Err, the Chinese gov't has been doing their best to *stop* free information exchange.
I hardly think they'd support something like this.
Depends on what you call "free information exchange". Curiously enough, countries that respect freedom of speech (eg USA) tend to frown on copyright violation, whereas countries that don't (like China) tend to ignore it.
And there's the problem. To you, it's utterly clear that this is "ripping off", by which I assume you mean theft, that I am depriving someone of something which they have or to which you think they are absolutely entitled. You believe that I should see it this way, and that I am merely fooling myself, or pretending to fool myself otherwise.
The real issue here is, how should authors of creative works be compensated ? The advocates of Napster appear to believe that they are entitled to free entertainment, and that no-one is morally obliged to compensate authors whose works they benefit from. Authors, they believe, should work without compensation. However, most of these leeches would fiercely object if their employer decided that they shouldn't be compensated for their labor.
The problem is, you're wrong on all counts. You're wrong that I'm fooling myself, and you're wrong that it's theft. I'll just assert that latter one, because that's all you did.
No he didn't. You asserted it on his behalf.
while a new generation of music listeners sniggers quietly behind their hands - or laughs out loud at you - and gets on with doing what people have really always done, which is to redefine both morality and legality by the weight of their actions and opinions.
No, they are defining "morality" by retroactively inventing half-assed rationalisations for immoral actions, and they're not the first people to do it.
Despite popular belief, truth is not a complete defense against libel.
I'd be interested to see some evidence to support this. The dictionary definition certainly requires a libelous statement to be (a) false, and (b) injurious. I don't believe the fact that the defendent is unaware that their statement is false constitutes a valid defense.
The fact that you were threatened with a lawsuit doesn't mean the suit had any merit, people make bogus threats all the time (and often back down on them) I don't think the suit would stand up if the story was clearly non-fiction, and the name was not a registered trademark or business name (but IANAL)
I'm not clear on what your problem is. If you don't like some of the autoconf macros, don't use them. I tend to avoid most of the macros you complain about here. Autoconf can be abused, as can most useful tools. I find it useful for simplifying build automation, and giving users (and myself) something better to work with than "edit the Makefile".
It's also convenient to allow the user to specify build options, eg prefixes, debug/production/profile builds, locations of libraries, and build options. One can apply your bullet points, and still find use for automake. As for "standard languages", C is standard, and it's portable if you only write standard code. Of course, most people want to use system libraries, but using some other language doesn't buy you that much (if the language has a huge standard library, it replaces that problem with other problems.)
libltdl goes as far as "emulating
support for run time linking even on platforms that don't support it". they are proud of this bizarre "accomplishment".
This is potential useful. Suppose for example you want to profile dynamically loaded modules. gprof doesn't work with dynamic libraries.
What options do you propose to libtdl ? I'm thinking of adopting it, for the very reason that several platforms don'/t use dlopen()
libtool's basic problem is that it starts out trying to solve a goal that very few people face:
A lot of people face it actually. In fact the vast majority of open source libraries available are supposed to work on several platforms.
One thing which can be more or less bad is, that using autoconf makes you use gnu make as well.
This is nonsense. Autoconf generates a configure script, which makes substitutions in a user supplied Makefile template, Makefile.in. If you write a portable Makefile.in, the configure script will write a portable Makefile.
basically, the autoconf/configure school of portability says "forget about actually writing portable code, just write it for each variant and let the build process pick".
This is not true at all. There's nothing in autoconf that mandates sloppy programming.
the argument 'configure ; make ; make install' is easy is stupid, as well. y'know why? 'cause 'make install' is easier.
OK, but what if I want to set a different prefix, turn on optimisation, enable debugging, and tell the build where Qt is installed ? I've seen straight make builds where this information is distributed across several Makefiles, and that's a pain.
i'd offer just a little extra advice: do not require GNU-specific stuff. don't use any of the
gmake-specific features or gcc language extentions.
This I agree with.
