Business week carrying this story. But it has a couple of snippets missing from the wired report:
1) Its not An alliance of companies, including ITV, Yahoo, Vodafone, Intel and Cisco Systems, warned that...., its an alliance of British companies (and British subsiduries of US companies)
2) The wired article makes no mention of what the actual rules are. From business week: Those rules include limits on hate speech, advertising and the kind of content that can be broadcast to children.
I'm not a big fan of censorship by any stretch of the imagination & I don't particularly support these rules - but I do find wired's reporting of this situation a little skewed (I wonder if wired thinks they'll be effected by this?)
it doesn't make sense for a car company to spend the extra money to add seat belts to a car. it DOES make sense for the insurance company to only insure cars that have seat belts, and therefore compel car companies to add seat belts, because they can't sell cars no one will want to buy if they won't be able to get insurance
what an utterly retarded comment.
it took government regulatory intervention to get seat belts into cars - not free market forces.
the same will be needed for climate change.
(you will note that of course im using your no-capitalization, one idea per paragraph formatting to make you feel comfortable reading this)
I agree with the general gist of your post & realize the challenges that free/open software face.
But, do you really think this is a good way to tackle this particular problem? Someone else in this thread suggested lobbying search engines not to index parked pages - perhaps thats a better approach then joining in?
Sorry, I replied too quickly and didn't understand what you were getting at.
When I said:
Proprietary drivers should never have been allowed to link to the linux kernel - doing so makes them a derivitive (yes, even those drivers that predate the linux kernel).
I meant that a work that links to GPLed software becomes derivitive at the time of linking.
When I use the word derivative (which I have been mispelling), I mean purely in the sense of the GPL. So, if some writes a filesystem (in 1982, under foo license) and later links it to the linux kernel - it must be GPLed & becomes a derived product (just like free, derived can have two meanings)
I understand where your coming from with your example - but it doesn't give any licenses, so doesn't fit with my (admittedly poorly explained) comment.
the author believes that Microsoft will unleash an abundance of next-generation applications that will take everyone by surprise.
No - thats the way Apple works (taking people by surprise with cool new stuff)
Microsoft announces products years in advance in an attempt to stop people buying the competitors products. When MS's software finally arrives, it tends to be..... dissapointing.
people (and I don't mean technology enthusiasts) will continue to purchase Microsoft products simply because of the sheer familiarity and comfort levels (BSoD et al) that they have with Microsoft software.'
No, this should read:
people (and I don't mean technology enthusiasts) will continue to purchase Microsoft products simply because of vendor lock in - they will continue to need to run specialised applications that only exist on the windows platform.
Quotes from the article:
Let's start with Vista. Fine, so it got delayed by a few months.
Gosh, that's the worst mispelling of six years I've ever seen!
Microsoft Office 2007. I don't know the last time I felt so good about a piece of software. It's just superb. While it doesn't have too many earth shattering features,
Thats just the problem - no new features compelling people to upgrade from office 2000 (or 97 for that matter)
Windows Live. The world is going ga-ga over Google Earth but it can never match the clarity that Microsoft's local.live.com has.
The only feature on Live Local I like is the birds eye view - and it doesn't work where I live! (large US cities only). A pity - as virtual earth problaby has better data then google earth, its just that google earth presents it nicer!
Microsoft is working overtime to get its search right. Its indexed search feature in Vista negates the need to install Google Desktop.
Riiiight...just like IE7 will mean no need to install firefox!
Analysis like this presents Google as the only competitor to MS - but the fact is their market is being chipped away from all sides, by a multitude of competitors.
You're the one that seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of not just the legal, but the ethical principles involved in this, and you make it clear when you spout non-sense such as this:
If the kernel were pure GPL in its license terms, the answer...would be: You couldn't link proprietary video drivers into it whether dynamically or statically, and you couldn't link drivers which were proprietary in their license terms.
Maybe I don't understand the legal and ethical questions - but I'm sure Eblen Moglen does.
So what you're saying is using the module interface constitutes a derivative work?
I will save us a good deal of time, by quoting Eblen Moglen (co author of the GPL v2, & General counsel for the FSF & Founder of the Software Freedom Law Center)
If the kernel were pure GPL in its license terms, the answer...would be: You couldn't link proprietary video drivers into it whether dynamically or statically, and you couldn't link drivers which were proprietary in their license terms.
Linux should be *open* to using either. If not than it's not really a "open" tool.
Are you sure about that?
Linux is distributed under a very specific license, that does not allow linking to closed code.
Unfortunately, linus decided to use a different definition of the word 'derivitive' to everyone else & created a grey legal area (and lets face it, its not like anyone is going to press for a GPL violation case involving the linux kernel without linus's support).
