I have also heard that the number of Buchanan votes, while high compared to neighboring counties, is consistent with the number of Buchanan votes in the 1996 election. Maybe the ballot was bad then, too, but I didn't hear people complaining.
Well, I noticed things that I consider voting irregularities here in Massachusetts. Like I walked into the polling location, and up to a table where all the district voters names and addresses are taped out on the table. Then they asked me my name and address but asked for no proof of identification or anything. I could have claimed to be anybody just by looking down in front of me. Of course, it doesn't really matter here, since the vote in Massachusetts was so clearly decisive. It only becomes an issue when it's just too damned close to figure out what the will of the people really is.
If you read a little deeper you'll see that he replies to a reply to his posting. He plans on posting "news" on Netscape, but not "reviews, criticism" and other info (sorry, I'm not digging up the link or quoting it verbatim for you). Personally, I imagine he's just frustrated from the flamage coming from both directions (pro- and anti- NS) and from those inside and outside the Mozilla community and is trying to distance what he puts his effort into, the Open Source project Mozilla, from the corporate entity Netscape.
oops, accidentally posted too soon... here's the full post...
Sorry, but this is BS. Would it be OK for you if another country did this? Just because of their history the Germans should not be allowed to do what they think is right?
No, clearly not. I was just talking about the appearance that was created, not about the moral rectitude of the act itself.
This is exactly what this is all about. It was the German government's choice to not use this defrag tool and they are also giving everyone else that wants to do this the choice to do so!
I realize this was the end result. The original intent of the german gov't based on the article on MSNBC and on the/. posting was to ban. The compromise result was as you described, which we all agree is a Good Thing. I never intended to dispute that. The lack of clarity in my first post was unfortunate, and has resulted in a flamefest.
Stuff like this coming from the US sounds really strange. Three keywords: "Native Americans", death penalty, KKK!
Sorry, this is just bunk. I am not the US. I am a US citizen but it's irrelevant to this thread. My ancestors weren't here when the Native Americans were butchered, they were busy fleeing Eastern European pogroms, I am opposed to the death penalty, and I don't think the KKK would admit me since I'm Jewish. More importantly, there is a HUGE difference between a government and the individuals who reside in a political municipality that a lot of people posting seem not to recognize. So my point is the "stuff" isn't coming from "the US". I am not "the US". I am an individual who sees unfortunate things come out both the US and Germany. I think certain episodes in American history have been tragic. Almost comparable in evil to the Holocaust, which was perpetrated by the German government under unlawful Nazi rule. In any case, it's the memory of those incidents that keeps some of us here in the US cautious of prejudging other groups, organizations, cults, religions, etc.
Sorry, but this is BS. Would it be OK for you if another country did this? Just because of their history the Germans should not be allowed to do what they think is right?
No, clearly not. I was just talking about the appearance that was created, not about the moral rectitude of the act itself.
Re:Oh you good Americans, please allow us ur own p
on
FRG on W2K: No CoS
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· Score: 1
This is also not flamebait. It was a defense against somebody who flamed me and got modded as insightful for posting an irrelevant flame on the USA. I had the courage to defend myself based on my opinion and if I took a jab at the German poster who flamed me, then it was well deserved for the jabs he took at Americans and our country (which by the way he seemed to have confused in his anti-American diatribe).
I am ashamed by the poor quality of moderation on this serious thread. It makes me rethink wasting my time trying to moderate seriously and post seriously when I'm not moderating.
Thanks, netpixie. That was all I ever intended to do. I think I got something out of the discussion too.... and saw some good points which hadn't occurred to me before. But I didn't intend to flame the German nation as I was accused of doing nor to bait flamers (which I apparently successfully did - although it was entirely by accident).
