They don't know who the legitimate customers are. If they just hand out keys to everyone and anyone, what was the point of the system in the first place?
The outcome of this case should've been obvious from the very beginning. Of course Google, Yahoo, Microsoft don't have to display his ads. It might be in their interests to display them since he will pay them for it, but why should they have to? He's still allowed to spread his information elsewhere.
"Wahh wahh... Google/Yahoo/Microsoft won't display the ads I want them to."
Copyleft is a better idea. Not only will your work be free for others to share, but anyone who makes a derivative work must also allow others to share alike.
If Microsoft used the license agreement against Virtual Machines at the same time as releasing their own, they'd get into legal trouble. Legal trouble is a pain in the neck, so what they're doing is saying that "Virtual Machines are a security flaw" and banning them from the operating system. Then, later on, as a complete coincidence Microsoft is going to create "a Virtual Machine that is safe". Luckily for them, the coincidence that they have crafted doesn't involve any competitors!
Symantec are not the problem. Symantec is the partial/flawed solution to a problem that Microsoft hasn't fixed. The problem is so large that there is an entire market created by it.
If you live in the US or Australia, then yes, it is illegal to decrypt the media you bought unless you have permission. You don't seem to care about that because you don't consider it immoral to decrypt something you purchased without permission. I agree with you, but the laws don't, which leads to my question for you...
If you're breaking copyright laws either way, why not just download it instead? I realise some people feel a need to "support those responsible for the art" but those same people (or people they do business with) are responsible for lobbying for these unbalanced copyright laws.
I'd like to remind you that we're dealing with a *pirate*, here. These are the same people who fire their weapons on our ships at sea, kill our children, rape our women, and in this particular case, they were forcing people to either "drink or die".
Remember, kids: There is no crime more serious than copyright infringement. When you infringe copyright, you are possibly stealing from some of the richest organisations in the world. By definition, nothing could be more immoral.
This is true, and thanks to copyleft, this is like a stronger version of the public domain. It is still an unfortunate situation, though, because there are many works that may never see the light of day as public domain or as a copylefted work.
We only want one distribution supported. Chances are that if that one works, people will be able to easily get the others working, too.
I don't even care if Dell doesn't ship Linux with their PCs, but there are a couple of specific things I do want: - I don't want to pay for Windows. I don't want Windows. I want a discount for not picking Windows. - I don't want to be sold hardware that won't work in Linux. I don't expect Dell to provide "official support" for hardware in Linux, but some sort of promise or indication that they won't knowingly sell hardware incompatible with Linux would be really good.
Concerts and sales/donations. Small artists don't make any money from the current system, anyway. The copyleft system is actually *better* for small artists because they make the same amount of money but have a wider audience.
Money could even come from lawsuits, but instead of suing fans they could sue any company that wraps the copylefted music in DRM.
Actually it can get a little bit easier. How about if you didn't need to click "apply"? Why should I have to click "apply"? I wouldn't have ticked the package if I didn't want to install it!
"Scroll, then click on Install" would be better.
I realise that expert users might want to mark a bunch of packages and then install them all in one go, but perhaps the installation can be backgrounded so that it doesn't affect the UI being used to select packages.
I think the OSX drag-and-drop method really stinks. It's not intuitive at all. I was using OSX for the first time on my girlfriend's laptop a bit over a year ago and couldn't figure out how to install Firefox on it until she told me I had to drag it into the Applications folder. It's easy once you know what to do, but what you have to do is not at all obvious to a first-time user.
How about, you download this file, double click on it, and then a little window pops up with an "Install" button. Once you click it, the installation is done within seconds. Does that sound good? That's the way deb packages work in Ubuntu.
Not buying music isn't enough. If we (geeks who care about this stuff) just did that, the RIAA wouldn't even notice it. We need to compete with the established record companies.
How do we do this? We give "up and coming" artists incentives to copyleft their music:
- Competitions
- Community word of mouth
- Zero-cost web design
- Zero-cost artwork in the form of posters and CDs
- Zero-cost music videos
- Pro bono legal representation against any company that tries to distribute their copylefted music in a DRM distribution channel (there will probably be companies stupid enough to try this!)
- Ability to accept donations via an iTunes competitor that is integrated into our popular media players (eg. Amarok)
The solution is recognising that there is no "Linux operating system". Stop trying to support all operating systems that use a Linux kernel with just one version of software. Each one could come with different libraries installed, different versions of those libraries, different places to put icon files, and so on.
Pick the operating systems you want to support and the versions you want to support. Build a package for each version of each operating system. One deb for Ubuntu 6.06, a different deb for Ubuntu 7.04, another different deb for Debian 3.1, another deb for Debian 4.0, an rpm for Fedora 9, etc, etc.
