If you accept McBride's premise that CS is less relevant today to IT, it does not follow that CS is dying. You could use that premise to argue for why the number of students is dropping, but a drop in students doesn't mean a discipline is dying either. CS is an academic field, not a trade.
If you're going to claim an academic field is dying you should instead argue that it is no longer intellectually interesting. Specifically, you might try to should show that less people are interested in studying it for its own sake. Don't argue it is dying because less people are in it to get rich, or a career. The loss of such people is really only a loss of bodies that provide funding.
A reasonable argument that CS is dying would much more resemble the argument that alchemy is dead then the argument that the blacksmith trade is dead.
I just finished an undergraduate CS degree. I found the field to be interesting. I would like to study more, not to enhance my IT career, not to meet someone else's expectations, but for its own sake. I did observe one thing threatening the academic field of CS; the constant pressure from government and business to behave more like the ICT school Mr. McBride runs.
I discovered that CS departments like the one I graduated from are stuck managing a delicate balance. If they were to ignore government and industry pressure, they would have less career centric students, and less resources to offer a quality CS education to intrinsically motivated people like myself. But, if they overreact to the pressure, someone like myself could end up with an even lesser CS education than the one I'd receive if all the career centric students disappeared.
Imagine person A is a copyright holder of a computer program, and A hands you a copy of their program. The program runs without asking you to agree to anything, and there is no COPYING or license file. What rights can you assume you have?
List them.
Later A gives you a new copy under the GNU General Public License. What rights do you have now?
List them.
By comparing these two lists, we will be able to evaluate your claim that the GNU GPL takes away your rights.
RedHat sells thier software for $349.00, and there are people who redistribute it gratis. RedHat hires programmers to improve that software. Those software developers spend thier time developing software and none of it providing tech support, other people in the company do that.
I would prefer that we find other ways to satisfy society's creative needs. I would agree that any new system should also aim to to pay a subset of the population to do this so we can get the best from them.
You are correct to state that abolishing copyright would also cause the withdrawal in participation for copyright's largest beneficiaries, music companies, movie studios, and traditional software companies. I would not miss them.
Copyright is a special power. It gives the legal power to the copyright holder to regulate the making of copies. In a world without software copyright the developer has a choice, publish the software or don't publish it. If you choose to publish in a copyrightless world the you have no power over subsequent copying by others.
I see, I thought you were talking about the transition away from the non-free FreeQt license, when you were really talking about the transition from QPL to GPL; my bad.
The switch from FreeQt to QPL was much more important then the later switch to the GPL. I mistakenly believed that RMS's involvement, ended at this point, but I was wrong.
The difference with respect to X is this, RMS and others felt the QPL was causing some serious practical problems for the free software community, hence effort was expended to asking Trolltech to switch. Ironically, RMS was involved in the QPL debate to help with a practical problem, whereas suggesting a licensing change for X would be more about the general philosophy of copyleft. ( Why Copyleft?,
What is Copyleft.)
The "I'm not even going to bother to talk to them I'm just going to insult them from afar with very emotive language until they use my own personal license" approach
Well, apparently he did talk to them. I have not seen any insults in any of his posts on the issue.
And the Linux kernel isn't very useful unless you have a shell like GNU bash, and you need command line tools like ls, cp, mv... all GNU provided. Thank you, RMS.
Don't forget the GNU C Library. This is a massive project, and it plays a very key role in allowing GNU to be a Unix replacement.
Somebody asked RMS how can software writers make enough money to live. RMS said that he would be in favor of a "free software tax" to pay the salaries of people writing free software.
How recently? If I recall correctly, this is an suggestion that dates back to the earlier years of the GNU project. It was used as an example (amongst many) that there are other ways to fund software development.
The tax approach is an ugly one, but I would still find it preferable to living in a proprietary world. Fortunately the free world has since demonstrated that it can flourish without this idea.
Actually that's an important point. RMS wants to maximise freedom for the USERS even at the expense of the PROGRAMMERS.
I would prefer not to live in a society that provides special powers for small group of people at the expense of the whole.
He is willing to constrain the freedom of a programmer,
If we abolish copyright on software, programmers will not have lost a freedom, a privilege/power will have been taken away. As for the 'freedom to withhold source', it is a freedom I'm willing to part with, just as I'm willing to part with the freedom to kill another human being. (I'm not saying I value the former restriction more so then the later) Every society has at least some restrictions on individual freedom for the benefit of everyone, the debate is on which ones. A freedom is not inherently a good thing, there are always costs to weight against the benefits. RMS engages in some pretty thoughtful cost-benifit analysis in Why Software Should Not Have Owners and Why Software Should Be Free.