Re:READ THIS! then go to www.xenu.net
on
FRG on W2K: No CoS
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· Score: 1
Dipshit AC, if you bothered to read the rest of my posts you would clearly understand that I am not flaming the German nation. I clearly have stated that I recognize the reality that a security risk is possible and that the government has an obligation to act on that. I did not know that the request for source was denied as I didn't do the research on this. I simply commented on the perception it created in an uninformed, non-expert American like myself. I am knowledgable about the evil acts that have been committed by the CoS, but I also know about a lot of fucking evil acts that have been committed by other organizations. There is still a difference between an orgnanization and an individual. And there is still a negative perception that could be created by the way in which this was handled. I agree that the outcome was generally fine (MS made it possible to remove defrag) and I agree that this was what happened after other steps. But if you read the posting and some of the relevant articles you would see that people at least asserted that the German government was trying to ban software produced by a company that has a CEO who is a Scientologist. My point is what if the CEO of a company is a member or backer of the PLO or Hamas. What if it's the COO, and not the CEO? Or what if it's just a Senior Software Engineer? Where the hell do you draw the line? If the organization is owned and run by CoS, then it's a different story entirely. This is essentially a question of economic philosophy - the German government can do whatever the hell it wants on government owned computers but if I were a German I would want the right to decide whether I thought it was a security risk to run software produced by a company with some unknown degree of affiliation with CoS. I wouldn't want the government telling me I couldn't run it based on their judgement.
And I regard them similarly. My point seemed to have been totally missed because I went ahead and showed what happened when you transposed some words and how the damned thing could be interpreted. Everyone agrees fighting terrorism is good. But should we ban software written by radical muslims, whose organizations (which I don't consider to be legitimate religions either, since no legitimate religion calls for the murder of other people based on nationality or religion) are clearly evil? Maybe we should... but there's a fuzzy line between cult and religion and terrorist organization and who falls where depends on who you ask - so while it makes sense to fight the organizations directly, I don't believe it makes sense to wage war against economic or commercial products with a tenuous link to the organization.... but maybe that's because I'm an American and I worship free trade.
Re:Oh you good Americans, please allow us ur own p
on
FRG on W2K: No CoS
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· Score: 2
No, if it was flamebait I would have posted AC. Acting against CoS is one thing. I am not criticizing the German government for raiding CoS compounds or banning the organization's activities. I am simply wondering about the appropriateness of extending these activities to the realm of bans based on personal affiliations. It blurs the line between "bad organization" and "bad person". This is NOT flamebait. This is a fucking legitimate question.
And please note, shithead, that you can't be "corrected" for having an opinion. If I stated something factually false, I will concede it. I merely stated an opinion about the impression that was created by certain words used to describe the German government's actions. I realize these concepts are too abstract for an AC like you.
Fully agreed. They aren't a legitimate religion. I stated that in my original posting. I was just shocked by the casualness with which most posters seemed to accept banning or mucking around with the sale of software that involved an individual associated with a "bad" organization. It was just the wording of it all that disturbed me - is it appropriate, despite or because of past historical events, for a government to try to ban software or books or products because the member of a group that commits admittedly evil acts was involved in a company that produced them.
Re:Oh you good Americans, please allow us ur own p
on
FRG on W2K: No CoS
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· Score: 1
Oh please, get your own head out of your self-righteous German ass. I didn't say the US is blameless nor do I represent the US. I merely pointed out that it creates the appearance of wrongdoing for a government to perform an action like this. I don't care that CoS is a cult and not a religion. It's an organization, it's for-profit and it does bad things. The point is that the German government is judging software based on the affiliation of a person who was involved in its creation.
PLEASE note, asshole, that I never said the current German government is Nazi-like. I merely said that if you were to transpose the statement I quoted and replace the word "Scientologist" with "Jew" it looks fucking identical to statements that might have been made by the Nazi regime. This is a fact, but it doesn't mean that the current German regime is comparable to Nazi regime. I am just trying to figure out where you draw the line on acceptable government intervention.
My point was merely to provoke thought on what the government's role is restricting usage or import of software based on who produced it. I would never use software produced by a Nazi. But I don't want my government banning software based on WHO produced it without consideration of the software's content.