Qemu can help a lot with this. Even kqemu is now Free Software, so qemu will be a lot nicer to use in future.
The RIAA homepage needs to be slashdotted, repeatedly, and with no end in sight.
Is this a joke? Somehow I don't think a bunch of nerds throwing packets at the RIAA website is going to help anyone. They're an organisation that deals with other *big* organisations who they already have other communication channels with. They don't need a fucking website. Get real.
Taking up arms against them is also a ridiculously extreme idea. If you want to help remove the RIAA's power, here's a few ideas:
- Learn a musical instrument and join the free culture movement.
- Get a law degree and help out in legal battles against RIAA and any organisation (MPAA, patent trolls, etc.) doing similar things.
- Start an alternative RIAA that protects artists of copylefted music from distributors using DRM on their copylefted music. Sue the DRM distributors for the maximum amount.
- If you feel strongly enough to dedicate a few thousand dollars of your own, launch a copylefted media competition and make the thousands of dollars the prize for the best copylefted film/song/etc. (online film festival, music website, etc.)
I can tell you right now that the patch won't be accepted, not because of the flame-fest but because of what it is. Why would a window manager aiming for simplicity want to let every click be configurable?
Feedback is good, but Linus' "feedback" is equivalent to "I don't like the project goals and I want you to change them."
I think you'll find that "fix it and submit a patch" is a response to defects rather than behavioural or "look and feel" issues. A slightly modified version of that response does still apply to this situation, though: "if you don't like something, change it yourself".
If Linus has a small issue with GNOME that's a deal-breaker but likes the rest of it, nothing is stopping him from compiling his own versions of GNOME to use himself. Perhaps if he tried submitting it as a patch it might even get accepted, but it would be silly for any project to accept all patches with complete disregard of any wider goals that the project might have.
GNOME seems quite focused on simplicity. Surprise, surprise... when you build simple applications you do tend to lose some functionality. If you don't like things this way, I don't see why you wouldn't just use KDE or some other window manager. Linus already uses KDE, so why does he care what GNOME is doing?
MS Paint: The most widely used image editing program in the world. Users can understand how to use it within seconds of seeing it for the first time, but expert users don't like it much.
Adobe Photoshop: The most powerful image editing program in the world. Entire books can be written on how to use it but all of the experts prefer it.
Differently skilled users will prefer different applications.
Exactly. Google are not the police or any other branch of the government, so they shouldn't be deciding for themselves whether sites that display their ads are legal.
That said, if you read their terms & conditions they do actually specify that they don't want their ads on certain types of sites, such as porn sites, sites that may offend people, or sites that may be violating copyright law. I think they should loosen up and allow those sites, though. It's quite limiting because any site that discusses religion, sex or violence runs the risk of offending people.
GPLv3 will be seen by some as a competing license, but it isn't intended as a competing license in the same way as Firefox 2.x isn't intended as a competing browser with Firefox 1.x.
Can you quote the clause in GPLv3 that "stops you modifying network protocols"? It sounds to me like you're a victim of GPLv3-FUD.
Well obviously there isn't any software under GPLv3 since it isn't finished yet. I would expect most projects to move to GPLv3 once it is finished, though.
One thing you seem to be missing is that GPLv3 is intended as a replacement for GPLv2, not a competing license. GPLv2 was meant to be a Free Software license that would ensure Free Software thrived. It worked, but with software patent lawsuits becoming more common as well as hardware that can only run "signed" programs also becoming more common, GPLv2 is not as effective as it once was. GPLv3 is the fixed/patched version.
The only people opposing GPLv3 are Linux kernel developers and a bunch of people who like talking on Slashdot, message boards, mailing lists, but don't really write any code and probably don't even understand GPLv3 properly. Even the kernel developers seem to have misunderstood major parts of GPLv3. Samba developers feel so strongly about it that they've already all agreed to switch to GPLv3 as soon as they can.
When I say "the same license as the majority", I'm counting every Free Software project that uses the "GPLv2 or, at your option, any later version" clause. Then you have some projects that don't even have that clause but still intend to go GPLv3 as soon as it is finished. I don't think you can reasonably argue that the majority of Free Software isn't licensed under one of the GPL licenses.
I used to think that GPL is the only way to go. I share my code, so why shouldn't others using my code (assuming they distribute software) have to share their modifications to it, as well?
Well, I've since found one good use for BSD-like licenses. They're good for situations where what you care about the most is that people are using your code. For example, I think some of the Vorbis code was released under BSD so that companies producing proprietary software would add Vorbis support, hopefully leading to widespread adoption of Vorbis.
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They don't know who the legitimate customers are. If they just hand out keys to everyone and anyone, what was the point of the system in the first place?