That being said, we probably don't need a law requiring source distribution, abolishing software copyright would probably be sufficient. The cultural change accompanying this could turn source distribution into a social norm requiring no government enforcement.
because he wants all software to come with source code.
He wants a lot more then that! You should be able to make changes to that source code. You should be able to share those changes with others, which benefits them and it can benefit you if the others make and share an additional change that builds on your own.
There's more. Given a universal information processing machine, some bytes that make that universal information machine do something useful, and a friend who would like a copy, most normally socialized people will utilize the copying capability that this machine excels at. In cyberspace this kind of behavior is as natural as breathing is in the real world. RMS thinks it should be legal.
Also restricting the use of a program with a restriction like 'educational use only' or 'company with less then or equal to 5 employees only' is unacceptable too.
But in an interview he recommended some obscure Linux called Extremadura or something like that, because he had read somewhere that they only provided GPL software.
No, he would of read (incorectly) that they only provided free software.
Your comparison of X and QT is inappropriate. X is free software and available under a non-copyleft free software license. QT was at one time completely non-free. RMS cares a lot more about the free/non-free distinction then the copyleft/non-copyleft distinction.
Ahh, I assumed that MonopolySoft was including the copy of Red Hat with the machine, making them the key software distributor in this case.
A highly unrealistic scenario has been contrived here. The parties involved can go right ahead, such an absurd device will enjoy little success. The license does not need to be modified to prevent this (nothing probably can), and the anti-DRM clauses need not be scraped under the view that this little pore hole makes them useless.
If some third party wants to sell the convenience of a combined machine-software combination, they will be out of luck.
This situation is far removed from the Tivoesque situations the new changes are meant to deal with.
Actually, MonopolySoft has violated the license. The problem for them is that they put themselves in a position where they could not possibly come into compliance. After the copyright holder complains, and after the 60 days are up, MonoplySoft will have to recall their product from the market. If they fail to do so the copyright holder can sue them.
If it's open source, why should it limit how one can use that source?
There are very good reasons. We don't just care about your freedoms, we care about the freedom of every subsequent person who gets a copy.
Why would you like the power to give another person a copy, but with less freedom and power then you received? Are they less important? Are they less deserving of freedom?
So you condemn a choice made by the maintainer to include this software
Yes.
solely on your preferences?
No. I'm concerned about the effects upon others too.
Are you saying that they should not have the freedom to do so?
Freedom? Copyright is a power granted by society, not a freedom. This power comes at the expense of the freedom of software users. I do not consider (what you call) the 'freedom' of a distributor to distribute a binary without source to be more important than the freedom to share, use, and modify software. Society also would condemn you if you *chose* to exercise your *freedom* to hit me in the knees with a sledgehammer.
How does that choice impinge on the freedom of users to remove the software?
It doesn't, but the fact that there is a choice in that situation doesn't prevent me from expressing that I don't like what the distributor has done.
Wouldn't not including it remove that freedom to remove software they don't like?
This is the silly question, your point is that not including something provides less freedom. Mandriva should include a copy of Linux 1.0 too I suppose?
You are right, ultimately users choose to be free or not. My objection stems from that fact that companies like Mandriva play a role in these choices; they are (positive or negative) role models for their users.
Positive role models are needed, as values are not formed in vacuums. (Even RMS didn't reach his conclusions alone). Without positive leadership from the distributions, our community will keep accepting proprietary software over free software, and we will all (Mandriva included) be worse off.
I should give credit where due, Linspire is leading the charge backwards more so than anyone else.
What's next? Remove the window managers?
If they're proprietary yes. Is there a distribution that distributes a proprietary window manager?
If you don't like the software, remove it.
I go much further then that, I refuse to obtain it in the first place.
I condem the bundling of this Mindawn preview program on the basis that it is proprietary software. Mandriva users should be very upset that thier distro would attempt to ask them to give up thier freedom.
After all, X.org is an essential part to all big name 'distros'.
X is an important and widely used piece of free software, but it is not as essential as GNU and Linux are. Many people run GNU/Linux without X. Every distro worth naming has an X package, but its installation in many cases is optional. Debian only installs X if asked. Ubuntu provides a nice convenient way for an server admin to opt out of X and graphical programs at the start of its installation. Who provides a choice during install of C library, shell, and coreutils? Not even the Linux From Scratch people raise this possibility.