And I guess that's how they saw Judaism 50 years ago. I know they were wrong then. Maybe they're right now. But it's tough to go through religions, cults, organizations, groups, and throw em all into a bin that says "good" or "neutral" or "evil". That's why foreign policy and economic policy doesn't bother to use such categorizations. They use "ally" or "enemy" or "neutral". These are made based on political structure and intergovernmental relations, not based on ethical judgements. Governments do a notoriously bad job at making moral decisions or categorizations.
This is not flamebait. This is an honest question about the appropriateness of government involvement in a decision like this about what relevance the beliefs or organizational associations of a person have to software they create. If the CEO was the member of the Aryan Nation, my questions would persist.
It may seem like a Good Thing. My point was that it would have seemed like a good thing to Germans 50 years ago to boycott software written by a company run by a Jew. Is this the appropriate way to fight an organization that we think is bad? It seems to me to cloud the distinction between an organization committing immoral acts and the people in it being "inherently bad" or somehow polluting to projects that they are involved in (i.e. defrag software).
I don't know the answer, this is a tough question. I agree the CoS is a Bad Thing. But I don't think it's a Good Thing to boycott software, or judge ideas or judge products as good or bad based on the beliefs, however wacked we think they are, of somebody who was involved in its production. Actually, let me clarify that: I think it's fine for INDIVIDUALS to make those sorts of decisions, but I don't get a good feeling when the GOVERNMENT of a large nation makes a decision like that. Governments tend to be bad at making fine-grained philisophical or ethical decisions like this (i.e. is the software somehow polluted by the participation of a Scientologist?).
Note that I'm ignoring potential security issues. There are other ways to deal with that (code audit for security).
I didn't say they were good. Note my comments that I agree that everything I know about CoS indicates to me that they are essentially a cult (although I don't claim to be an expert). Merely that it creates a generally bad appearance for the German government to get involved in this sort of thing, whether the organization is a cult or a religion, or a political group or whatever. It's the affiliation of one person who happens to be the CEO of a company that produces the software. My point is that 50 years ago many people in Germany would have said the exact same things about a company run by a Jew. Now, I think we are pretty much right today and they were clearly morally way-off 50 years ago, and I'm not a moral relativist. Merely pointing out that it should give us pause - not that I have the ideal explanation for the situation and the correct and incorrect course of action for the German government or people.
Now, I'm no fan of the tenets of CoS. But things like this coming from the German government also give me pause. I mentally replace "Scientologist" with "Jew" and I see something that could have happened 50 years ago if we had a software industry... "We won't use software tools made by the Jews, you can't trust them or their software".
I am not saying that I think CoS is a legitimate religious organization. I don't. Admittedly, many religions tend toward greed or zealotry, but CoS walks like a cult, smells like a cult and quacks like a cult. Nevertheless, coming from the German government broad regulations and requirements of software or other consumer products based on the belief set or association of those who created them - well, it just doesn't ring very well in my mind. If you're not going to use software written by a Scientologist, or written by a crony of Bill Gates, that should be your own wacky individual choice to make. I don't think having the government try to muck around in it is a good idea, especially in a country like Germany, where there is a long history of cultural tendencies toward nationalism and racism.
I realize that in this case the result is instructions on uninstalling and not government action, but the government made the statement and did try to get involved, and that's enough to give me pause.
Bruce,
I think linking is fundamentally unclear in GPL v2. I've heard people extol the lack of clarity, but I think it makes some people nervous to have code out there under a license that requires interpretation by everybody who uses it.
This is my own personal bias, but as an author of a lot of Java programs and a professional Java developer who writes and has released GPLed code and writes a lot of non-Free code for money, I worry whether or not I am linking to code by using it in certain ways. And there is an increasing amount of GPLed Java code out there, so I think this is relevant to a lot of people.
