The problem with GPLv3 is that RMS refuses to consider proposals from people who don't agree with him.
The GPLv3 process started with a set of goals for the license to achieve. The comment process is not there for those that ask him to dump any one of these goals, it is there for those that see other problems in the license, such as lack of language clarity to laymen, or circumstances that would make it possible to sidestep the goals of the license.
RMS apparently does not care about making a license that other people want
Why should he feel obligated to? Remember that this is primarily the license for the GNU software suit. If other people like it and use it, fine, but if not, they can use another license. Why should he have to give up certain goals of the GNU project to accomodate the wishes of other projects?
Red Hat and HP are offering to help you if you get sued by a patent holder who is not them. In contrast, Novell has this friend "Big Mike" who was going to beat you up, but Novell made a deal with him so that Big Mike will now promise not to beat you up.
Exactly! This is analogous to the difference between an insurance company and a protection racket. An insurance company provides insurance against problems not caused by the insurer, while a protection racket provides insurance against problems caused by the insurer.
/var is for various system thingsActually, I think/var means variable data, i.e. such files that change during normal use of the system (e.g. logs, databases, lock files, etc). That means that/usr and/etc among others can be kept on readonly filesystems without breaking applications. Even if you keep/etc and/usr on writeable filesystems, e.g. to allow online system maintenance, use of a separate partition for/var minimizes file fragmentation in/usr and/etc.
If you are complaining about editing the registry, its easier to run regedit then locate a config file...
That might be true for parts of the registry, but some parts are extremely obfuscated, such as those categories that have some GUID as a name. How am I supposed to find anything there?
I believe that Microsoft is still being run by its original founders (Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in particular), who still put forth the old Microsoft mentality. As new blood enters the company and the old (can I say "cancer?"), is finally evicted, they may actually turn into an ethical corporation. If you look at many of the MSDN blogs you can see that the developers coming into the company now are much more familiar with the FOSS and understand what it means. I see a sort of "grass roots" change going on within the company that will really take off once that loud mouth Ballmer finally lets go of his Empire mentality.
Or by then, the new blood may have been infected by the old management cancer.
for many, perhaps most normal folks, Microsoft *is* computing.
Sadly it is, but I agree.
maybe they'll be on our side one day.
I'd have a hard time believing that this is possible with the current management though. They have invested too heavily in the GPL is Evil, Communist and Unamerican mantra.
The solution write itself, people: The Linux community needs to conduct a comprehensive review of Microsoft's patents.
There are problems with that approach. First, you need people who are versed both in Linux kernel internals and in patent legalese. There are not that many people with such qualifications around, and those that are tend to be expensive to hire. The other problem is that by looking at their patents, if they are later sued for infringement of these patents, the plaintiff can be awarded treble (triple) damages for willful infringement. This is avoided by knowing as little as you can about competitors' patents.
I heard that most software developers don't look at patents. I think Linus said so too. The reason (apart from that it is time-consuming) is that if you look at the patents, in a patent lawsuit you will be judged as knowingly infringing, which would mean triple damages awarded to the patent holder.
The changes in version 3 are about DRM, not patents.
The changes in version 3 are about DRM, but they are also about patents. I don't know specifically what has changed in that regard though. But since the Novell/Microsoft agreement, there is also talk about adding a clause that would stop companies sidestepping the GPL by providing covenants only to each others' customers and not the companies themselves.
Well, except the whole "OSS developers come across as immature, childish amateurs" thing.
I think that it is quite childish to judge an entire community based on just a few people. It is about as fair as if I would judge all americans based on my impression of George W Bush och Dick Cheney.
One big problem that I see if the violence inherent in the community. Everything is a "war" or a "Battle".
I don't see that as something OSS-specific, but rather a cultural aspect of america. Many americans use words such as battle and war when discussing competition. This terminology is largely absent in other parts of the world.
Note: This post is not supposed to bash america, just highligh an aspect of american culture as viewed by a non-american.
MS may be able to defend a couple different suits at the same tyme but their warchest could be quickly drained if a bunch of claims were broght against them.
They had more than forty billion dollars in cash last time I looked, so I think a lot more than "a bunch of claims" need to be brought to drain that warchest.
At a philosophical level, Novell probably didn't want to sign the agreement with Microsoft either... heck, Microsoft basically destroyed them as a leading software provider.
Even if we tend to assign human characteristics, such as memory, to corporations, they are not human beings. Microsoft did bad things to Novell in the past, but that was with a different board, a different CEO, etc. The current Novell management probably have no memory of those past Microsoft transgressions, and is thus unable to learn from the Novell's past. And even if there are Novell employees that were there during those transgressions, they might not be in a position to influence the current direction.
And by the way, what are Novell customers supposed to do in 5 years when this deal expires? Do they think that Microsoft will be nice to Novell then?
In any case, I don't think Ron Hovsepian will be there to take the blame. He came in as a new CEO, almost immediately started negotiations with Microsoft, and will probably move on before any of the effects of the deal could stain his resumé.
Well... and the GPL. Much the same thing that gets in the way of Nvidia and ATI releasing source drivers. Under more liberal licenses, Microsoft wouldnt have an issue with interop, but if its GPL, they cant so easily add support, without having to make themselves exposed to GPL.
