Changing the [Linux] licence... would require one of two extra things:
1) Everyone agreeing to a particular licence at the same time 2) Everyone agreeing to give someone (Linus? FSF?) the copyright to their submissions.
It's not really that hard. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the code was written by 20% of the contributors. Plus, some of the code in Linux is already GPLv3-compatible, since it's either taken from the BSDs, or it's licenced under GPLv2-or-later. Additionally, older code tends to be replaced over time. If a switch to GPLv3 became popular among today's kernel developers, and Linus imposed a policy of only accepting GPLv2-and-GPLv3-compatible patches, then I suspect that in 5 years, it would be fairly simple to replace the little bit of GPLv3-incompatible code that remains, and drop GPLv2 compatibility.
It could probably also be done in less time and/or without Linus' cooperation, but with substantially more work required.
Would it be a pain? Yes, but I'm very skeptical that it's the impossible task that you claim it to be.
Was he selling these items primarily to people in Japan?
If you're in Japan, selling stuff to customers in Japan, and putting the money into a bank account in Japan, then I can understand if the Japanese authorities would get involved. The/. story makes it sound as though he got deported for being a Chinese student in Japan who just happened to also be running a foreign business.
There should be no life in prison. I don't want to pay to feed the fuckers.
Except there's a problem: People gaming the system.
Let's say you manage to frame your boss for murder. Let's also say it's likely that your boss could expose you, but only if he thought that you were the one who framed him. You know that unless you get caught right away, your boss will be killed, your secret will be safe, and you'll be able to proceed with taking over your boss's company.
If they get a life sentence, the possibility of your discovery will exist for a long time, and so you'll have nothing to gain by trying to frame your boss for murder in the first place.
If that's too far-fetched for you, there is also another reason: Mistakes.
Imagine a court case that is the opposite of the O.J. Simpson case: somebody is obviously innocent, but because of the fear of rioting, the jury finds him guilty. If he's sentenced to death, it's game over. If he's sentenced to life imprisonment, the matter can be revisited in a few years once people calm down, or once stronger evidence surfaces.
This life-sentence-watered-down-to-25-years-watered-dow n-to-15-years stuff that we're seeing in Canada is utter crap, though. Life should mean life.
Um, what? Who made you the authority on what OSS is "about"?
Also you contradict yourself. You say "OSS is about choice". News flash: Jumping ship is about choice. Mark Shuttleworth is reminding the openSUSE devs of one of the choices available to them.
Also, OSS is very much about attracting developers. Projects without developers don't go anywhere. Projects that have developers do, almost without regard to technical merit (cf. PHP)
The "free market", like the spherical Earth, doesn't actually exist, and there is no reason to believe that it ever will. It's just an idealization that is useful for making approximate calculations about the overall behaviour of a system. Despite what a bunch of pseudo-intellectual Slashdotters will tell you, the free market is not a magical force that would make everyone happy if only the evil government would keep its greedy paws out of things.
A foreign company gets various benefits from a country (copyright, trademarks, corporate status, access to the market, etc), and in return, is required not to screw the people in that country, or harm that country's economy. If they break the rules, they are punished. What do you expect?
Microsoft's not a monopoly: you're perfectly free to create your own standard (as the OO crowd is trying to do).
This has been discussed before. Microsoft is a monopoly, under the legal definitions of several jurisdictions. And it makes sense. From Wikipedia:
Primary characteristics of a monopoly
Single sellers - Check. Only Microsoft gets to set prices for MS Office.
No close substitutes - "Personally I don't use OO because I can't swap files with people with whom I co-author scientific articles." This is probably the weakest characteristic, but it still applies under a wide variety of circumstances.
Price maker - This is the big one. Microsoft can charge pretty much whatever it wants for Office/Windows, and people will still buy, because they have to.
Blocked entry - Competitors can't enter the market because they can't interoperate with Microsoft's offering. This is what the EU is trying to address.
Any user input should be scrubbed sanitized and checked before using it
This statement is almost always wrong. While there are occasionally cases where certain information simply cannot be represented in a particular (poorly-designed) system, most of the time you need to properly encode the data, rather than "checking" it for "dangerousness".
Most non-trivial software can't just be recompiled for another architecture and work, 16 > 32 had some significant changes, it would require a significant rewrite, and considering how much crap was probably in it to begin with, it'd be a real pain in the ass.
Refer to the original quote:
I read somewhere that Windows Vista includes applications with 5 different UIs because not everything was upgraded to work with the new Vista UI, and some of it hasn't been upgraded since 3.1.
Windows 9x did it. I once compared progman.exe (or maybe it was calc.exe; I can't remember.) from Windows 3.1 and Windows 9x, and they had the same MD5 hash. Yes, it's messy, but it's not inconceivable that Microsoft would extend this practice to individual modules in Windows Vista.
As far as recompiling goes, it also means relinking to different libraries. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Microsoft reused some of its Win16-compatibility code in glue libraries in order to avoid having to make changes to their old application code. It would be like using wowexec, but without having to put the CPU into 16-bit mode.
Slashdot Mirror
What's marketing porn? Is that like Bill Gates[1] stripping?
[1] former head of the largest marketing company in the world
True, but the sales guy would know what you meant, since he'd understand the type of stuff you like to build.