Re:Point for Point Comments and criticism of O'Rei
on
Freedom or Power Redux
·
· Score: 2
Lets start out with O'Reilly's objectionable mentioning of the story regarding cows and butter.
It doesn't follow that O'Reilly is racist, and the proposition that he is racist does not support your argument. This line of argument is little more than a poor ad-hominem.
The goal should be to maximize the amount of good software the the public effectively has access to
Software has to exist to be "effectively accesible". And it doesn't have to be "free-as-in-beer" to be "effectively accessible".
Short sighted attempts to benefit consumers by punishing producers simply don't work because they destroy financial incentive to produce. This is why we're stuck with capitalism.
O'Reilly's assertion that "that's silly" is not backed up.
Calling a hotly contested claim "obvious" is indeed silly.
however, it is the only way under our current system to prevent those users from modifying the code, copyrighting it, and excercising undue power over others.
The requirement that the source be made available is not necessary to accomplish the above. In a system without copyright, an author could still produce binary-only derivative works, and sell them.
If progress in software means that you have to spend 1000 dollars for a single program, that progress is useless to the vast majority of us.
Making resources available to everybody in equal quantities is not a sound economic principal.
Lets see, lets compare the Modern age of "enlightenment" and the Ancient age, to the Middle Ages.
"Proof by analogy is fraud" -- Bjarne Stroustrup.
And no, your analogy is not analogous.
The only way to fight proprietary software in a world that has largely accepted it is to use copyright against itself. This is precisely what GPL does.
I disagree. By requiring that the source be made available (and not just binary executables), it actually benefits from the basic principle of copyrights -- that creators should be able to set the terms of use.
In some sort of ideal utopian society without copyright, these issues would be mute because software would be incapable of being sold and thus no economic advantage would be had from closed source.
Actually, there would be no reason to publically release source code. In fact most companies would be hesitant to do this because they want to preserve their trade secrets where possible. Moreover, I suspect there would be more intrusive registration requirements for software packages.
The only way software could be commercially produced in such a society would be by paying programmers / software companies for their focused labor instead their end product.
Which is a terrible system, because most home users, and small businesses can't afford a programmers salary. Which explains why the traditional model still prevails. If it was true that it was more efficient for companies to buy developer time, they'd do that.
And in fact, this is the ultimate goal of true proponents of Open Source software.
I disagree. It's possibly the goal of GPL proponents, but that's not the same thing.
Though copyright may be with us for awhile, GPL is a huge step towards reducing its power in the software industry.
Not at all. The GPL depends on copyright as much as proprietary software does. Perhaps what it accomplishes is to reduce the power of proprietary software (which is a good thing IMO) and reduce the damage caused by more intrusive copyright legislation.
Perhaps you have another reason for being opposed?
Are you somehow personally benefiting from "cannot" based IP laws?
All of my software is released under a free license (GPL or artistic. Personally, I prefer the MIT license, but I'm working for someone else.) All of my writing is available on the web, though I haven't explicitly licensed all of it.
I did read your webpage, but it's too nebulous to provide me with a great deal of insight into what problems you are trying to solve, and how you intend to solve them. Current IP laws are designed to enhance technology, on the basic capitalist premise that to advance production of something (eg creative works), you offer financial incentive to produce. In principal, this strikes me as a good idea, though some of the implementations have a lot to be desired.
Whether or not the average village idiot on the street has sense is not the topic of discussion. It doesn't surprise me that there are people who find bright lights impressive. However, I don't believe that there are many such people in the academic community.
The only different between a researcher and a typical employee of a corporation is the researcher is usually given the freedom to research what ever the hell they want to for how ever long they want to (or are allowed to in the case of having to look for funding).
Another big difference is that the corporation puts up the money to pay their employees, while university employees may be funded by grant money.
as they have to be accountable just like all of us in the corporate world.
Yes, but accountable to whom ? In particular, if their research is funded by a grant, they typically are accountable to the entity that provides the grant (typically, they are expected to file a research report). In pracitce, they are only held accountable by the university for duties that the university pays them for -- teaching, and administration.