You mention dynamic linking, CORBA and daemons in your quote. In the Java world, we have RMI (am I linking if I call a method or use an object redirected through socket services and not located locally on a machine?) What about interfaces in Java? I can have GPLed code that implements a Sun-specified (and thus non GPLed) interface (for examples you need only look at a GPLed implementation of JMS, of which there were some although they may have switched to BSD-style licensing for exactly these reasons). And what about deeper decoupling mechanisms like MOM-style messaging? If I pass an XML message to a remote, decoupled module and get a reply back, all I've done is thrown XML out there and gotten XML back. Is that linking? And what about JINI and other service oriented tools. Is using a remote service considered linking (this sort of bridges the ASP and linking issues... I certainly think people should have to release changes they make that they are using in a service-style offering, but I think it would be unwise and limiting to ban non-GPLed clients to request things from GPLed services. Hell, HTTP is request-reply over the network and nobody would say a GPLed client can't connect to a non-GPLed server or vice versa. The only change here with messaging systems or other networked service offerings is that the data is structured and machine readable (i.e. XML) and that can even be pushed over HTTP.
Hope I didn't get carried away, but you see the new world of networked programming presents a LOT of challenges to the GPL. There is a blurry line there that needs to be clarified. I see some Java projects (especially J2EE related) that have given up on the GPL and moved to licenses like MPL and BSD-style for exactly these reasons. There are a lot of Java developers who would love to GPL code if this stuff was clarified. Thanks, Bruce, and I hope this is useful.
This law is much more broad than that. Read the text yourself. It says nothing about causing death or endangering American lives. It basically perpetually silences anyone who has ever had classified information about that information unless they go and obtain "authorization" to reveal it. The flaw I believe lies in the fact that a ton of information is "classified" and this bill bears no sensistivity to the nature of the degree or the type of information.
I don't know if it's fair or meaningful to consider politician's political actions in light of their reasons. The key thing is that whether they are being selfish or not doesn't matter if the results are good for our country and for us. Look at most Supreme Court decisions - go ahead, read some. The opinions written by different justices who agree on the case's outcome scarcely ever are similar in reasoning... they often times have to make a morally correct decision and back it up with a convoluted legal argument. Such is the nature of the job.
Now, I don't know what Clinton's motivations are. I know he's a selfish guy, but I find that pretty much everyone running for president, while they want to lead the nation, they generally also have self interest at heart. Look at Gore and Bush. Are either of them really self sacrifying guys who just care about the American people? I don't think so. They both ooze selfishness. Oh well. Go vote for Browne, or Nader if you want selfless. If you just want somebody to do a decent job of not fucking us all over, vote for Gore. If you want a loose cannon moron, vote for Bush.
I agree with you here. The important part here is the guarantor and who's systems I need to integrate with, who I send the PO to, who sends me confirmation, etc. My company is building a B2B marketplace for an electronic components sales and distribution company and they are basically just playing middleman, but they have their own logistics management system. So what does that mean? Well they are effectively selling stuff from lots of distributers in an open spot market, but they are handling the logistics management themselves. Sorta the best of both worlds.
If you bother to read to the bottom you will see that this email is clearly labelled as a _SATIRE_. That's right, it doesn't claim to be real, it's not even a hoax, because there's nothing fraudulent. It's just a joke, a satire piece, intended to offer insight into some possible lines of criticism that somebody like Bill Gates could throw at Linux.
Check your links before you post stories. This is pure SlashTrash. And if/. eds don't bother, at least read the story linked to before replying.
I think Sci Fi tends to reflect very heavily the culture that produced it. You can see this by reading some old sci fi from the 40s or 50s. It expresses the hopes and fears that people generally have at any given time and how they project those hopes and fears onto the future. And that's about the best most of us can do, given that we aren't telepathic. Different cultures have different things in their shared subconcious hopes and different thoughts that scare the living bejesus out of them. Here in the grand ole USA, we see corps engulfing everything. It kinds makes sense that it comes out in a lot of our Sci Fi. I don't know if it means that we fear or embrace rampant capitalism. Probably a little of both.
Funny. I have a BA in Physics and CS. And I seem to get plenty of respect from the people around me at my company and from the rest of the people I interact with in the industry. Not because of the letters of my degree, which are nice and document some time and effort put into academics, but because of the knowledge and skills that I have.
