By your comment and the context you are claiming that writing a program in hand-coded assembly is faster than writing the same program in Java and that this is true for all programs. That, sir, is one of the most asinine things I've ever heard. Hardly ever does even an expert assembly programmer do better than an optimizing compiler, but it does happen occasionally.
An expert assembly programmer can always do at least as well as the compiler, because the programmer can use a compiler, then optimize the output further, if possible.
Is this because of the fact that Bill Gates has made the whole industry look nerdy?
No, it's because Bill Gates slowed innovation in the industry to a crawl. Well, he and all those people who broke end-to-end model of the Internet using NAT, dynamic IP addressing, deep packet inspection, "no servers" policies, proprietary data interchange formats, etc. And don't even get me started on digital video and cryptography patents.
"IT" has come to mean "IT inside the company you work for". We have all these wonderfully powerful information processing technologies at the edges of the Internet, but can we make new and exciting uses of them? Not many. Why? Because of the problems I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
A school is a place of learning. If this kid was more capable than the teachers in the school (which is very likely) then they should have let him pass with A's on principle.
So if he's l33t at pwning n00bs, he should get an A in English Composition and Economics?
Odd. Don't all the electronics kits (for kids or not) have accompanying schematic diagrams for everything you're assembling? Mine did, and I assumed they all did--0but I got it during the late 1980s, probably from Radio Shack. My parents taught me to ignore the point-to-point assembly instructions and instead look at the schematics.
The inconsistency you outline is fiction. That's what happens when you think about "intellectual property" as if you're a lawyer (arguing within the framework of existing law) rather than a legislator (arguing about what the law should be).
It's about acting in the public interest, and about what laws are in the public's interest.
The grandparent hasn't made a credible argument for how the public is served by removing the teeth from the GPL, and pretends that the FSF/GNU people haven't thought about it.
The GPL reduces the extent to which software development acts as a drain on the economy. That benefits society.
Software development, while often creative, is mostly uninventive, and any invention that does occur happens in the course of producing software---there is no need for an incentive to invent when it comes to software. Also, it has been shown numerous times that patents actually hinder software development.
If it's okay to persue GPL violations in court, it should also be okay that the *IAA persues violations of their copyright in court as well, shouldn't it?
Not if it doesn't serve the public interest.
Look, in a free society, we avoid creating laws that restrict what individuals (or groups of individuals) do with their own time, equipment, and supplies. Whenever we do create such laws (e.g. copyright, patent), it's in order to advance the public interest. If you can't show, convincingly, that these laws serve the public, then they need to be modified to do so, or be repealed.
As a software engineer, I understand the importance of adhering to and enforcing a software license, however these constant lawsuits are eventually going to cripple the free software movement.
Oh really? How? The terms of the GPL are very clear, and people keep getting sued because they persist making up their own rules instead of following the actual rules. The GPL is only effective because the risk of lawsuits is real.
Many companies are adopting OSS as a means of rolling out custom products faster. It is easier to use something that already exists rather than rebuilding it themselves.
What invariably happens is that along the way, is that some engineer decides to make a modification to a package in order to make it fit their unique needs (usually without authorization from the legal dept). Next thing you know you have a product that is heavily dependent on some customized OSS package that was never supposed to be used in such a capacity. Now the company is forced to turn over software that they invested in and are exposed to risk of litigation because of a breakdown in the dev process.
Oh, cry me a river! If your company can't get its act together, then it's best for everyone that your company's competitors---who actually do follow the rules---eat your lunch.
Now I am not saying that companies should be able to rape OSS projects for free development work
In effect, that's exactly what you are saying.
but there has to be a balance.
Why? Between what extremes? What would be the impact?
I think the FSF and the Gnu people should work out some sort of process where corporate customizations can be evaluated for context and value of the original package. And maybe have a source review process where the OSS developer can review what was added without exposing trade secrets of the corporations trying to use the OSS.
What? Who would do the evaluation? How do you judge "value"? Who is going to bear the cost of this process? Why are trade secrets being intermingled with GPL-covered code? What's would the BusyBox gain by doing this? What would society gain?
