Now, if package management systems - like, say, a.deb repository - had a community rating system ubuntu# aptitude install popularity-contest (or click the "advanced" button at the opportune moment when installing, and agree to install popularity-contest)
To see what it does for you, press Alt+F1 -> Add/Remove -> notice the "Popularity" column with 1-5 stars per package.
When I was young, we had to walk 50 miles in 8-feet snow uphill both ways just to get to the nearest computer, which didn't even have an OS; we would plug and unplug cables from the best of our memory, just to get to use cat. Then we would retype our file with our changes, unplug all the cables, walk 50 miles home in 9-feet snow uphill both ways again, and when we got home our dad would slice us in two with the dull edge of a rusty spife.
> They just want to surf myspace and look at pictures of half-naked teenage girls. I like surfing myspacing looking at pictures of (half) naked teenage girls, you insensitive clod!
Yeah, those damn Research Motion In America and ther crackblack berries. I say we make pirate copies of their patented trademark copyrights! Down with the black cranberries! They are our robot overlords in disguise, phear them!!!
Speaking of The Matrix, it actually contains some of the most realistic use of computers seen in movies: nmap, a too old version of ssh, and some buffer overflow exploit code (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sshnuke; it's about 1h43m into the movie).
> Furthermore these actions are also considered to be defence of copyright so that they do not lose that copyright. Bzzzt! Wrong. They lose the copyright the day it expires, independently of how many (or few) pirates they have sued.
AFAICR, trademarks actually work the way you suggest copyright works (you have to defend it in order to keep it), so you might have the two confused. Or you might think in terms of "intellectual property", and this--as RMS has banged on about--is why you shouldn't: you fail to understand what the law actually says.
Surey if the spirit is true freedom then I should be able to use it without having to GNU/everything? Yes, and you are.
Why should RMS feel he has naming rights on Linux boxes? The way I see it, he doesn't. If you run a computer with Linux (the kernel) and none of the GNU tools, I'm willing to wage money that he wouldn't ask to call that system a GNU/Linux system. However, most people don't do that.
There is nothing in the GPL (the agreement) suggesting we GNU/ everything. It's not an agreement, it's a license. And you're right.
Stop this before it gets silly: "Announcing the GNU/Linux/Bell/GSM/Nokia 3477 phone that connects to the the DARPA/Al Gore/Internet for CERN/web browsing. The unit features a 400MHz Turing/von Neumann/Babbage/CPU and has a Faraday/battery providing 5 days of typical usage...." You're totally right, that example is silly: unless the GNU project played a significant role in the design or production of such a phone, it would be overrepresentation to call the phone "GNU/.../Nokia" (similarly for other names). Also, AFAIK, the von Neumann architecture consists of more than just the CPU (but that's just nitpicking).
The reason why a somewhat less ludicrous version of the same argument is flaky--let me use LaTeX/X/Linux/GNU as an example--is that neither LaTeX or X is an operating system and was never intended to be. Linux was intended to be--and is--an operating system (if you define OS:= kernel, it's trivially true, and if you define OS:= distro, it is too, it just has some 70% of GNU added on top). GNU was intended to be--and is--an operating system (only in the sense of OS:= distro; HURD is an OS if OS:= kernel), with some 30% Linux added at the bottom.
(warning: numbers may be covered in fecal substances).
So, if you want to talk about the OS, it's really two different OSes at the same time: the Linux OS and the GNU OS. Hence, they deserve equal mention, QED.
If you have OS:= kernel, the OS/distro is really only GNU, but it's worth mentioning that it's not the "true" GNU system (i.e. it doesn't run HURD, it runs Linux), so we mention Linux too.
If I make free software in my spare time, I still need a conventional job to pay the bills.
Agreed (somewhat depending on your definition of conventional). That dayjob might be writing free software (No, Ubuntu is not the Canonical example, Red Hat is, but I'm sure you can find other examples if you look carefully)--possibly custom modifications. The dayjob might be system administration. The dayjob might be in training people to use the free software you write in your spare time.
Are you you suggesting every software developer double trains as a plumber to pay the bills?
No, see above. Sure, it's hard to compete against a price tag that says zero, so you might have to shift your dayjob away from "conventional" development, but I see no reason why you couldn't get a job which consists of--in a very wide sense--"operating" computers. And there's probably still lots of jobs which consist of writing code.
If you dont want to follow the license, you can't use the code.
Actually, that's not true. Copyright doesn't prevent you from compiling or running any source code you get a hold of; copyright only prohibits unlicensed redistribution and modification.
Even without a copyright we could have a GPL, but if someone took it to court people would argue about whose was the code.