Actually, liberal arts schools like Amherst DO give BAs in CS. I don't think this guy is just trolling, or if he is, he's taking his trolling very seriously (see his user profile).
Uhh.... I never answered for any community of software developers. I just interpreted and expounded on what I believe Richard Stallman's opinion is. This is based on reading a lot of rants he's written, having a few conversations with him, and reading this correspondence. Do I agree with him? Sometimes. And sometimes I disagree. But I never implied that the sentence you quoted was what I felt.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I noticed things that I consider voting irregularities here in Massachusetts. Like I walked into the polling location, and up to a table where all the district voters names and addresses are taped out on the table. Then they asked me my name and address but asked for no proof of identification or anything. I could have claimed to be anybody just by looking down in front of me. Of course, it doesn't really matter here, since the vote in Massachusetts was so clearly decisive. It only becomes an issue when it's just too damned close to figure out what the will of the people really is.
If you read a little deeper you'll see that he replies to a reply to his posting. He plans on posting "news" on Netscape, but not "reviews, criticism" and other info (sorry, I'm not digging up the link or quoting it verbatim for you). Personally, I imagine he's just frustrated from the flamage coming from both directions (pro- and anti- NS) and from those inside and outside the Mozilla community and is trying to distance what he puts his effort into, the Open Source project Mozilla, from the corporate entity Netscape.
Sorry, but this is BS. Would it be OK for you if another country did this? Just because of their history the Germans should not be allowed to do what they think is right?
No, clearly not. I was just talking about the appearance that was created, not about the moral rectitude of the act itself.
This is exactly what this is all about. It was the German government's choice to not use this defrag tool and they are also giving everyone else that wants to do this the choice to do so!
I realize this was the end result. The original intent of the german gov't based on the article on MSNBC and on the /. posting was to ban. The compromise result was as you described, which we all agree is a Good Thing. I never intended to dispute that. The lack of clarity in my first post was unfortunate, and has resulted in a flamefest.
Stuff like this coming from the US sounds really strange. Three keywords: "Native Americans", death penalty, KKK!
Sorry, this is just bunk. I am not the US. I am a US citizen but it's irrelevant to this thread. My ancestors weren't here when the Native Americans were butchered, they were busy fleeing Eastern European pogroms, I am opposed to the death penalty, and I don't think the KKK would admit me since I'm Jewish. More importantly, there is a HUGE difference between a government and the individuals who reside in a political municipality that a lot of people posting seem not to recognize. So my point is the "stuff" isn't coming from "the US". I am not "the US". I am an individual who sees unfortunate things come out both the US and Germany. I think certain episodes in American history have been tragic. Almost comparable in evil to the Holocaust, which was perpetrated by the German government under unlawful Nazi rule. In any case, it's the memory of those incidents that keeps some of us here in the US cautious of prejudging other groups, organizations, cults, religions, etc.
No, clearly not. I was just talking about the appearance that was created, not about the moral rectitude of the act itself.
This is also not flamebait. It was a defense against somebody who flamed me and got modded as insightful for posting an irrelevant flame on the USA. I had the courage to defend myself based on my opinion and if I took a jab at the German poster who flamed me, then it was well deserved for the jabs he took at Americans and our country (which by the way he seemed to have confused in his anti-American diatribe).
I am ashamed by the poor quality of moderation on this serious thread. It makes me rethink wasting my time trying to moderate seriously and post seriously when I'm not moderating.
Thanks, netpixie. That was all I ever intended to do. I think I got something out of the discussion too.... and saw some good points which hadn't occurred to me before. But I didn't intend to flame the German nation as I was accused of doing nor to bait flamers (which I apparently successfully did - although it was entirely by accident).