The FSF and the GNU people have worked a lot of things out. They created the rules that leveled the playing field for all of us. Those rules are codified in the GPL. You apparently don't like the rules, and whine when they are enforced.
I think it is insane to treat corporations as the enemy.
Red Hat isn't the enemy. MySQL isn't the enemy. Ingres isn't the enemy. Google isn't the enemy. Microsoft is an enemy, but only because they have a history of trying to screw, well, everyone (and there's no credible reason to believe that they've stopped). The "enemies" are those who persist in acting selfishly to the detriment of all of us. If anything, I'd argue that the BusyBox developers have been too lenient: Linksys routers (to my knowledge, which is a bit out of date) still aren't shipped with copies of the GPL included.
OSS developers should be working with Corporations not suing them.
They are. Many work for corporations. Many are corporations.
This is the sole reason I release all my code under BSD license. I want people to use my products
Then the BSD license is a good match for your goals. Good for you. Not everyone values fame as highly as you do. People who release software under the GPL generally do so either to spread the freedoms that the GPL provides, or because they want to modify and re-distribute software that is already covered by the GPL. I see no reason to prejudice the latter group by letting Bell, SuperMicro, or anyone else get a free pass.
Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
Most people who buy hardware from Linksys (and various other distributors GPL-covered code) never find out about the freedoms they're afforded by the GPL. When are we going to see enforcement of section 1 of GPLv2? It reads:
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's
source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you
conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate
copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty;
and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License
along with the Program.
GPLv3 isn't my concern. GPLv4 and later versions are. KDE developers have no assurance that they won't be locked to some obsolete version of the GPL in the future.
It's a shame, because as a user, I much prefer KDE over GNOME, but I suspect the latter might outlive the former.
If Nokia screws up and stops releasing FOSS versions of Qt or otherwise messes with it, Qt's forcefully taken from them. The Foundation is there to ensure that Qt remains available.
It doesn't, however, ensure that Qt remains compatible with the most current version of the GPL. That's something to be concerned about.
Step 1. Buy TrollTech, thus making yourself (nominally) an "open source company"
Step 2. Frame serious, anti-competitive technical/legal barriers-to-entry to the market (and barriers to creating new markets) as "touchy, emotional issues".
Step 3. Label critics of these barriers as "idealists"; Claim you're taking the "pragmatic" approach. (cf. classic anti-GPL rhetoric)
Step 4. Profit!
My prediction: Don't expect Qt to be compatible with a future GPLv4.
Criminal vs. civil proceedings? Usually criminal proceedings are biased in favour of the defendant, in order to minimize the number of false convictions.
Yeah, it's just a shame that you can't opt for a non-jury trial.
Heh. Exactly.:)
Hans' lawyer likely thought a judge wouldn't buy his story. On the other hand, he probably didn't count on Hans taking the stand and totally discrediting himself.
And how would a non-techie lawyer ensure that his copy of PGP is actually authentic? Check its PGP signature? Use SSL? Review the source code and disassemble the compiler? What about getting good random numbers? As we've seen over the past year, you often can't rely on the operating system to generate them for you, especially not on Windows.
Not transmitting sensitive information over an insecure network, while prohibitively expensive in many cases, is far more reliable than transmitting it "encrypted" and hoping the encryption actually holds.
Who cares? This is Slashdot, where every boneheaded idea has at least 10 supporters. If Twitter wants to carry on as if he has multiple personalities, let him.
The difference is free as in the FSF's 4 freedoms and free as in "free of charge". There is no "Free". None of the FSF's documentation refers to "Free".
Regardless of what you call it, assembly can't go away until the processor interface changes to something completely different and we no longer have ISAs... Yeah I don't even know what that would possibly look like. So it's definitely sticking around for a while.
It would probably look like a hardware description language, e.g. VHDL or Verilog. On the other hand, people tend to build mini-CPUs (which have instruction sets) with them.