What? You must be either joking or ignorant. The GPL covers program code, not communication protocols or file formats. There is nothing stopping Microsoft from implementing file formats and protocols from Linux, unless they try to take existing GPL code that does this and incorporate into their products. That would expose them to the GPL.
Realistically Red Hat should at least go to the table with Microsoft, though presumably it will do so quietly behind the scenes.
Information tends to leak sooner or later, and if such information would appear, it would certainly look like Red Hat wanted to enter into an agreement with Microsoft, setting them up for the same type of backlash that Novell has faced the last week. Red Hat already did a major blunder during the transition from RHL to RHEL/Fedora, I don't think they can afford another one.
This is one Linux user that is excited by the partnership and looking forward to more deals like this by Microsoft because in the end it is the users who benefit.
Yeah, because users always benefit from Microsofts actions.</sarcasm>
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The GPLv3 process started with a set of goals for the license to achieve. The comment process is not there for those that ask him to dump any one of these goals, it is there for those that see other problems in the license, such as lack of language clarity to laymen, or circumstances that would make it possible to sidestep the goals of the license.
RMS apparently does not care about making a license that other people wantWhy should he feel obligated to? Remember that this is primarily the license for the GNU software suit. If other people like it and use it, fine, but if not, they can use another license. Why should he have to give up certain goals of the GNU project to accomodate the wishes of other projects?
And you should go back under the bridge where you belong.
Exactly! This is analogous to the difference between an insurance company and a protection racket. An insurance company provides insurance against problems not caused by the insurer, while a protection racket provides insurance against problems caused by the insurer.
To get a certain amount of credibility to their FUD, at least among business types.
No, the best way is to sign an agreement with the open source company and start to FUD its competitors. Just like the situation we have now.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Source RPM repository
There is another alternative: Government intervention.
/var is for various system thingsActually, I think /var means variable data, i.e. such files that change during normal use of the system (e.g. logs, databases, lock files, etc). That means that /usr and /etc among others can be kept on readonly filesystems without breaking applications. Even if you keep /etc and /usr on writeable filesystems, e.g. to allow online system maintenance, use of a separate partition for /var minimizes file fragmentation in /usr and /etc.
That might be true for parts of the registry, but some parts are extremely obfuscated, such as those categories that have some GUID as a name. How am I supposed to find anything there?
Or by then, the new blood may have been infected by the old management cancer.
Yep, including the proposed reform to allow software patents in Europe.
for many, perhaps most normal folks, Microsoft *is* computing.
Sadly it is, but I agree.
maybe they'll be on our side one day.
I'd have a hard time believing that this is possible with the current management though. They have invested too heavily in the GPL is Evil, Communist and Unamerican mantra.
There are problems with that approach. First, you need people who are versed both in Linux kernel internals and in patent legalese. There are not that many people with such qualifications around, and those that are tend to be expensive to hire. The other problem is that by looking at their patents, if they are later sued for infringement of these patents, the plaintiff can be awarded treble (triple) damages for willful infringement. This is avoided by knowing as little as you can about competitors' patents.
I heard that most software developers don't look at patents. I think Linus said so too. The reason (apart from that it is time-consuming) is that if you look at the patents, in a patent lawsuit you will be judged as knowingly infringing, which would mean triple damages awarded to the patent holder.
The changes in version 3 are about DRM, but they are also about patents. I don't know specifically what has changed in that regard though. But since the Novell/Microsoft agreement, there is also talk about adding a clause that would stop companies sidestepping the GPL by providing covenants only to each others' customers and not the companies themselves.
I think that it is quite childish to judge an entire community based on just a few people. It is about as fair as if I would judge all americans based on my impression of George W Bush och Dick Cheney.
I don't see that as something OSS-specific, but rather a cultural aspect of america. Many americans use words such as battle and war when discussing competition. This terminology is largely absent in other parts of the world.
Note: This post is not supposed to bash america, just highligh an aspect of american culture as viewed by a non-american.
They had more than forty billion dollars in cash last time I looked, so I think a lot more than "a bunch of claims" need to be brought to drain that warchest.
A monorail system? This does not look like a monorail to me, just an ordinary elevated railway.
What do you mean?
Even if we tend to assign human characteristics, such as memory, to corporations, they are not human beings. Microsoft did bad things to Novell in the past, but that was with a different board, a different CEO, etc. The current Novell management probably have no memory of those past Microsoft transgressions, and is thus unable to learn from the Novell's past. And even if there are Novell employees that were there during those transgressions, they might not be in a position to influence the current direction.
In any case, I don't think Ron Hovsepian will be there to take the blame. He came in as a new CEO, almost immediately started negotiations with Microsoft, and will probably move on before any of the effects of the deal could stain his resumé.
What? You must be either joking or ignorant. The GPL covers program code, not communication protocols or file formats. There is nothing stopping Microsoft from implementing file formats and protocols from Linux, unless they try to take existing GPL code that does this and incorporate into their products. That would expose them to the GPL.
Information tends to leak sooner or later, and if such information would appear, it would certainly look like Red Hat wanted to enter into an agreement with Microsoft, setting them up for the same type of backlash that Novell has faced the last week. Red Hat already did a major blunder during the transition from RHL to RHEL/Fedora, I don't think they can afford another one.
Yeah, because users always benefit from Microsofts actions.</sarcasm>