Dipshit AC, if you bothered to read the rest of my posts you would clearly understand that I am not flaming the German nation. I clearly have stated that I recognize the reality that a security risk is possible and that the government has an obligation to act on that. I did not know that the request for source was denied as I didn't do the research on this. I simply commented on the perception it created in an uninformed, non-expert American like myself. I am knowledgable about the evil acts that have been committed by the CoS, but I also know about a lot of fucking evil acts that have been committed by other organizations. There is still a difference between an orgnanization and an individual. And there is still a negative perception that could be created by the way in which this was handled. I agree that the outcome was generally fine (MS made it possible to remove defrag) and I agree that this was what happened after other steps. But if you read the posting and some of the relevant articles you would see that people at least asserted that the German government was trying to ban software produced by a company that has a CEO who is a Scientologist. My point is what if the CEO of a company is a member or backer of the PLO or Hamas. What if it's the COO, and not the CEO? Or what if it's just a Senior Software Engineer? Where the hell do you draw the line? If the organization is owned and run by CoS, then it's a different story entirely. This is essentially a question of economic philosophy - the German government can do whatever the hell it wants on government owned computers but if I were a German I would want the right to decide whether I thought it was a security risk to run software produced by a company with some unknown degree of affiliation with CoS. I wouldn't want the government telling me I couldn't run it based on their judgement.
And I regard them similarly. My point seemed to have been totally missed because I went ahead and showed what happened when you transposed some words and how the damned thing could be interpreted. Everyone agrees fighting terrorism is good. But should we ban software written by radical muslims, whose organizations (which I don't consider to be legitimate religions either, since no legitimate religion calls for the murder of other people based on nationality or religion) are clearly evil? Maybe we should... but there's a fuzzy line between cult and religion and terrorist organization and who falls where depends on who you ask - so while it makes sense to fight the organizations directly, I don't believe it makes sense to wage war against economic or commercial products with a tenuous link to the organization.... but maybe that's because I'm an American and I worship free trade.
No, if it was flamebait I would have posted AC. Acting against CoS is one thing. I am not criticizing the German government for raiding CoS compounds or banning the organization's activities. I am simply wondering about the appropriateness of extending these activities to the realm of bans based on personal affiliations. It blurs the line between "bad organization" and "bad person". This is NOT flamebait. This is a fucking legitimate question.
And please note, shithead, that you can't be "corrected" for having an opinion. If I stated something factually false, I will concede it. I merely stated an opinion about the impression that was created by certain words used to describe the German government's actions. I realize these concepts are too abstract for an AC like you.
Fully agreed. They aren't a legitimate religion. I stated that in my original posting. I was just shocked by the casualness with which most posters seemed to accept banning or mucking around with the sale of software that involved an individual associated with a "bad" organization. It was just the wording of it all that disturbed me - is it appropriate, despite or because of past historical events, for a government to try to ban software or books or products because the member of a group that commits admittedly evil acts was involved in a company that produced them.
Oh please, get your own head out of your self-righteous German ass. I didn't say the US is blameless nor do I represent the US. I merely pointed out that it creates the appearance of wrongdoing for a government to perform an action like this. I don't care that CoS is a cult and not a religion. It's an organization, it's for-profit and it does bad things. The point is that the German government is judging software based on the affiliation of a person who was involved in its creation.
PLEASE note, asshole, that I never said the current German government is Nazi-like. I merely said that if you were to transpose the statement I quoted and replace the word "Scientologist" with "Jew" it looks fucking identical to statements that might have been made by the Nazi regime. This is a fact, but it doesn't mean that the current German regime is comparable to Nazi regime. I am just trying to figure out where you draw the line on acceptable government intervention.
My point was merely to provoke thought on what the government's role is restricting usage or import of software based on who produced it. I would never use software produced by a Nazi. But I don't want my government banning software based on WHO produced it without consideration of the software's content.
And I guess that's how they saw Judaism 50 years ago. I know they were wrong then. Maybe they're right now. But it's tough to go through religions, cults, organizations, groups, and throw em all into a bin that says "good" or "neutral" or "evil". That's why foreign policy and economic policy doesn't bother to use such categorizations. They use "ally" or "enemy" or "neutral". These are made based on political structure and intergovernmental relations, not based on ethical judgements. Governments do a notoriously bad job at making moral decisions or categorizations.