Taxpayers pay for a lot of things, include government research grants, but no-one who pays their taxes believes that they somehow 'own' a share of that research! Taxes are just taxes, nothing more.
I beg to differ. I like to see government spending of my money accounted for. I would like to see it used in a way that benefits the interests of the public. If my money is being used to fund research, I would like the research to benefit the public, as opposed to propping up some greedy corporations. If the corporations want to fund research to further their intersts, that's fine with me. I only have a problem with their research being funded with my money.
If they have a choice between grabbing free research off the internet, and paying $5 for that same paper, they will immediately place more importance on the $5 copy. One way to increase the public's view of open source may - ironically - be to charge a higher price for it.
This is not true, in my experience. No-one with any sense naively accepts selling price as a true measure of worth. The academic community has a process of peer review and publication. Research that is published in a reputable journal, or produced by a reputable scientist will be valued highly. Research, whether "open source", or sold for $5, $1000,000, by a crackpot will be ignored.
When matriculating at universities it's standard to sign a whole slew of paperwork. An IP contract is probably one of them, and most people probably don't read it.
I certainly haven't signed an IP agreement, and I'm working at a University.
P laws today are "cannot" based. As in you cannot use unless you have approval, etc.
This practice needs to change to "Can" based laws. As in you can use but if you receive monies for doing so, you must direct a percentage back to the IP holder.
Your "solution" is worse than the problem you are trying to solve. The main problem is that every company "receives monies" from activity related to software use. How do you calculate "percentages" ? It puts an onerous burden on licensees.
In fact, the solution you propose for copyrights is analogous to the way patent legislation currently works.
There's some question of legal interpretation here, however. If the licensee for the software under the GPL is considered to be the company, not the employees, then giving the app to employees is not distribution, they're just part of the company.
You make a good point, but I still wouldn't want to be in that position if I were the company. The main problem with this line of argument is that once the software is within your grasp, the GPL gives you permission to use it. Some argument would need to be made that the employees didn't have the right to license the software as individuals while they were on company time.
A point that's even more problematic is this -- even if they could nail the employee, the GPL wouldn't prevent others from redistributing the software.
The point is that companies developing in-house software don't care about the GPL one bit. They could care less whether they have to give the source to their own employees.
Giving the source to their employees is not the problem here, giving the code to their employees under the terms of the GPL (which permits licensees to redistribute code) is.
And not using the GPL will prevent some evil employee from posting the source anonymously.
You miss his point entirely. What it will do is prevent it from being distributed further. It gives them room for damage control.
One the offending code is taken down, no-one can legally redistribute or use it. OTOH, if it's GPL code, there's nothing preventing anyone who downloads it from legally distributing it, and competitors from legally using it.
One of the guys in the office had played with Cygwin and Xfree86 running some stuff - nice idea, but seemed a bit kludgy at the time.
For all the flaws in the implementation, it does a great job at turning a Windows machine into a moderately usable X-term without paying for a commercial windows X server.
The KDE port to Windows may eventually give Windows users another mature choice for browsing, besides Opera, Mozilla and K-Meleon, Konqueror.
Not really. The problem is that it's a port to cygwin, not windows. IOW, it's running through some sort of emulation layer that is darn slow, IME.
The Qt libraries are cross-platform (though there may be licensing issues), so hopefully eventually we'll see a simple to install binary port of Konqueror.
Running it with the native Windows Qt port is an interesting idea. Not sure how well it would work, but it would potentially speed things up a lot.
Re:I switched from Gtk-- to Qt
on
GTK-- vs. QT
·
· Score: 1
What about invoking a signal from the debugger?
One can use the emit method. The SIGNAL and SLOT macros are pretty straightforward (wrap in quotes and prepend 2 and 1 resp.)
Again, using the preprocessor to generate code is really not a great idea.
They're using a preprocessor. This difference is important, in that it doesn't cause the problems that macros cause.
If one needs dynamic typing, use a more dynamic language.
It's not clearly advantageous to do so. Having an
object system that supports dynamic typing is a very different thing to having a program where all objects "look the same".
