Hi Sam,
Codeplex claims to be an "open source project community". So why no GPLv3? If fact, why was GPLv3 actually *removed*? And how is this in the interests of the "community" of which you claim to represent?
Yeah, but life is a precious thing (and no, I'm not religious). Even when someone's life is taken where they didn't deserve to have one and for everyone's benefit, it is still the ending of a human life, which is a shame.
I, too, think that this subject should be handled with some respect. Or not treated quite so lightly at any rate.
> You say the games industry thrived in the face of piracy.
Ah, to hell with the games industry. And the music and film industries as well, for that matter. Do you think people will stop writing games/music/films just because the industries aren't making enough money to survive?
In the past those industries have thrived, much to the expense of the rest of us, in a scenario where their product couldn't so easily be replicated. They paid the actual artists and creative people peanuts whilst charging the consumers a fortune so that they can make a mint. Now that the data *can* be trivially copied, those industries are finding that their business model is failing. But I say we're better off without them anyway! They're middle men! They've only been making money off the backs of the artists (game developers, film writers, etc.) and consumers anyway!
I genuinely feel sympathy for the little independent groups that still want to earn an honest living from making and selling games. The reality is though, that the market these guys are involved in has been pillaged and plundered by these industries for years! My advice to them would be to find a different market. This one is a sinking ship.
And as far as ethics goes, it's a question of degrees... If I found a crisp tenner on the street, would I pocket it, or hand it in to the local police station? I'd pocket it. Does that also make me unethical? Of course, but I think I can live with that...
But how guilty do we really feel? As it is officially a crime to steal wi-fi Why should anyone feel guilty for committing a crime? The article seems to be confusing ethics and law.
Why, why, WHY do people persist with this ridiculous and completely irrational idiom that just because you've put time and effort in to something that you therefore automatically have some ownership and rights!? It's nonsense!
If anyone spends their time and effort creating something which can be trivially copied by anyone, but with the sole intention of making money by selling copies to everyone, then they've wasted their time! There are no "rights"!
Good god people - why are we even discussing this? As a race, shouldn't we be more concerned with making sure everyone has food to eat than who has the right to copy some new rubbish album?!!!
We can't afford to GPL our entire 20 million line software stack, which would be the result of using even a tiny bit of GPL code.
So don't use it! I doubt the people who released it under the GPL care. If they had wanted you to be able to use this "community" source code in your closed-source product they would have released it under the LGPL.
There's absolutely no ethical reason to choose a less restrictive license over the GPL. I'm not so sure about that. They may just not want to force other people to release their source code.
But I would definitely say that if you want to release something like this to the open source community, then there is no justifiable reason not to at least use the LGPL. That would achieve the best of both worlds! It would ensure the source code remained community source code, whilst also allowing it to be used in proprietary, closed-source products without forcing those products to adopt an open source license.
First, may I offer my sympathy regarding your friend and her brother. Suicide is a tragic, tragic thing. I know from personal experience that it leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions. I wish all the best to her family.
Regarding gaining access to their websites, etc, hHere is what I suggest:
1) Get access to their email account(s).
This should be fairly easy for "regular" email accounts - if they use Windows to collect mail, their passwords will probably be kept by their email software.
Universities are going to be easier to talk to and more prepared to co-operate than companies (like MySpace, MSN, etc). Try speaking to someone at the University face to face about gaining access to their email account there.
I'm not sure what I'd suggest about MSN/Hotmail email accounts though - they might be more problematic to gain access to.
2) Go to the sites you want access to, such as MySpace for example, and go through their "forgotten password" procedures to have the website's password emailled to the email accounts you have access to.
Once again, I wish you and their family all the best.
What would you do? How would you handle it? Would you just tolerate it? What if you began to notice you were no longer making $40,000 a year and ended up making only $20,000 a year? Would you give up the art that you love? Well, "giving up the art that I love" aside, your opinion seems to be a very common one, and also one that I don't share and don't really understand. Many people seem to be of the opinion that just because you've put a lot of time and effort in to something, you therefore deserve to get paid for it.