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By your comment and the context you are claiming that writing a program in hand-coded assembly is faster than writing the same program in Java and that this is true for all programs. That, sir, is one of the most asinine things I've ever heard. Hardly ever does even an expert assembly programmer do better than an optimizing compiler, but it does happen occasionally.
An expert assembly programmer can always do at least as well as the compiler, because the programmer can use a compiler, then optimize the output further, if possible.
No, it's because Bill Gates slowed innovation in the industry to a crawl. Well, he and all those people who broke end-to-end model of the Internet using NAT, dynamic IP addressing, deep packet inspection, "no servers" policies, proprietary data interchange formats, etc. And don't even get me started on digital video and cryptography patents.
"IT" has come to mean "IT inside the company you work for". We have all these wonderfully powerful information processing technologies at the edges of the Internet, but can we make new and exciting uses of them? Not many. Why? Because of the problems I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
So yeah, it's a boring job.
Yet again, "ID cards" are proposed as a method to curb spam, at the expense of anonymous speech.
When are we going to actually fix our protocols?
Thoroughly disappointing. Not only was it not Maddox, but it wasn't even something Maddox would approve of.
"It's okay for you to cry if your pet dies." (paraphrased)... Yuck.
Overtly religious, too.
I bet an autopsy could reveal frostbite around the wound.
Since when is Robin Williams a requirement for geek cred? Yeesh.
So if he's l33t at pwning n00bs, he should get an A in English Composition and Economics?
Of course it isn't. Unfortunately, we've outlawed all the fun stuff as "cruel and unusual punishment".
Or we could fix the jails so that they aren't training camps for would-be criminals.
Odd. Don't all the electronics kits (for kids or not) have accompanying schematic diagrams for everything you're assembling? Mine did, and I assumed they all did--0but I got it during the late 1980s, probably from Radio Shack. My parents taught me to ignore the point-to-point assembly instructions and instead look at the schematics.
Sure, but they're both in a very good position to negotiate whatever contract terms they desire.
The inconsistency you outline is fiction. That's what happens when you think about "intellectual property" as if you're a lawyer (arguing within the framework of existing law) rather than a legislator (arguing about what the law should be).
It's about acting in the public interest, and about what laws are in the public's interest.
The grandparent hasn't made a credible argument for how the public is served by removing the teeth from the GPL, and pretends that the FSF/GNU people haven't thought about it.
The GPL reduces the extent to which software development acts as a drain on the economy. That benefits society.
Software development, while often creative, is mostly uninventive, and any invention that does occur happens in the course of producing software---there is no need for an incentive to invent when it comes to software. Also, it has been shown numerous times that patents actually hinder software development.
If it's okay to persue GPL violations in court, it should also be okay that the *IAA persues violations of their copyright in court as well, shouldn't it?Not if it doesn't serve the public interest.
Look, in a free society, we avoid creating laws that restrict what individuals (or groups of individuals) do with their own time, equipment, and supplies. Whenever we do create such laws (e.g. copyright, patent), it's in order to advance the public interest. If you can't show, convincingly, that these laws serve the public, then they need to be modified to do so, or be repealed.
Oh really? How? The terms of the GPL are very clear, and people keep getting sued because they persist making up their own rules instead of following the actual rules. The GPL is only effective because the risk of lawsuits is real.
Many companies are adopting OSS as a means of rolling out custom products faster. It is easier to use something that already exists rather than rebuilding it themselves. What invariably happens is that along the way, is that some engineer decides to make a modification to a package in order to make it fit their unique needs (usually without authorization from the legal dept). Next thing you know you have a product that is heavily dependent on some customized OSS package that was never supposed to be used in such a capacity. Now the company is forced to turn over software that they invested in and are exposed to risk of litigation because of a breakdown in the dev process.Oh, cry me a river! If your company can't get its act together, then it's best for everyone that your company's competitors---who actually do follow the rules---eat your lunch.
Now I am not saying that companies should be able to rape OSS projects for free development workIn effect, that's exactly what you are saying.
but there has to be a balance.Why? Between what extremes? What would be the impact?