I haven't personally found coupling to be a problem. Templates are less tightly bound than non-template code because they don't care anything about class heirarchies.
It's a problem because (for example) changing the implementation of a template class typically requires a recompile of all the client code (because you include the class definition, not just the declaration).
There are several garbage collectors available for C++. I was just providing a starting place. The fexibility of std allocators is very nice.
GC is a choice worthy of consideration for an object model designed to facilitate "rapid development". I suppose Troll's reason to stick with a heirarchical ownership system is that it makes sense for a GUI.
I don't see it as a problem at all. Templates prevent the cut-and-paste code one often sees with C.
I certainly agree that templates are useful. I have written code that makes heavy use of templates.
Anyway, I've enjoyed this discussion. I don't often have intelligent conversations on slashdot.
Cheers,
I've thought about this, as well. What I always come up with is this: Why doesn't China have an immigration problem?
It's a trick question. China does have an immigration problem, with N. Korea. They don't have as much of a problem as the US, because their borders aren't as exposed.
Ask Asians in America if they want to move to China. You'll get a resounding "no".
Most non-Chinese don't want to move to China, sure (-; Seriously, besides the mainland-Chinese, most
of the Asian students intend to go back home.
I think if people are exposed both to cultures that grant or restrict human rights, they will choose overwhelmingly to live in the culture that promotes individual freedom.
You're starting to sound like Timothy. You're confusing affluence with freedom. People from industrialised countries (eg Singapore) or sem-industrialised countries (eg Malaysia) that have repressive governments aren't as interested in immigrating.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on what you call "free information exchange". Curiously enough, countries that respect freedom of speech (eg USA) tend to frown on copyright violation, whereas countries that don't (like China) tend to ignore it.
The real issue here is, how should authors of creative works be compensated ? The advocates of Napster appear to believe that they are entitled to free entertainment, and that no-one is morally obliged to compensate authors whose works they benefit from. Authors, they believe, should work without compensation. However, most of these leeches would fiercely object if their employer decided that they shouldn't be compensated for their labor.
The problem is, you're wrong on all counts. You're wrong that I'm fooling myself, and you're wrong that it's theft. I'll just assert that latter one, because that's all you did.
No he didn't. You asserted it on his behalf.
while a new generation of music listeners sniggers quietly behind their hands - or laughs out loud at you - and gets on with doing what people have really always done, which is to redefine both morality and legality by the weight of their actions and opinions.
No, they are defining "morality" by retroactively inventing half-assed rationalisations for immoral actions, and they're not the first people to do it.
I'd be interested to see some evidence to support this. The dictionary definition certainly requires a libelous statement to be (a) false, and (b) injurious. I don't believe the fact that the defendent is unaware that their statement is false constitutes a valid defense.
The fact that you were threatened with a lawsuit doesn't mean the suit had any merit, people make bogus threats all the time (and often back down on them) I don't think the suit would stand up if the story was clearly non-fiction, and the name was not a registered trademark or business name (but IANAL)
I'm not clear on what your problem is. If you don't like some of the autoconf macros, don't use them. I tend to avoid most of the macros you complain about here. Autoconf can be abused, as can most useful tools. I find it useful for simplifying build automation, and giving users (and myself) something better to work with than "edit the Makefile".
This is potential useful. Suppose for example you want to profile dynamically loaded modules. gprof doesn't work with dynamic libraries. What options do you propose to libtdl ? I'm thinking of adopting it, for the very reason that several platforms don'/t use dlopen()
libtool's basic problem is that it starts out trying to solve a goal that very few people face:
A lot of people face it actually. In fact the vast majority of open source libraries available are supposed to work on several platforms.
This is nonsense. Autoconf generates a configure script, which makes substitutions in a user supplied Makefile template, Makefile.in. If you write a portable Makefile.in, the configure script will write a portable Makefile.
This is not true at all. There's nothing in autoconf that mandates sloppy programming.
the argument 'configure ; make ; make install' is easy is stupid, as well. y'know why? 'cause 'make install' is easier.