When you think about it, this is obviously not the case. It's like building sandcastles on the beach - they're ultimately worthless because the tide will wash them away. I think the problem here is that that the technology that allows us to share information has changed. It is now so trivial to copy massive amounts of data (films, music, etc) that value of that information is falling.
Back to your example of no longer making $40,000 a year: It's the same scenario. If there are other companies offering the same thing as you make for free, then the value of what you sell has fallen. There's nothing to "tolerate", the market has just changed, that's all. In this situation, if you want to carry on selling something that has depreciated, your only option is to come up with a way to make the market *think* your product is different/better. Microsoft are doing quite well at this. Alternatively, you'll have to sell something else or find some other way of making money.
This entire site is complete and utter FUD. Nothing but. It's absolute crap!
Some things don't even make sense when you think about them. This is an argument *against* open source:
Empirical evidence that the 'everyone can see the code' approach to software security doesn't work for Red Hat Over the first 650 days of product life for Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Windows Server 2003 had 75 percent fewer published vulnerabilities.
Except, surely that means there's 75% more vulnerabilities found and *fixed* in the open source model, and 75% more as-yet undiscovered vulnerabilities in windows server 2003? Surely this is an argument in *favour* of open source!?
And I wont even go in to the length of time it takes MS to release fixes...
If that were the case, then wouldn't that mean that *every* contributor could change the licence for his/her bit of code to (say) BSD and screw everyone over?!
As I understood it, if a particular version of the kernel is released with a license, then that's that! *Future* versions can be released under a different license, but that version is always available under the license it was released under. Thus, if a contributor decides he no longer wants to play fair, his code so far is already available under that license and can be forked (or just developed further) by someone else.
If JKR writes a book and releases it to the world, then he should *expect* to have it copied (assuming it's a good book of course)! That's the nature of the world!
You're talking as if JKR should be pissed off that after making his work public, other people are copying it. It's like me drawing a work of art in the sand and then being pissed off that the tide's gonna wash it away!
Slashdot Mirror
Hi Sam,
Codeplex claims to be an "open source project community". So why no GPLv3? If fact, why was GPLv3 actually *removed*? And how is this in the interests of the "community" of which you claim to represent?
OBZVault is not open-source. I'm afraid that for someone who is serious about security, this would be an essential.
And mouse gestures... definitely need mouse gestures too...
> Engadget also has live coverage from the Kindle 2 press conference.
Surely Engadget has just "coverage" and not "live coverage"? Unless they're streaming 24hrs a day from a perpetual press conference.
Yeah, but life is a precious thing (and no, I'm not religious). Even when someone's life is taken where they didn't deserve to have one and for everyone's benefit, it is still the ending of a human life, which is a shame.
I, too, think that this subject should be handled with some respect. Or not treated quite so lightly at any rate.
Ah man - you could have given us an at-work warning!
Out of the kettle, in to the fire...
Switch to an open, free (libre) platform, people!
> You say the games industry thrived in the face of piracy.
Ah, to hell with the games industry. And the music and film industries as well, for that matter. Do you think people will stop writing games/music/films just because the industries aren't making enough money to survive?
In the past those industries have thrived, much to the expense of the rest of us, in a scenario where their product couldn't so easily be replicated. They paid the actual artists and creative people peanuts whilst charging the consumers a fortune so that they can make a mint. Now that the data *can* be trivially copied, those industries are finding that their business model is failing. But I say we're better off without them anyway! They're middle men! They've only been making money off the backs of the artists (game developers, film writers, etc.) and consumers anyway!
I genuinely feel sympathy for the little independent groups that still want to earn an honest living from making and selling games. The reality is though, that the market these guys are involved in has been pillaged and plundered by these industries for years! My advice to them would be to find a different market. This one is a sinking ship.
And as far as ethics goes, it's a question of degrees... If I found a crisp tenner on the street, would I pocket it, or hand it in to the local police station? I'd pocket it. Does that also make me unethical? Of course, but I think I can live with that...
Don't be so over-dramatic! :o)
"Dudes, wassup with our share prices? They're tumbling! I mean, hello?"
"Shut uuup!"
"Aw, man! We so got owned!"