This is not flamebait. This is an honest question about the appropriateness of government involvement in a decision like this about what relevance the beliefs or organizational associations of a person have to software they create. If the CEO was the member of the Aryan Nation, my questions would persist.
It may seem like a Good Thing. My point was that it would have seemed like a good thing to Germans 50 years ago to boycott software written by a company run by a Jew. Is this the appropriate way to fight an organization that we think is bad? It seems to me to cloud the distinction between an organization committing immoral acts and the people in it being "inherently bad" or somehow polluting to projects that they are involved in (i.e. defrag software).
I don't know the answer, this is a tough question. I agree the CoS is a Bad Thing. But I don't think it's a Good Thing to boycott software, or judge ideas or judge products as good or bad based on the beliefs, however wacked we think they are, of somebody who was involved in its production. Actually, let me clarify that: I think it's fine for INDIVIDUALS to make those sorts of decisions, but I don't get a good feeling when the GOVERNMENT of a large nation makes a decision like that. Governments tend to be bad at making fine-grained philisophical or ethical decisions like this (i.e. is the software somehow polluted by the participation of a Scientologist?).
Note that I'm ignoring potential security issues. There are other ways to deal with that (code audit for security).
I didn't say they were good. Note my comments that I agree that everything I know about CoS indicates to me that they are essentially a cult (although I don't claim to be an expert). Merely that it creates a generally bad appearance for the German government to get involved in this sort of thing, whether the organization is a cult or a religion, or a political group or whatever. It's the affiliation of one person who happens to be the CEO of a company that produces the software. My point is that 50 years ago many people in Germany would have said the exact same things about a company run by a Jew. Now, I think we are pretty much right today and they were clearly morally way-off 50 years ago, and I'm not a moral relativist. Merely pointing out that it should give us pause - not that I have the ideal explanation for the situation and the correct and incorrect course of action for the German government or people.
Now, I'm no fan of the tenets of CoS. But things like this coming from the German government also give me pause. I mentally replace "Scientologist" with "Jew" and I see something that could have happened 50 years ago if we had a software industry ... "We won't use software tools made by the Jews, you can't trust them or their software".
I am not saying that I think CoS is a legitimate religious organization. I don't. Admittedly, many religions tend toward greed or zealotry, but CoS walks like a cult, smells like a cult and quacks like a cult. Nevertheless, coming from the German government broad regulations and requirements of software or other consumer products based on the belief set or association of those who created them - well, it just doesn't ring very well in my mind. If you're not going to use software written by a Scientologist, or written by a crony of Bill Gates, that should be your own wacky individual choice to make. I don't think having the government try to muck around in it is a good idea, especially in a country like Germany, where there is a long history of cultural tendencies toward nationalism and racism.
I realize that in this case the result is instructions on uninstalling and not government action, but the government made the statement and did try to get involved, and that's enough to give me pause.
Bruce,
I think linking is fundamentally unclear in GPL v2. I've heard people extol the lack of clarity, but I think it makes some people nervous to have code out there under a license that requires interpretation by everybody who uses it.
This is my own personal bias, but as an author of a lot of Java programs and a professional Java developer who writes and has released GPLed code and writes a lot of non-Free code for money, I worry whether or not I am linking to code by using it in certain ways. And there is an increasing amount of GPLed Java code out there, so I think this is relevant to a lot of people.
You mention dynamic linking, CORBA and daemons in your quote. In the Java world, we have RMI (am I linking if I call a method or use an object redirected through socket services and not located locally on a machine?) What about interfaces in Java? I can have GPLed code that implements a Sun-specified (and thus non GPLed) interface (for examples you need only look at a GPLed implementation of JMS, of which there were some although they may have switched to BSD-style licensing for exactly these reasons). And what about deeper decoupling mechanisms like MOM-style messaging? If I pass an XML message to a remote, decoupled module and get a reply back, all I've done is thrown XML out there and gotten XML back. Is that linking? And what about JINI and other service oriented tools. Is using a remote service considered linking (this sort of bridges the ASP and linking issues... I certainly think people should have to release changes they make that they are using in a service-style offering, but I think it would be unwise and limiting to ban non-GPLed clients to request things from GPLed services. Hell, HTTP is request-reply over the network and nobody would say a GPLed client can't connect to a non-GPLed server or vice versa. The only change here with messaging systems or other networked service offerings is that the data is structured and machine readable (i.e. XML) and that can even be pushed over HTTP.