OK, but what if I want to set a different prefix, turn on optimisation, enable debugging, and tell the build where Qt is installed ? I've seen straight make builds where this information is distributed across several Makefiles, and that's a pain.
i'd offer just a little extra advice: do not require GNU-specific stuff. don't use any of the gmake-specific features or gcc language extentions.
This I agree with.
It doesn't follow that O'Reilly is racist, and the proposition that he is racist does not support your argument. This line of argument is little more than a poor ad-hominem.
The goal should be to maximize the amount of good software the the public effectively has access to
Software has to exist to be "effectively accesible". And it doesn't have to be "free-as-in-beer" to be "effectively accessible". Short sighted attempts to benefit consumers by punishing producers simply don't work because they destroy financial incentive to produce. This is why we're stuck with capitalism.
O'Reilly's assertion that "that's silly" is not backed up.
Calling a hotly contested claim "obvious" is indeed silly.
however, it is the only way under our current system to prevent those users from modifying the code, copyrighting it, and excercising undue power over others.
The requirement that the source be made available is not necessary to accomplish the above. In a system without copyright, an author could still produce binary-only derivative works, and sell them.
If progress in software means that you have to spend 1000 dollars for a single program, that progress is useless to the vast majority of us.
Making resources available to everybody in equal quantities is not a sound economic principal.
Lets see, lets compare the Modern age of "enlightenment" and the Ancient age, to the Middle Ages.
"Proof by analogy is fraud" -- Bjarne Stroustrup. And no, your analogy is not analogous.
I disagree. By requiring that the source be made available (and not just binary executables), it actually benefits from the basic principle of copyrights -- that creators should be able to set the terms of use.
In some sort of ideal utopian society without copyright, these issues would be mute because software would be incapable of being sold and thus no economic advantage would be had from closed source.
Actually, there would be no reason to publically release source code. In fact most companies would be hesitant to do this because they want to preserve their trade secrets where possible. Moreover, I suspect there would be more intrusive registration requirements for software packages.
The only way software could be commercially produced in such a society would be by paying programmers / software companies for their focused labor instead their end product.
Which is a terrible system, because most home users, and small businesses can't afford a programmers salary. Which explains why the traditional model still prevails. If it was true that it was more efficient for companies to buy developer time, they'd do that.
And in fact, this is the ultimate goal of true proponents of Open Source software.
I disagree. It's possibly the goal of GPL proponents, but that's not the same thing.
Though copyright may be with us for awhile, GPL is a huge step towards reducing its power in the software industry.
Not at all. The GPL depends on copyright as much as proprietary software does. Perhaps what it accomplishes is to reduce the power of proprietary software (which is a good thing IMO) and reduce the damage caused by more intrusive copyright legislation.
Cheers,
All of my software is released under a free license (GPL or artistic. Personally, I prefer the MIT license, but I'm working for someone else.) All of my writing is available on the web, though I haven't explicitly licensed all of it.
I did read your webpage, but it's too nebulous to provide me with a great deal of insight into what problems you are trying to solve, and how you intend to solve them. Current IP laws are designed to enhance technology, on the basic capitalist premise that to advance production of something (eg creative works), you offer financial incentive to produce. In principal, this strikes me as a good idea, though some of the implementations have a lot to be desired.
Cheers,
Whether or not the average village idiot on the street has sense is not the topic of discussion. It doesn't surprise me that there are people who find bright lights impressive. However, I don't believe that there are many such people in the academic community.
Another big difference is that the corporation puts up the money to pay their employees, while university employees may be funded by grant money.
as they have to be accountable just like all of us in the corporate world.
Yes, but accountable to whom ? In particular, if their research is funded by a grant, they typically are accountable to the entity that provides the grant (typically, they are expected to file a research report). In pracitce, they are only held accountable by the university for duties that the university pays them for -- teaching, and administration.