Go ahead and refer to the operating system as GNU/Linux/X if you really value X's existence that much. That would be a lot better than simply calling it Linux, as you would at least be including the name of the most significant component, GNU.
why should the operating system be named after optional and replaceable stuff sitting on top of the operating system. Why name my automobile after the brand of tires it uses?
I do not accept your comparison of the GNU C library, BASH, and GNU coreutils to tires. These components are quite important, and not as interchangeable with alternatives as you may think. Replace them with dietlibc and busybox and will you have a new operating system, as distinct and incompatible as Solaris, FreeBSD, GNU/HURD, and GNU/Linux are to each other.
There is another point worth adding. If the significance of GNU's contribution was the only issue, people like myself would not bother engaging in this argument. There is a second major reason for why we call the system GNU/Linux, I discuss it elsewhere in the thread.
But all of those parts are replaceable. Take the linux kernel, add the BSD utils, diet libc, tcsh, etc. Hey look, UNG/Linux! Or use Busybox, BSD libc, and ash instead. Whatever.
How is it relevant that alternatives to GNU exist? At issue is the naming of systems that use GNU and Linux as essential parts, that is all the big name 'distros'. At issue is the actual system people are using, not what they could be using.
Linux is replaceable too. I inform people that they are incorrect when they refer to systems that don't use Linux as being 'Linux' too.
Actually, the project and distribution you're referring to calls itself Debian GNU/Linux.
but strictly speaking, because there's no complete operating system that uses only GNU utils and the Linux kernel, there's no such thing as GNU/Linux.
You misunderstand the argument for calling the system GNU/Linux. Allow me to summarize it.
Premises
The operating system in question consists of a many components from many projects.
It would be unreasonable to name the system after all these components.
A compromise must be made where the system is named after the most important components.
The most significant contribution to this operating system is GNU.
The second most significant contribution is a kernel named Linux.
Failing to include GNU in the name of the system leaves most users unaware that GNU is the most significant component.
The GNU project's idealism resulted in a significant practical outcome.
Unawareness of the significance of GNU's contribution can lead to two problems, a person thinking their philosophy is impractical, or not knowing about it at all.
Including GNU in the name of the system does not spread the philosophy, but it does highlight the contribution's significance, increasing the chance that a user will learn about and agree with the philosophy.
Conclusion: The best name for the operating system in question is GNU/Linux.
I understand why someone who rejects any of these premises would disagree with the conclusion. If GNU were not the most significant component, it would be unfair to insist on including it in the system's name, even if one wanted to promote the philosphy. (We don't call Solaris or FreeBSD, GNU systems) If one does not feel it is important to spread the project's philosophy, there is little gained by including it in the name, even when one recognizes that GNU is the most significant component. Thus, it must be understood that the combination of these reasons and circumstances leads to the conclusion.
There's Debian Linux, RedHat Linux, SuSE Linux, Gentoo Linux, and dozens of others.... Debian is probably closest to GNU/Linux
These are all GNU/Linux systems, Debian doesn't have more GNU software than the others. All of them use Linux as a kernel and the following vital GNU components:
Slashdot Mirror
I take it that the parent has communicated with enough autistic people to be confident with what they're saying.
evidence?
science.slashdot.org?
If you accept McBride's premise that CS is less relevant today to IT, it does not follow that CS is dying. You could use that premise to argue for why the number of students is dropping, but a drop in students doesn't mean a discipline is dying either. CS is an academic field, not a trade.
If you're going to claim an academic field is dying you should instead argue that it is no longer intellectually interesting. Specifically, you might try to should show that less people are interested in studying it for its own sake. Don't argue it is dying because less people are in it to get rich, or a career. The loss of such people is really only a loss of bodies that provide funding.
A reasonable argument that CS is dying would much more resemble the argument that alchemy is dead then the argument that the blacksmith trade is dead.
I just finished an undergraduate CS degree. I found the field to be interesting. I would like to study more, not to enhance my IT career, not to meet someone else's expectations, but for its own sake. I did observe one thing threatening the academic field of CS; the constant pressure from government and business to behave more like the ICT school Mr. McBride runs.
I discovered that CS departments like the one I graduated from are stuck managing a delicate balance. If they were to ignore government and industry pressure, they would have less career centric students, and less resources to offer a quality CS education to intrinsically motivated people like myself. But, if they overreact to the pressure, someone like myself could end up with an even lesser CS education than the one I'd receive if all the career centric students disappeared.
What are you waiting for?
It exists. It works.
The driver support and performance arn't super, but it is a real working system.
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/
Really.