I think the FSF and the Gnu people should work out some sort of process where corporate customizations can be evaluated for context and value of the original package. And maybe have a source review process where the OSS developer can review what was added without exposing trade secrets of the corporations trying to use the OSS.What? Who would do the evaluation? How do you judge "value"? Who is going to bear the cost of this process? Why are trade secrets being intermingled with GPL-covered code? What's would the BusyBox gain by doing this? What would society gain?
The FSF and the GNU people have worked a lot of things out. They created the rules that leveled the playing field for all of us. Those rules are codified in the GPL. You apparently don't like the rules, and whine when they are enforced.
I think it is insane to treat corporations as the enemy.Red Hat isn't the enemy. MySQL isn't the enemy. Ingres isn't the enemy. Google isn't the enemy. Microsoft is an enemy, but only because they have a history of trying to screw, well, everyone (and there's no credible reason to believe that they've stopped). The "enemies" are those who persist in acting selfishly to the detriment of all of us. If anything, I'd argue that the BusyBox developers have been too lenient: Linksys routers (to my knowledge, which is a bit out of date) still aren't shipped with copies of the GPL included.
OSS developers should be working with Corporations not suing them.They are. Many work for corporations. Many are corporations.
This is the sole reason I release all my code under BSD license. I want people to use my productsThen the BSD license is a good match for your goals. Good for you. Not everyone values fame as highly as you do. People who release software under the GPL generally do so either to spread the freedoms that the GPL provides, or because they want to modify and re-distribute software that is already covered by the GPL. I see no reason to prejudice the latter group by letting Bell, SuperMicro, or anyone else get a free pass.
Being a corporation has nothing to do with it.
From the GPLv2 preamble:
Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.Most people who buy hardware from Linksys (and various other distributors GPL-covered code) never find out about the freedoms they're afforded by the GPL. When are we going to see enforcement of section 1 of GPLv2? It reads:
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.GPLv3 isn't my concern. GPLv4 and later versions are. KDE developers have no assurance that they won't be locked to some obsolete version of the GPL in the future.
It's a shame, because as a user, I much prefer KDE over GNOME, but I suspect the latter might outlive the former.
I'm not so sure about that...
It doesn't, however, ensure that Qt remains compatible with the most current version of the GPL. That's something to be concerned about.
Step 1. Buy TrollTech, thus making yourself (nominally) an "open source company"
Step 2. Frame serious, anti-competitive technical/legal barriers-to-entry to the market (and barriers to creating new markets) as "touchy, emotional issues".
Step 3. Label critics of these barriers as "idealists"; Claim you're taking the "pragmatic" approach. (cf. classic anti-GPL rhetoric)
Step 4. Profit!
My prediction: Don't expect Qt to be compatible with a future GPLv4.
Criminal vs. civil proceedings? Usually criminal proceedings are biased in favour of the defendant, in order to minimize the number of false convictions.
Heh. Exactly. :)
Hans' lawyer likely thought a judge wouldn't buy his story. On the other hand, he probably didn't count on Hans taking the stand and totally discrediting himself.
Heaven forbid a disinterested party be on the jury!
"Lawyers would rather fly than download PGP"...
And how would a non-techie lawyer ensure that his copy of PGP is actually authentic? Check its PGP signature? Use SSL? Review the source code and disassemble the compiler? What about getting good random numbers? As we've seen over the past year, you often can't rely on the operating system to generate them for you, especially not on Windows.
Not transmitting sensitive information over an insecure network, while prohibitively expensive in many cases, is far more reliable than transmitting it "encrypted" and hoping the encryption actually holds.
Who cares? This is Slashdot, where every boneheaded idea has at least 10 supporters. If Twitter wants to carry on as if he has multiple personalities, let him.
The difference is free as in the FSF's 4 freedoms and free as in "free of charge". There is no "Free". None of the FSF's documentation refers to "Free".
The capitalization just looks stupid.
It would probably look like a hardware description language, e.g. VHDL or Verilog. On the other hand, people tend to build mini-CPUs (which have instruction sets) with them.