I beg to differ. I like to see government spending of my money accounted for. I would like to see it used in a way that benefits the interests of the public. If my money is being used to fund research, I would like the research to benefit the public, as opposed to propping up some greedy corporations. If the corporations want to fund research to further their intersts, that's fine with me. I only have a problem with their research being funded with my money.
This is not true, in my experience. No-one with any sense naively accepts selling price as a true measure of worth. The academic community has a process of peer review and publication. Research that is published in a reputable journal, or produced by a reputable scientist will be valued highly. Research, whether "open source", or sold for $5, $1000,000, by a crackpot will be ignored.
I certainly haven't signed an IP agreement, and I'm working at a University.
Your "solution" is worse than the problem you are trying to solve. The main problem is that every company "receives monies" from activity related to software use. How do you calculate "percentages" ? It puts an onerous burden on licensees. In fact, the solution you propose for copyrights is analogous to the way patent legislation currently works.
You make a good point, but I still wouldn't want to be in that position if I were the company. The main problem with this line of argument is that once the software is within your grasp, the GPL gives you permission to use it. Some argument would need to be made that the employees didn't have the right to license the software as individuals while they were on company time.
A point that's even more problematic is this -- even if they could nail the employee, the GPL wouldn't prevent others from redistributing the software.
Giving the source to their employees is not the problem here, giving the code to their employees under the terms of the GPL (which permits licensees to redistribute code) is.
You miss his point entirely. What it will do is prevent it from being distributed further. It gives them room for damage control. One the offending code is taken down, no-one can legally redistribute or use it. OTOH, if it's GPL code, there's nothing preventing anyone who downloads it from legally distributing it, and competitors from legally using it.
For all the flaws in the implementation, it does a great job at turning a Windows machine into a moderately usable X-term without paying for a commercial windows X server.
Not really. The problem is that it's a port to cygwin, not windows. IOW, it's running through some sort of emulation layer that is darn slow, IME.
The Qt libraries are cross-platform (though there may be licensing issues), so hopefully eventually we'll see a simple to install binary port of Konqueror.
Running it with the native Windows Qt port is an interesting idea. Not sure how well it would work, but it would potentially speed things up a lot.
One can use the emit method. The SIGNAL and SLOT macros are pretty straightforward (wrap in quotes and prepend 2 and 1 resp.)
Again, using the preprocessor to generate code is really not a great idea.
They're using a preprocessor. This difference is important, in that it doesn't cause the problems that macros cause.
If one needs dynamic typing, use a more dynamic language.
It's not clearly advantageous to do so. Having an object system that supports dynamic typing is a very different thing to having a program where all objects "look the same".
I haven't personally found coupling to be a problem. Templates are less tightly bound than non-template code because they don't care anything about class heirarchies.
It's a problem because (for example) changing the implementation of a template class typically requires a recompile of all the client code (because you include the class definition, not just the declaration).
There are several garbage collectors available for C++. I was just providing a starting place. The fexibility of std allocators is very nice.
GC is a choice worthy of consideration for an object model designed to facilitate "rapid development". I suppose Troll's reason to stick with a heirarchical ownership system is that it makes sense for a GUI.
I don't see it as a problem at all. Templates prevent the cut-and-paste code one often sees with C.
I certainly agree that templates are useful. I have written code that makes heavy use of templates.
Anyway, I've enjoyed this discussion. I don't often have intelligent conversations on slashdot. Cheers,
It's a trick question. China does have an immigration problem, with N. Korea. They don't have as much of a problem as the US, because their borders aren't as exposed.
Ask Asians in America if they want to move to China. You'll get a resounding "no".
Most non-Chinese don't want to move to China, sure (-; Seriously, besides the mainland-Chinese, most of the Asian students intend to go back home.
I think if people are exposed both to cultures that grant or restrict human rights, they will choose overwhelmingly to live in the culture that promotes individual freedom.
You're starting to sound like Timothy. You're confusing affluence with freedom. People from industrialised countries (eg Singapore) or sem-industrialised countries (eg Malaysia) that have repressive governments aren't as interested in immigrating.