Imagine person A is a copyright holder of a computer program, and A hands you a copy of their program. The program runs without asking you to agree to anything, and there is no COPYING or license file. What rights can you assume you have?
List them.
Later A gives you a new copy under the GNU General Public License. What rights do you have now?
List them.
By comparing these two lists, we will be able to evaluate your claim that the GNU GPL takes away your rights.
Actually it will be 20.4
RedHat sells thier software for $349.00, and there are people who redistribute it gratis. RedHat hires programmers to improve that software. Those software developers spend thier time developing software and none of it providing tech support, other people in the company do that.
ATI *is* an enemy of your freedom, no exageration there.
Yes.
I would prefer that we find other ways to satisfy society's creative needs. I would agree that any new system should also aim to to pay a subset of the population to do this so we can get the best from them.
You are correct to state that abolishing copyright would also cause the withdrawal in participation for copyright's largest beneficiaries, music companies, movie studios, and traditional software companies. I would not miss them.
Copyright is a special power. It gives the legal power to the copyright holder to regulate the making of copies. In a world without software copyright the developer has a choice, publish the software or don't publish it. If you choose to publish in a copyrightless world the you have no power over subsequent copying by others.
I see, I thought you were talking about the transition away from the non-free FreeQt license, when you were really talking about the transition from QPL to GPL; my bad.
The switch from FreeQt to QPL was much more important then the later switch to the GPL. I mistakenly believed that RMS's involvement, ended at this point, but I was wrong.
The difference with respect to X is this, RMS and others felt the QPL was causing some serious practical problems for the free software community, hence effort was expended to asking Trolltech to switch. Ironically, RMS was involved in the QPL debate to help with a practical problem, whereas suggesting a licensing change for X would be more about the general philosophy of copyleft. ( Why Copyleft?, What is Copyleft.)
Well, apparently he did talk to them. I have not seen any insults in any of his posts on the issue.
Don't forget the GNU C Library. This is a massive project, and it plays a very key role in allowing GNU to be a Unix replacement.
How recently? If I recall correctly, this is an suggestion that dates back to the earlier years of the GNU project. It was used as an example (amongst many) that there are other ways to fund software development.
The tax approach is an ugly one, but I would still find it preferable to living in a proprietary world. Fortunately the free world has since demonstrated that it can flourish without this idea.
I would prefer not to live in a society that provides special powers for small group of people at the expense of the whole.
If we abolish copyright on software, programmers will not have lost a freedom, a privilege/power will have been taken away. As for the 'freedom to withhold source', it is a freedom I'm willing to part with, just as I'm willing to part with the freedom to kill another human being. (I'm not saying I value the former restriction more so then the later) Every society has at least some restrictions on individual freedom for the benefit of everyone, the debate is on which ones. A freedom is not inherently a good thing, there are always costs to weight against the benefits. RMS engages in some pretty thoughtful cost-benifit analysis in Why Software Should Not Have Owners and Why Software Should Be Free.
That being said, we probably don't need a law requiring source distribution, abolishing software copyright would probably be sufficient. The cultural change accompanying this could turn source distribution into a social norm requiring no government enforcement.
He wants a lot more then that! You should be able to make changes to that source code. You should be able to share those changes with others, which benefits them and it can benefit you if the others make and share an additional change that builds on your own.
There's more. Given a universal information processing machine, some bytes that make that universal information machine do something useful, and a friend who would like a copy, most normally socialized people will utilize the copying capability that this machine excels at. In cyberspace this kind of behavior is as natural as breathing is in the real world. RMS thinks it should be legal.
Also restricting the use of a program with a restriction like 'educational use only' or 'company with less then or equal to 5 employees only' is unacceptable too.
No, he would of read (incorectly) that they only provided free software.
Your comparison of X and QT is inappropriate. X is free software and available under a non-copyleft free software license. QT was at one time completely non-free. RMS cares a lot more about the free/non-free distinction then the copyleft/non-copyleft distinction.
I don't like the term 'ripping-off' as a way to say using pre-existing ideas, ripping-off has negative conotations.
Ahh, I assumed that MonopolySoft was including the copy of Red Hat with the machine, making them the key software distributor in this case.
A highly unrealistic scenario has been contrived here. The parties involved can go right ahead, such an absurd device will enjoy little success. The license does not need to be modified to prevent this (nothing probably can), and the anti-DRM clauses need not be scraped under the view that this little pore hole makes them useless.
If some third party wants to sell the convenience of a combined machine-software combination, they will be out of luck.