Hope I didn't get carried away, but you see the new world of networked programming presents a LOT of challenges to the GPL. There is a blurry line there that needs to be clarified. I see some Java projects (especially J2EE related) that have given up on the GPL and moved to licenses like MPL and BSD-style for exactly these reasons. There are a lot of Java developers who would love to GPL code if this stuff was clarified. Thanks, Bruce, and I hope this is useful.
This law is much more broad than that. Read the text yourself. It says nothing about causing death or endangering American lives. It basically perpetually silences anyone who has ever had classified information about that information unless they go and obtain "authorization" to reveal it. The flaw I believe lies in the fact that a ton of information is "classified" and this bill bears no sensistivity to the nature of the degree or the type of information.
I don't know if it's fair or meaningful to consider politician's political actions in light of their reasons. The key thing is that whether they are being selfish or not doesn't matter if the results are good for our country and for us. Look at most Supreme Court decisions - go ahead, read some. The opinions written by different justices who agree on the case's outcome scarcely ever are similar in reasoning... they often times have to make a morally correct decision and back it up with a convoluted legal argument. Such is the nature of the job.
Now, I don't know what Clinton's motivations are. I know he's a selfish guy, but I find that pretty much everyone running for president, while they want to lead the nation, they generally also have self interest at heart. Look at Gore and Bush. Are either of them really self sacrifying guys who just care about the American people? I don't think so. They both ooze selfishness. Oh well. Go vote for Browne, or Nader if you want selfless. If you just want somebody to do a decent job of not fucking us all over, vote for Gore. If you want a loose cannon moron, vote for Bush.
I agree with you here. The important part here is the guarantor and who's systems I need to integrate with, who I send the PO to, who sends me confirmation, etc. My company is building a B2B marketplace for an electronic components sales and distribution company and they are basically just playing middleman, but they have their own logistics management system. So what does that mean? Well they are effectively selling stuff from lots of distributers in an open spot market, but they are handling the logistics management themselves. Sorta the best of both worlds.
If you bother to read to the bottom you will see that this email is clearly labelled as a _SATIRE_. That's right, it doesn't claim to be real, it's not even a hoax, because there's nothing fraudulent. It's just a joke, a satire piece, intended to offer insight into some possible lines of criticism that somebody like Bill Gates could throw at Linux.
/. eds don't bother, at least read the story linked to before replying.
Check your links before you post stories. This is pure SlashTrash. And if
I think Sci Fi tends to reflect very heavily the culture that produced it. You can see this by reading some old sci fi from the 40s or 50s. It expresses the hopes and fears that people generally have at any given time and how they project those hopes and fears onto the future. And that's about the best most of us can do, given that we aren't telepathic. Different cultures have different things in their shared subconcious hopes and different thoughts that scare the living bejesus out of them. Here in the grand ole USA, we see corps engulfing everything. It kinds makes sense that it comes out in a lot of our Sci Fi. I don't know if it means that we fear or embrace rampant capitalism. Probably a little of both.
Funny. I have a BA in Physics and CS. And I seem to get plenty of respect from the people around me at my company and from the rest of the people I interact with in the industry. Not because of the letters of my degree, which are nice and document some time and effort put into academics, but because of the knowledge and skills that I have.
Actually, liberal arts schools like Amherst DO give BAs in CS. I don't think this guy is just trolling, or if he is, he's taking his trolling very seriously (see his user profile).
Uhh.... I never answered for any community of software developers. I just interpreted and expounded on what I believe Richard Stallman's opinion is. This is based on reading a lot of rants he's written, having a few conversations with him, and reading this correspondence. Do I agree with him? Sometimes. And sometimes I disagree. But I never implied that the sentence you quoted was what I felt.