Why, why, WHY do people persist with this ridiculous and completely irrational idiom that just because you've put time and effort in to something that you therefore automatically have some ownership and rights!? It's nonsense!
If anyone spends their time and effort creating something which can be trivially copied by anyone, but with the sole intention of making money by selling copies to everyone, then they've wasted their time! There are no "rights"!
Good god people - why are we even discussing this? As a race, shouldn't we be more concerned with making sure everyone has food to eat than who has the right to copy some new rubbish album?!!!
So don't use it! I doubt the people who released it under the GPL care. If they had wanted you to be able to use this "community" source code in your closed-source product they would have released it under the LGPL.
...as the parent post suggested!
But I would definitely say that if you want to release something like this to the open source community, then there is no justifiable reason not to at least use the LGPL. That would achieve the best of both worlds! It would ensure the source code remained community source code, whilst also allowing it to be used in proprietary, closed-source products without forcing those products to adopt an open source license.
First, may I offer my sympathy regarding your friend and her brother. Suicide is a tragic, tragic thing. I know from personal experience that it leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions. I wish all the best to her family.
Regarding gaining access to their websites, etc, hHere is what I suggest:
1) Get access to their email account(s).
This should be fairly easy for "regular" email accounts - if they use Windows to collect mail, their passwords will probably be kept by their email software.
Universities are going to be easier to talk to and more prepared to co-operate than companies (like MySpace, MSN, etc). Try speaking to someone at the University face to face about gaining access to their email account there.
I'm not sure what I'd suggest about MSN/Hotmail email accounts though - they might be more problematic to gain access to.
2) Go to the sites you want access to, such as MySpace for example, and go through their "forgotten password" procedures to have the website's password emailled to the email accounts you have access to.
Once again, I wish you and their family all the best.
When you think about it, this is obviously not the case. It's like building sandcastles on the beach - they're ultimately worthless because the tide will wash them away. I think the problem here is that that the technology that allows us to share information has changed. It is now so trivial to copy massive amounts of data (films, music, etc) that value of that information is falling.
Back to your example of no longer making $40,000 a year: It's the same scenario. If there are other companies offering the same thing as you make for free, then the value of what you sell has fallen. There's nothing to "tolerate", the market has just changed, that's all. In this situation, if you want to carry on selling something that has depreciated, your only option is to come up with a way to make the market *think* your product is different/better. Microsoft are doing quite well at this. Alternatively, you'll have to sell something else or find some other way of making money.
Looks like the game has been removed. It's no longer on their games menu either.
Sadly, the wayback machine doesn't have a copy and while you can see the old games menu in google's cache, google didn't cache the actual game (which was at http://en.beijing2008.cn/upload/e-games/fuwa_02_e.swf)
That's $27 in decimal.
But where do I download the source from?
Some things don't even make sense when you think about them. This is an argument *against* open source: Except, surely that means there's 75% more vulnerabilities found and *fixed* in the open source model, and 75% more as-yet undiscovered vulnerabilities in windows server 2003? Surely this is an argument in *favour* of open source!?
And I wont even go in to the length of time it takes MS to release fixes...
> Sorta like how the FSF didn't make the tools, but they own the label.
You what!?
You are obviously not very informed on this subject. Go and read up.
I can recomend the Holy Bible (King James Version, leather bound):L ibrary/dp/0834003511/ref=ed_oe_h/002-6705002-67456 10
http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Giant-Print-Personal-
to help absolve your sins, my son...
If that were the case, then wouldn't that mean that *every* contributor could change the licence for his/her bit of code to (say) BSD and screw everyone over?! As I understood it, if a particular version of the kernel is released with a license, then that's that! *Future* versions can be released under a different license, but that version is always available under the license it was released under. Thus, if a contributor decides he no longer wants to play fair, his code so far is already available under that license and can be forked (or just developed further) by someone else.
[quick google search] So she is! Well I never did!
You're living in a fantasy, sonny!
If JKR writes a book and releases it to the world, then he should *expect* to have it copied (assuming it's a good book of course)! That's the nature of the world!
You're talking as if JKR should be pissed off that after making his work public, other people are copying it. It's like me drawing a work of art in the sand and then being pissed off that the tide's gonna wash it away!