Sure, without a copyright we could still have a copyright license named "the GNU General Public License", but it would be fairly inconsequential: a fair analogy would be for me to allow you to inhale the air I exhale--something for which you don't need my permission.
This is still however a problem for most GPLd works (no registered copyright on many of them),
Huh? \forall programs p: I have looked for p.license \Rightarrow I have found it.
What do you do for a living? because if (like me) you make anything that can be presented in digital form, you just got yourself kicked out of where you live, into the street with no food and no source of income.
Oh? Let's see... Red Hat bases its business model around free (libre) software. Last I checked, they're doing well. You can download music for free on http://www.doomworld.com/fanatic/--but apparently he can afford a computer and an internet connection.
(...) but to propose we "make everything digital free!" ignores the questions of what all the millions of people who currently work in industries that produce content do to put food on the table. (...) will simply mean no more new information.
Your argument seems to be that without copyright law, patent law, DRM and censorship (of the DeCSS program), the people working to create books, software, music, motion pictures, or still images would basically have zero revenue, hence zero motivation, hence zero creations.
Wrong! I've already given you counterexamples for software and music. I'm sure that you know how to use google well enough to find counterexamples for still images and motion pictures.
An interesting question is How do we provide enough economic incentive to the creators, while still letting the public keep as many `usable' freedoms as possible? In the age of the printing press, copying a book was considered an unusable freedom--but in the age of computer networks, it's a very usable freedom (I hope that illustrates well enough what I mean by `usable'). I wouldn't know a sound economic model if it hit me in the face with a sledgehammer, so I won't predict how well each money-earning scheme would do. But look around. Bram Cohen gave away BitTorrent, and he doesn't appear to have gone missing in action.
How often do you visit other countries' web sites? All the fucking time! Slashdot, sourceforge, fsf, userfriendly, linuxquestions and my email providers (one of which is--afaict--hosted in egypt) are all sites not hosted in Denmark.
How often do you e-mail people in other countries? All the fucking time! Altkeyboards@yahoogroups, the various devs I run into on interesting projects, some indian bloke from LQ,...
Do you ever search in a language other than English, and if you do, how often does it turn up foreign vs domestic sites? I do most searches in English, and as English is not an official language in denmark, most hits are foreign sites.
You have so far displayed the nigh-obliviousness of the existence other countries than the United States of America that I suspect a lot of USAians suffer from (and that really pisses me off). And if they are aware of other countries, they still think USA is just fine and dandy (Dane Cook: "Look, we're the greatest country on earth,...", said as if that was an obvious and obviously true fact).
What would foreigners lose by not being able to visit US-hosted sites[?] (copy-paste) Slashdot, sourceforge, fsf, userfriendly, linuxquestions and my email providers.
how quickly would they be able to recreate what they lost? Never! If I can't communicate over the 'net with my fellow developers from the USA, India, the Netherlands, etc., then the bazaar development model loses almost everything for people in fairly small countries. Scale the internet down to 3.5 million users (wild guesstimate, five point something like five million people live in Denmark). Then scale the number of gdb developers down by the same number. How many developers do you have left? More than zero?
Imagine this: instead of the net being limited to the USA, it was segmented such that you couldn't cross state boundaries. I think that is a reasonably fair comparison to large parts of the rest of the world. Okay, Russia, India and China would be the most notable exception (Russia mostly due to sheer size, not so much the population count).
That means that you can only download software from www.gnu.org if you live in Massachusetts. And that you could only... uhh... gee, look up some arin records to see where stuff is hosted, and pull some more examples out of your... pocket.
Suffice it to say, it would be really bad if the internet was split up.
Slashdot Mirror
(or click the "advanced" button at the opportune moment when installing, and agree to install popularity-contest)
To see what it does for you, press Alt+F1 -> Add/Remove -> notice the "Popularity" column with 1-5 stars per package.
(or Alt+F1 -> Add/Remove -> clickety-clickety -> now you have four megs of free space (in total))
Anything else I can do for you?
> the RIAA crapwad will be looking for a new job.
:)
Fixed. Now, what did we learn about disemvowelment today? Use it whenever it gives me +$n funny
> tell me that we're going to let every country on earth have a couple of [whatever]
You see, that's why I hate the US: it has no respect for the sovereignty of nations other than itself.
(Yeah, yeah, mod me -1 Redundant, I just had to get it off my chest. And GWB is a lying piece of shit (+5 insightful))
> If even Google can't get it right, city governments probably [reader exercise].
:D
I hear they haves good muni wifi intarwebs in Tuttle, what with the FBI protecting it
(captcha: "egghead")
> ed
ed? You were lucky.
