Why go to such lengths, when so many of us are giving software away for free? Or by 'our', do you mean Microsoft? It's kind of scary to think that major changes in the legal system are occuring just to improve the profits of a company that's already extremely profitable.
Forget it. This is like a burglar claiming it was okay to break into your house because you didn't have a clear notice prohibiting him from doing so. Oh, and it's up to him to determine whan a notice is 'clear' enough.
Microsoft is essentially claiming ownership of all web content.
Yep. It's like writing a book, getting it copyrighted, and then finding that some bookstore is selling copies that they've modified by inserting extra pages. When you complain, they tell you that you should have included their special "Inserting extra pages is prohibited" dislaimer!
I just can't wait until a web-site owner with a bit of money takes MS to court on this.
Yes. I write software at work, and GPL'd software at home. Here's how it goes:
At work, they never mention my name, or anyone else's, with the product. Generally, the only time I get any feedback is when bugs come in, and they're often assigned in a fairly critical manner. But they pay me a bunch of money.
At home, I work on a project with about six others around the world. We usually get at least one fan email a week. And when people report the inevitable bugs, they're always extremely polite.
We've also been interviewed by an online gaming site. But, alas, the pay, $0, could be better.
IANAL, but I've read a bit about copyrights. They do not protect ideas, but only the expression of ideas. In other words, I'm perfectly free to write my own story about a 'dinosaur park', and M. Crichton can't sue me. But if I use a passage from his book in a story about colonizing mars, he could.
It's strange, but I've been writing software for over a couple decades, and I've yet to hear of anyone or any company getting in trouble by mistakenly using bits of GPL'd code. Unless you blatenly paste in tracts of code including text messages, how would anyone be able to tell?
It really bothers me when someone talks about the GPL this way, as it assumes that the only value in a piece of software is the code itself, rather than the ideas that the code implements.
If I, say, wanted to produce my own commercial, completely closed-source text editor, there's nothing in the GPL that prevents me from studying the Emacs code, 'stealing' its data structures and algorithms, and recoding them.
I didn't mean to come across as an open-source radical, as I'm not. My comment came from my experience with Konqueror and its predecessor, KFM, starting with an Alpha of KDE 1.0. During a 3-year period, it's progressed from a fast but somewhat buggy and feature-poor program to a full-featured browser that now handles some pages that NS 4.7 chokes on.
Ok, so anyone would be free to modify + redistribute the engine (if it was under the GPL)
True. But the publisher could also protect their investment by having the game's plot and puzzles done in a script language. The script could still be closed-source, and distributed in binary as part of the content.
"I only need to teach them when blue screens pop up, or things lock up, press the reset button and start over."
What do you teach them to do when, after pressing 'reset', the machine halts during booting with a complaint about a missing driver or GPF? This has happened to me a couple times with Windows 95, and has resulted in several hair-pulling hours of messy reinstallation, not only of Windows, but of several applications too.
So, my machine with an SB16 sound card, Voodoo3 video, and NE2000 network card crashes all the time because the hardware isn't standard.
Perhaps instead of spending billions on developing and marketing the X-box, Microsoft should put up a 20-line web page with the list of components that will guarantee Windows stability.
Good point. Another thing I've been wondering: Will X-box games be like most Win32 games I've played, in other words, buggy and crash-prone? My impression has been that console games are quite solid, and that's why the big chains are willing to rent them.
The local Blockbuster probably won't be too happy when X-box game renters start calling in with questions about GPF's or stuttering sound. It just won't be worth it to them for the $2-3 they're charging.
I guess I don't see how yet-another-game-console has anything to do with free software. The desktop certainly isn't dead, unless you expect to see secretaries writing documents on an X-box. Of course, it might not be such a bad idea; when you want to delete a word, you aim at it with the joystick and hit the fire button.
Of course, that's an average. A linked list (back before STL) might have just taken a few hours, while a VHDL parser could take several months. But in the end, they all average out to 6 weeks.
I loved that game. The graphics weren't the best, but the humor and AI were great. And (so the author claimed), it never cheated.
As for Egghead, they became real toads for Microsoft around the time Windows95 came out. Now they, like so many others who thought they could profit from an MS world, are all but gone.