The Vista shutdown menu had 19 managers who don't know what they're doing in charge. Linux only has a Linus and a few others.
1) Everyone agreeing to a particular licence at the same time
2) Everyone agreeing to give someone (Linus? FSF?) the copyright to their submissions.
It's not really that hard. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the code was written by 20% of the contributors. Plus, some of the code in Linux is already GPLv3-compatible, since it's either taken from the BSDs, or it's licenced under GPLv2-or-later. Additionally, older code tends to be replaced over time. If a switch to GPLv3 became popular among today's kernel developers, and Linus imposed a policy of only accepting GPLv2-and-GPLv3-compatible patches, then I suspect that in 5 years, it would be fairly simple to replace the little bit of GPLv3-incompatible code that remains, and drop GPLv2 compatibility.
It could probably also be done in less time and/or without Linus' cooperation, but with substantially more work required.
Would it be a pain? Yes, but I'm very skeptical that it's the impossible task that you claim it to be.
Was he selling these items primarily to people in Japan?
If you're in Japan, selling stuff to customers in Japan, and putting the money into a bank account in Japan, then I can understand if the Japanese authorities would get involved. The /. story makes it sound as though he got deported for being a Chinese student in Japan who just happened to also be running a foreign business.
<sarcasm>Yeah, Canada is so strict in comparison</sarcasm>
So, in other words, they're strict when you're a drain on their society, and lenient when you contribute to it. I fail to see your problem.
Only if that makes the code easier to read.
No kidding.
Copyright should have a fixed term. None of this "death of author" crap.
Explaining themselves? Please. The post was more along the lines of, "Let's put an end this thread. Obviously you are wrong!"
I'd like to answer, but I'm too busy playing Frozen Bubble. Version 2!
I don't know about Ubuntu, but I think you don't understand the motivations of Debian developers very well.
Trying to get in the last word, are you? If you weren't, why didn't you stop there?
Not referring to anyone in particular, please bear in mind that some open source devs are high school students.
Erm, do you mean non-US? non-free didn't go anywhere.
Except there's a problem: People gaming the system.
Let's say you manage to frame your boss for murder. Let's also say it's likely that your boss could expose you, but only if he thought that you were the one who framed him. You know that unless you get caught right away, your boss will be killed, your secret will be safe, and you'll be able to proceed with taking over your boss's company.
If they get a life sentence, the possibility of your discovery will exist for a long time, and so you'll have nothing to gain by trying to frame your boss for murder in the first place.
If that's too far-fetched for you, there is also another reason: Mistakes.
Imagine a court case that is the opposite of the O.J. Simpson case: somebody is obviously innocent, but because of the fear of rioting, the jury finds him guilty. If he's sentenced to death, it's game over. If he's sentenced to life imprisonment, the matter can be revisited in a few years once people calm down, or once stronger evidence surfaces.
This life-sentence-watered-down-to-25-years-watered-dow n-to-15-years stuff that we're seeing in Canada is utter crap, though. Life should mean life.
And yet it happens enough to cause projects like Linux, KDE, GNOME, OpenBSD, Apache, and so on, to get off the ground. Get used to it.
Um, what? Who made you the authority on what OSS is "about"?
Also you contradict yourself. You say "OSS is about choice". News flash: Jumping ship is about choice. Mark Shuttleworth is reminding the openSUSE devs of one of the choices available to them.
Also, OSS is very much about attracting developers. Projects without developers don't go anywhere. Projects that have developers do, almost without regard to technical merit (cf. PHP)
A good manager will be better with technical know-how. A bad manager won't be helped by it.
The "free market", like the spherical Earth, doesn't actually exist, and there is no reason to believe that it ever will. It's just an idealization that is useful for making approximate calculations about the overall behaviour of a system. Despite what a bunch of pseudo-intellectual Slashdotters will tell you, the free market is not a magical force that would make everyone happy if only the evil government would keep its greedy paws out of things.
A foreign company gets various benefits from a country (copyright, trademarks, corporate status, access to the market, etc), and in return, is required not to screw the people in that country, or harm that country's economy. If they break the rules, they are punished. What do you expect?
This has been discussed before. Microsoft is a monopoly, under the legal definitions of several jurisdictions. And it makes sense. From Wikipedia:
Primary characteristics of a monopoly
When creationism finally dies out, the only place you'll be able to find a creationism museum will be in a museum!
Oh wait...
This statement is almost always wrong. While there are occasionally cases where certain information simply cannot be represented in a particular (poorly-designed) system, most of the time you need to properly encode the data, rather than "checking" it for "dangerousness".
I'm not a Windows programmer.
Refer to the original quote:
Windows 9x did it. I once compared progman.exe (or maybe it was calc.exe; I can't remember.) from Windows 3.1 and Windows 9x, and they had the same MD5 hash. Yes, it's messy, but it's not inconceivable that Microsoft would extend this practice to individual modules in Windows Vista.
As far as recompiling goes, it also means relinking to different libraries. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Microsoft reused some of its Win16-compatibility code in glue libraries in order to avoid having to make changes to their old application code. It would be like using wowexec, but without having to put the CPU into 16-bit mode.