The outcome of this case should've been obvious from the very beginning. Of course Google, Yahoo, Microsoft don't have to display his ads. It might be in their interests to display them since he will pay them for it, but why should they have to? He's still allowed to spread his information elsewhere.
"Wahh wahh... Google/Yahoo/Microsoft won't display the ads I want them to."
Copyleft is a better idea. Not only will your work be free for others to share, but anyone who makes a derivative work must also allow others to share alike.
This is evil-genius-style clever.
If Microsoft used the license agreement against Virtual Machines at the same time as releasing their own, they'd get into legal trouble. Legal trouble is a pain in the neck, so what they're doing is saying that "Virtual Machines are a security flaw" and banning them from the operating system. Then, later on, as a complete coincidence Microsoft is going to create "a Virtual Machine that is safe". Luckily for them, the coincidence that they have crafted doesn't involve any competitors!
Symantec are not the problem. Symantec is the partial/flawed solution to a problem that Microsoft hasn't fixed. The problem is so large that there is an entire market created by it.
If you live in the US or Australia, then yes, it is illegal to decrypt the media you bought unless you have permission. You don't seem to care about that because you don't consider it immoral to decrypt something you purchased without permission. I agree with you, but the laws don't, which leads to my question for you...
If you're breaking copyright laws either way, why not just download it instead? I realise some people feel a need to "support those responsible for the art" but those same people (or people they do business with) are responsible for lobbying for these unbalanced copyright laws.
I'd like to remind you that we're dealing with a *pirate*, here. These are the same people who fire their weapons on our ships at sea, kill our children, rape our women, and in this particular case, they were forcing people to either "drink or die".
Remember, kids: There is no crime more serious than copyright infringement. When you infringe copyright, you are possibly stealing from some of the richest organisations in the world. By definition, nothing could be more immoral.
Read this. You might be slightly reassured by the last and second last paragraphs.
This is true, and thanks to copyleft, this is like a stronger version of the public domain. It is still an unfortunate situation, though, because there are many works that may never see the light of day as public domain or as a copylefted work.
We only want one distribution supported. Chances are that if that one works, people will be able to easily get the others working, too.
I don't even care if Dell doesn't ship Linux with their PCs, but there are a couple of specific things I do want:
- I don't want to pay for Windows. I don't want Windows. I want a discount for not picking Windows.
- I don't want to be sold hardware that won't work in Linux. I don't expect Dell to provide "official support" for hardware in Linux, but some sort of promise or indication that they won't knowingly sell hardware incompatible with Linux would be really good.
Concerts and sales/donations. Small artists don't make any money from the current system, anyway. The copyleft system is actually *better* for small artists because they make the same amount of money but have a wider audience.
Money could even come from lawsuits, but instead of suing fans they could sue any company that wraps the copylefted music in DRM.
Actually it can get a little bit easier. How about if you didn't need to click "apply"? Why should I have to click "apply"? I wouldn't have ticked the package if I didn't want to install it!
"Scroll, then click on Install" would be better.
I realise that expert users might want to mark a bunch of packages and then install them all in one go, but perhaps the installation can be backgrounded so that it doesn't affect the UI being used to select packages.
I think the OSX drag-and-drop method really stinks. It's not intuitive at all. I was using OSX for the first time on my girlfriend's laptop a bit over a year ago and couldn't figure out how to install Firefox on it until she told me I had to drag it into the Applications folder. It's easy once you know what to do, but what you have to do is not at all obvious to a first-time user.
How about, you download this file, double click on it, and then a little window pops up with an "Install" button. Once you click it, the installation is done within seconds. Does that sound good? That's the way deb packages work in Ubuntu.
Not buying music isn't enough. If we (geeks who care about this stuff) just did that, the RIAA wouldn't even notice it. We need to compete with the established record companies.
How do we do this? We give "up and coming" artists incentives to copyleft their music:
- Competitions
- Community word of mouth
- Zero-cost web design
- Zero-cost artwork in the form of posters and CDs
- Zero-cost music videos
- Pro bono legal representation against any company that tries to distribute their copylefted music in a DRM distribution channel (there will probably be companies stupid enough to try this!)
- Ability to accept donations via an iTunes competitor that is integrated into our popular media players (eg. Amarok)
I don't disagree with you, but that's why the copyleft movement needs more musicians involved!
The solution is recognising that there is no "Linux operating system". Stop trying to support all operating systems that use a Linux kernel with just one version of software. Each one could come with different libraries installed, different versions of those libraries, different places to put icon files, and so on.
Pick the operating systems you want to support and the versions you want to support. Build a package for each version of each operating system. One deb for Ubuntu 6.06, a different deb for Ubuntu 7.04, another different deb for Debian 3.1, another deb for Debian 4.0, an rpm for Fedora 9, etc, etc.