When I was young, we had to walk 50 miles in 8-feet snow uphill both ways just to get to the nearest computer, which didn't even have an OS; we would plug and unplug cables from the best of our memory, just to get to use cat. Then we would retype our file with our changes, unplug all the cables, walk 50 miles home in 9-feet snow uphill both ways again, and when we got home our dad would slice us in two with the dull edge of a rusty spife.
> Hate leads to the Darkside.
God damn you kids nowadays (and get off my lawn): Hate leads to suffering (http://imdb.com/title/tt0120915/quotes)
> They just want to surf myspace and look at pictures of half-naked teenage girls.
I like surfing myspacing looking at pictures of (half) naked teenage girls, you insensitive clod!
(captcha: offering)
> > But can you imagine a web built solely by programmers?
> Yeah, it probably would have consisted entirely of porn.
Porn made for, by and of the 35-year old hairy guys all living in their mom's basements? Where's that damn spork when I need to apply it to my eyes?
And I really don't want to think about why the captcha is "augments"!
> Do you really think our government could keep an "inside" job of this scale [quiet] for so long?
:P
What do you mean? It worked fine for tricking the world into believing you actually sent a man to the moo
Yeah, those damn Research Motion In America and ther crackblack berries. I say we make pirate copies of their patented trademark copyrights! Down with the black cranberries! They are our robot overlords in disguise, phear them!!!
... Sorry, what was this about again?
(captcha: goaded)
I like red-headed stepchildren, you insensitive clod!
(Captcha: straight)
Yeah, but does it run...
uhh...
In Soviet Russia, Linux runs...
nah...
All your unix-base are belong to...
well...
Profit!
For sure it means that I can sue you for not buying my (now coffee-drenched) monitor.
Speaking of The Matrix, it actually contains some of the most realistic use of computers seen in movies: nmap, a too old version of ssh, and some buffer overflow exploit code (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sshnuke; it's about 1h43m into the movie).
> For the ideologues, knowing that there's one less piece of non-free software on your system is a real comfort.
And for the ideologists, now being able to use java (as opposed to kinda' sorta' sometimes using java for some things) is a real comfort.
> Can you imagine if everyone were free to fork the XML standard and still call it XML.
:)
> Sheer pointless chaos.
Even worse, what if people were free to fork javascript? Or HTML?
> Furthermore these actions are also considered to be defence of copyright so that they do not lose that copyright.
Bzzzt! Wrong. They lose the copyright the day it expires, independently of how many (or few) pirates they have sued.
AFAICR, trademarks actually work the way you suggest copyright works (you have to defend it in order to keep it), so you might have the two confused. Or you might think in terms of "intellectual property", and this--as RMS has banged on about--is why you shouldn't: you fail to understand what the law actually says.
die if ($lawer or $legal_advice);
Surey if the spirit is true freedom then I should be able to use it without having to GNU/everything?
:= kernel, it's trivially true, and if you define OS := distro, it is too, it just has some 70% of GNU added on top). GNU was intended to be--and is--an operating system (only in the sense of OS := distro; HURD is an OS if OS := kernel), with some 30% Linux added at the bottom.
:= kernel, the OS/distro is really only GNU, but it's worth mentioning that it's not the "true" GNU system (i.e. it doesn't run HURD, it runs Linux), so we mention Linux too.
Yes, and you are.
Why should RMS feel he has naming rights on Linux boxes?
The way I see it, he doesn't. If you run a computer with Linux (the kernel) and none of the GNU tools, I'm willing to wage money that he wouldn't ask to call that system a GNU/Linux system. However, most people don't do that.
There is nothing in the GPL (the agreement) suggesting we GNU/ everything.
It's not an agreement, it's a license. And you're right.
Stop this before it gets silly: "Announcing the GNU/Linux/Bell/GSM/Nokia 3477 phone that connects to the the DARPA/Al Gore/Internet for CERN/web browsing. The unit features a 400MHz Turing/von Neumann/Babbage/CPU and has a Faraday/battery providing 5 days of typical usage...."
You're totally right, that example is silly: unless the GNU project played a significant role in the design or production of such a phone, it would be overrepresentation to call the phone "GNU/.../Nokia" (similarly for other names). Also, AFAIK, the von Neumann architecture consists of more than just the CPU (but that's just nitpicking).
The reason why a somewhat less ludicrous version of the same argument is flaky--let me use LaTeX/X/Linux/GNU as an example--is that neither LaTeX or X is an operating system and was never intended to be. Linux was intended to be--and is--an operating system (if you define OS
(warning: numbers may be covered in fecal substances).
So, if you want to talk about the OS, it's really two different OSes at the same time: the Linux OS and the GNU OS. Hence, they deserve equal mention, QED.
If you have OS
At least, that's the way I see it.
free software is still made by people who eat.
Agreed.
If I make free software in my spare time, I still need a conventional job to pay the bills.