This situation is far removed from the Tivoesque situations the new changes are meant to deal with.
Actually, MonopolySoft has violated the license. The problem for them is that they put themselves in a position where they could not possibly come into compliance. After the copyright holder complains, and after the 60 days are up, MonoplySoft will have to recall their product from the market. If they fail to do so the copyright holder can sue them.
There are very good reasons. We don't just care about your freedoms, we care about the freedom of every subsequent person who gets a copy.
Why would you like the power to give another person a copy, but with less freedom and power then you received? Are they less important? Are they less deserving of freedom?
Yes.
No. I'm concerned about the effects upon others too.
Freedom? Copyright is a power granted by society, not a freedom. This power comes at the expense of the freedom of software users. I do not consider (what you call) the 'freedom' of a distributor to distribute a binary without source to be more important than the freedom to share, use, and modify software. Society also would condemn you if you *chose* to exercise your *freedom* to hit me in the knees with a sledgehammer.
It doesn't, but the fact that there is a choice in that situation doesn't prevent me from expressing that I don't like what the distributor has done.
This is the silly question, your point is that not including something provides less freedom. Mandriva should include a copy of Linux 1.0 too I suppose?
You are right, ultimately users choose to be free or not. My objection stems from that fact that companies like Mandriva play a role in these choices; they are (positive or negative) role models for their users.
Positive role models are needed, as values are not formed in vacuums. (Even RMS didn't reach his conclusions alone). Without positive leadership from the distributions, our community will keep accepting proprietary software over free software, and we will all (Mandriva included) be worse off.
I should give credit where due, Linspire is leading the charge backwards more so than anyone else.
If they're proprietary yes. Is there a distribution that distributes a proprietary window manager?
I go much further then that, I refuse to obtain it in the first place.
I condem the bundling of this Mindawn preview program on the basis that it is proprietary software. Mandriva users should be very upset that thier distro would attempt to ask them to give up thier freedom.
Mindawn has a proprietary preview client.
Rejoice, freedom is on the way.
> 1024 cylinder limitations No such limitation for grub. It can boot anything, anywhere.
X is an important and widely used piece of free software, but it is not as essential as GNU and Linux are. Many people run GNU/Linux without X. Every distro worth naming has an X package, but its installation in many cases is optional. Debian only installs X if asked. Ubuntu provides a nice convenient way for an server admin to opt out of X and graphical programs at the start of its installation. Who provides a choice during install of C library, shell, and coreutils? Not even the Linux From Scratch people raise this possibility.
Go ahead and refer to the operating system as GNU/Linux/X if you really value X's existence that much. That would be a lot better than simply calling it Linux, as you would at least be including the name of the most significant component, GNU.
I do not accept your comparison of the GNU C library, BASH, and GNU coreutils to tires. These components are quite important, and not as interchangeable with alternatives as you may think. Replace them with dietlibc and busybox and will you have a new operating system, as distinct and incompatible as Solaris, FreeBSD, GNU/HURD, and GNU/Linux are to each other.
There is another point worth adding. If the significance of GNU's contribution was the only issue, people like myself would not bother engaging in this argument. There is a second major reason for why we call the system GNU/Linux, I discuss it elsewhere in the thread.
How is it relevant that alternatives to GNU exist? At issue is the naming of systems that use GNU and Linux as essential parts, that is all the big name 'distros'. At issue is the actual system people are using, not what they could be using.
Linux is replaceable too. I inform people that they are incorrect when they refer to systems that don't use Linux as being 'Linux' too.
Actually, the project and distribution you're referring to calls itself Debian GNU/Linux.
You misunderstand the argument for calling the system GNU/Linux. Allow me to summarize it.
Premises
Conclusion: The best name for the operating system in question is GNU/Linux.
I understand why someone who rejects any of these premises would disagree with the conclusion. If GNU were not the most significant component, it would be unfair to insist on including it in the system's name, even if one wanted to promote the philosphy. (We don't call Solaris or FreeBSD, GNU systems) If one does not feel it is important to spread the project's philosophy, there is little gained by including it in the name, even when one recognizes that GNU is the most significant component. Thus, it must be understood that the combination of these reasons and circumstances leads to the conclusion.
These are all GNU/Linux systems, Debian doesn't have more GNU software than the others. All of them use Linux as a kernel and the following vital GNU components:
In the case of Gentoo, GNU make, gcc, GNU binutils. and GNU patch should be viewed as vital too. :)
If you think carefully about what makes a system 'Unix like', you will appreciate why GNU is the most significant contribution. Another pos