As a former OS/2 user, I've got to admit that there was something 'loveable' about that OS that Linux doesn't have. I think it was the consistency of the PM interface, where dragging anything anywhere almost always had the desired effect.
And Galactic Civilizations is the only sim game I've ever liked.
Of course there's no loss of IP. Anyone, even Microsoft, can analyze a piece of GPL'd software and then use the ideas and algorithms in their own products.
Slashdot Mirror
Why go to such lengths, when so many of us are giving software away for free? Or by 'our', do you mean Microsoft? It's kind of scary to think that major changes in the legal system are occuring just to improve the profits of a company that's already extremely profitable.
Microsoft is essentially claiming ownership of all web content.
I just can't wait until a web-site owner with a bit of money takes MS to court on this.
At work, they never mention my name, or anyone else's, with the product. Generally, the only time I get any feedback is when bugs come in, and they're often assigned in a fairly critical manner. But they pay me a bunch of money.
At home, I work on a project with about six others around the world. We usually get at least one fan email a week. And when people report the inevitable bugs, they're always extremely polite. We've also been interviewed by an online gaming site. But, alas, the pay, $0, could be better.
It's strange, but I've been writing software for over a couple decades, and I've yet to hear of anyone or any company getting in trouble by mistakenly using bits of GPL'd code. Unless you blatenly paste in tracts of code including text messages, how would anyone be able to tell?
If I, say, wanted to produce my own commercial, completely closed-source text editor, there's nothing in the GPL that prevents me from studying the Emacs code, 'stealing' its data structures and algorithms, and recoding them.
I didn't mean to come across as an open-source radical, as I'm not. My comment came from my experience with Konqueror and its predecessor, KFM, starting with an Alpha of KDE 1.0. During a 3-year period, it's progressed from a fast but somewhat buggy and feature-poor program to a full-featured browser that now handles some pages that NS 4.7 chokes on.
Except... for those of us who use Konqueror, or other open-source browsers.
Ok, so anyone would be free to modify + redistribute the engine (if it was under the GPL)
True. But the publisher could also protect their investment by having the game's plot and puzzles done in a script language. The script could still be closed-source, and distributed in binary as part of the content.
Wish I'd been smart enough to go to one of those stores when I bought Windows98. I could not get it to install, and CompUSA refuses returns.
What do you teach them to do when, after pressing 'reset', the machine halts during booting with a complaint about a missing driver or GPF? This has happened to me a couple times with Windows 95, and has resulted in several hair-pulling hours of messy reinstallation, not only of Windows, but of several applications too.
Perhaps instead of spending billions on developing and marketing the X-box, Microsoft should put up a 20-line web page with the list of components that will guarantee Windows stability.
Sorry. Bill Gates is one of the major investors, so I thought the 'G' was for him. But you are right; it does represent Geffen.
Note that the 'G' in 'SKG' stands for Gates. Seems a bit ironic that they're using Linux, doesn't it?
What percentage of the market do X-box games hold?
I'd say that someone who ports Linux to X-box, and then buys Loki games to run on it, certainly does count.
The local Blockbuster probably won't be too happy when X-box game renters start calling in with questions about GPF's or stuttering sound. It just won't be worth it to them for the $2-3 they're charging.
...I'd rather think of them as The Weakest Link.
I guess I don't see how yet-another-game-console has anything to do with free software. The desktop certainly isn't dead, unless you expect to see secretaries writing documents on an X-box. Of course, it might not be such a bad idea; when you want to delete a word, you aim at it with the joystick and hit the fire button.
If it weren't for censorship, Dorothy would have known right away that the Wizard was really a fake, and... er, oh, THAT Oz.
...sounds like it might be a good idea. But what if you want to read Slashdot while you're 'working', but your partner wants to read LinuxToday?
Of course, that's an average. A linked list (back before STL) might have just taken a few hours, while a VHDL parser could take several months. But in the end, they all average out to 6 weeks.
As for Egghead, they became real toads for Microsoft around the time Windows95 came out. Now they, like so many others who thought they could profit from an MS world, are all but gone.
And Galactic Civilizations is the only sim game I've ever liked.
They just have to expend the effort to recode it.