Agreed (somewhat depending on your definition of conventional). That dayjob might be writing free software (No, Ubuntu is not the Canonical example, Red Hat is, but I'm sure you can find other examples if you look carefully)--possibly custom modifications. The dayjob might be system administration. The dayjob might be in training people to use the free software you write in your spare time.
Are you you suggesting every software developer double trains as a plumber to pay the bills?
No, see above. Sure, it's hard to compete against a price tag that says zero, so you might have to shift your dayjob away from "conventional" development, but I see no reason why you couldn't get a job which consists of--in a very wide sense--"operating" computers. And there's probably still lots of jobs which consist of writing code.
I hope this answers your question.
If you dont want to follow the license, you can't use the code.
Actually, that's not true. Copyright doesn't prevent you from compiling or running any source code you get a hold of; copyright only prohibits unlicensed redistribution and modification.
Even without a copyright we could have a GPL, but if someone took it to court people would argue about whose was the code.
Sure, without a copyright we could still have a copyright license named "the GNU General Public License", but it would be fairly inconsequential: a fair analogy would be for me to allow you to inhale the air I exhale--something for which you don't need my permission.
This is still however a problem for most GPLd works (no registered copyright on many of them),
Huh? \forall programs p: I have looked for p.license \Rightarrow I have found it.
Go practice your `wyping' skills in #dvorak :P
What do you do for a living? because if (like me) you make anything that can be presented in digital form, you just got yourself kicked out of where you live, into the street with no food and no source of income.
Oh? Let's see... Red Hat bases its business model around free (libre) software. Last I checked, they're doing well. You can download music for free on http://www.doomworld.com/fanatic/--but apparently he can afford a computer and an internet connection.
(...) but to propose we "make everything digital free!" ignores the questions of what all the millions of people who currently work in industries that produce content do to put food on the table. (...) will simply mean no more new information.
Your argument seems to be that without copyright law, patent law, DRM and censorship (of the DeCSS program), the people working to create books, software, music, motion pictures, or still images would basically have zero revenue, hence zero motivation, hence zero creations.
Wrong! I've already given you counterexamples for software and music. I'm sure that you know how to use google well enough to find counterexamples for still images and motion pictures.
An interesting question is How do we provide enough economic incentive to the creators, while still letting the public keep as many `usable' freedoms as possible? In the age of the printing press, copying a book was considered an unusable freedom--but in the age of computer networks, it's a very usable freedom (I hope that illustrates well enough what I mean by `usable'). I wouldn't know a sound economic model if it hit me in the face with a sledgehammer, so I won't predict how well each money-earning scheme would do. But look around. Bram Cohen gave away BitTorrent, and he doesn't appear to have gone missing in action.
How often do you visit other countries' web sites?
...
...", said as if that was an obvious and obviously true fact).
All the fucking time! Slashdot, sourceforge, fsf, userfriendly, linuxquestions and my email providers (one of which is--afaict--hosted in egypt) are all sites not hosted in Denmark.
How often do you e-mail people in other countries?
All the fucking time! Altkeyboards@yahoogroups, the various devs I run into on interesting projects, some indian bloke from LQ,
Do you ever search in a language other than English, and if you do, how often does it turn up foreign vs domestic sites?
I do most searches in English, and as English is not an official language in denmark, most hits are foreign sites.
You have so far displayed the nigh-obliviousness of the existence other countries than the United States of America that I suspect a lot of USAians suffer from (and that really pisses me off). And if they are aware of other countries, they still think USA is just fine and dandy (Dane Cook: "Look, we're the greatest country on earth,
What would foreigners lose by not being able to visit US-hosted sites[?]
(copy-paste) Slashdot, sourceforge, fsf, userfriendly, linuxquestions and my email providers.
how quickly would they be able to recreate what they lost?
Never! If I can't communicate over the 'net with my fellow developers from the USA, India, the Netherlands, etc., then the bazaar development model loses almost everything for people in fairly small countries. Scale the internet down to 3.5 million users (wild guesstimate, five point something like five million people live in Denmark). Then scale the number of gdb developers down by the same number. How many developers do you have left? More than zero?
Imagine this: instead of the net being limited to the USA, it was segmented such that you couldn't cross state boundaries. I think that is a reasonably fair comparison to large parts of the rest of the world. Okay, Russia, India and China would be the most notable exception (Russia mostly due to sheer size, not so much the population count).
That means that you can only download software from www.gnu.org if you live in Massachusetts. And that you could only... uhh... gee, look up some arin records to see where stuff is hosted, and pull some more examples out of your... pocket.
Suffice it to say, it would be really bad if the internet was split up.
In my opinion, microsoft should have been broken up years ago.
At least Microsoft has been broken for years.