Qemu can help a lot with this. Even kqemu is now Free Software, so qemu will be a lot nicer to use in future.
The RIAA homepage needs to be slashdotted, repeatedly, and with no end in sight.
Is this a joke? Somehow I don't think a bunch of nerds throwing packets at the RIAA website is going to help anyone. They're an organisation that deals with other *big* organisations who they already have other communication channels with. They don't need a fucking website. Get real.
Taking up arms against them is also a ridiculously extreme idea. If you want to help remove the RIAA's power, here's a few ideas:
- Learn a musical instrument and join the free culture movement.
- Get a law degree and help out in legal battles against RIAA and any organisation (MPAA, patent trolls, etc.) doing similar things.
- Start an alternative RIAA that protects artists of copylefted music from distributors using DRM on their copylefted music. Sue the DRM distributors for the maximum amount.
- If you feel strongly enough to dedicate a few thousand dollars of your own, launch a copylefted media competition and make the thousands of dollars the prize for the best copylefted film/song/etc. (online film festival, music website, etc.)
I can tell you right now that the patch won't be accepted, not because of the flame-fest but because of what it is. Why would a window manager aiming for simplicity want to let every click be configurable?
Feedback is good, but Linus' "feedback" is equivalent to "I don't like the project goals and I want you to change them."
I think you'll find that "fix it and submit a patch" is a response to defects rather than behavioural or "look and feel" issues. A slightly modified version of that response does still apply to this situation, though: "if you don't like something, change it yourself".
If Linus has a small issue with GNOME that's a deal-breaker but likes the rest of it, nothing is stopping him from compiling his own versions of GNOME to use himself. Perhaps if he tried submitting it as a patch it might even get accepted, but it would be silly for any project to accept all patches with complete disregard of any wider goals that the project might have.
GNOME seems quite focused on simplicity. Surprise, surprise... when you build simple applications you do tend to lose some functionality. If you don't like things this way, I don't see why you wouldn't just use KDE or some other window manager. Linus already uses KDE, so why does he care what GNOME is doing?
MS Paint: The most widely used image editing program in the world. Users can understand how to use it within seconds of seeing it for the first time, but expert users don't like it much.
Adobe Photoshop: The most powerful image editing program in the world. Entire books can be written on how to use it but all of the experts prefer it.
Differently skilled users will prefer different applications.
Exactly. Google are not the police or any other branch of the government, so they shouldn't be deciding for themselves whether sites that display their ads are legal.
That said, if you read their terms & conditions they do actually specify that they don't want their ads on certain types of sites, such as porn sites, sites that may offend people, or sites that may be violating copyright law. I think they should loosen up and allow those sites, though. It's quite limiting because any site that discusses religion, sex or violence runs the risk of offending people.
GPLv3 will be seen by some as a competing license, but it isn't intended as a competing license in the same way as Firefox 2.x isn't intended as a competing browser with Firefox 1.x.
Can you quote the clause in GPLv3 that "stops you modifying network protocols"? It sounds to me like you're a victim of GPLv3-FUD.
Well obviously there isn't any software under GPLv3 since it isn't finished yet. I would expect most projects to move to GPLv3 once it is finished, though.
One thing you seem to be missing is that GPLv3 is intended as a replacement for GPLv2, not a competing license. GPLv2 was meant to be a Free Software license that would ensure Free Software thrived. It worked, but with software patent lawsuits becoming more common as well as hardware that can only run "signed" programs also becoming more common, GPLv2 is not as effective as it once was. GPLv3 is the fixed/patched version.
The only people opposing GPLv3 are Linux kernel developers and a bunch of people who like talking on Slashdot, message boards, mailing lists, but don't really write any code and probably don't even understand GPLv3 properly. Even the kernel developers seem to have misunderstood major parts of GPLv3. Samba developers feel so strongly about it that they've already all agreed to switch to GPLv3 as soon as they can.
When I say "the same license as the majority", I'm counting every Free Software project that uses the "GPLv2 or, at your option, any later version" clause. Then you have some projects that don't even have that clause but still intend to go GPLv3 as soon as it is finished. I don't think you can reasonably argue that the majority of Free Software isn't licensed under one of the GPL licenses.
I used to think that GPL is the only way to go. I share my code, so why shouldn't others using my code (assuming they distribute software) have to share their modifications to it, as well?
Well, I've since found one good use for BSD-like licenses. They're good for situations where what you care about the most is that people are using your code. For example, I think some of the Vorbis code was released under BSD so that companies producing proprietary software would add Vorbis support, hopefully leading to widespread adoption of Vorbis.