The real question is: Should we buy hardware with closed source drivers.
The answer is 'no' - but sometimes market pressure is not enough. It would be better for linus to tell these comapnies that the party is over & allow no more closed source drivers in linux.
"If Linux expects broader vendor support, the community needs to capitulate to proprietary software involvement," said Raven Zachary, an analyst at The 451 Group.
Zachary gets this the wrong way round - instead, he should say:
"If vendors expects broader Linux support, they needs to capitulate to free software needs"
This is (yet) another way Linus has misunderstood a legal, rather then technical challenge (along with GPL v3 & the bitkeeper fiasco).
Proprietary drivers should never have been allowed to link to the linux kernel - doing so makes them a derivitive (yes, even those drivers that predate the linux kernel). Allowing them to link has diluted efforts to create free drivers, diluted the GPL's effectiveness (in the kernel) and allowed Nvidia & ATI to appear to be contributing more then they actually are.
I'm lucky (hah!) enogh to be using a driver from a vendor who shows a little more support for OSS, but while the software is quite stable, the actual hardware is crap (and utterly useless for games).
In an earlier post, I asked you to debate the topic, or conserve bandwidth. I now extend that invitation to you again.
*heh* Someone with your sig asking me to conserve bandwidth?
You're so cute!:-) *ruffles TMM's hair*
Oh - and thanks for your definition of spelt (even the American Heritage Dictionary agrees with my definition). Still I guess you're just aspiring to be a slashdot editor - so its not like spelling's going to be *really* important for you:-)
Glad to see you've got so much time on your hands!
You are so right, I attacked everyone else who responded to that thread!
Gosh it must be hard being as insightful and informative as you are.
Anyway, I've lurked on/. for some time & have noticed your irritating tangentially ontopic comments appearing close to the top of the comments for some time.
As you seem to have no apparant agenda, I presume its because you're unemployed & bored that you post so often to slashdot, including anonymous (with a shallow attempt to cover your writing style) appeals to get yourself employed as an editor (deny it all you like, noone can really confirm or deny an anonymous post)
Lastly, I note the link you provided is currently modded -1 flamebait. I see at least some of the slashdot community agree with me that you're a whiney windows fanboy:-)
(smiley added so you have a chance to grab the joke as it wooshes over your head)
As for me 'flaming' you for a 'simple mistake', exactly which mistake are you referencing?
Which mistake was I referencing? I bolded it for you! (and you have the gall to accuse me of a lack of reading comprehension)requesite
Here's the mistake for you: Disregarding for just a moment what a 'tiny laptop retard' might me.....
Seeing you didn't see the bolding last time, I'll point out you spelt the word "mean" with only half the needed letters (and that was simply the most glaring of a number of errors you made in your post)
WMF: Call me whiney all you like.
TMM: Since that's what you've chosen to call yourself [slashdot.org], I will, thanks.
Cripes! And you tell me that I can't see a joke! (You seem completely bamboozled - do you understand humour?)
Slashdot Mirror
Business week carrying this story. But it has a couple of snippets missing from the wired report:
1) Its not An alliance of companies, including ITV, Yahoo, Vodafone, Intel and Cisco Systems, warned that...., its an alliance of British companies (and British subsiduries of US companies)
2) The wired article makes no mention of what the actual rules are. From business week: Those rules include limits on hate speech, advertising and the kind of content that can be broadcast to children.
I'm not a big fan of censorship by any stretch of the imagination & I don't particularly support these rules - but I do find wired's reporting of this situation a little skewed (I wonder if wired thinks they'll be effected by this?)
It wouldn't - not unless you distributed them together.
it doesn't make sense for a car company to spend the extra money to add seat belts to a car. it DOES make sense for the insurance company to only insure cars that have seat belts, and therefore compel car companies to add seat belts, because they can't sell cars no one will want to buy if they won't be able to get insurance
what an utterly retarded comment.
it took government regulatory intervention to get seat belts into cars - not free market forces.
the same will be needed for climate change.
(you will note that of course im using your no-capitalization, one idea per paragraph formatting to make you feel comfortable reading this)
To argue that merely linking a module to the kernel brings the module under the GPL is patently absurd.
Yes - you also have to distribute.
I agree with the general gist of your post & realize the challenges that free/open software face.
But, do you really think this is a good way to tackle this particular problem? Someone else in this thread suggested lobbying search engines not to index parked pages - perhaps thats a better approach then joining in?
(disclaimer - I'm not sure how practical that is)
Longhorn is the biggest failed project in software development history
What about copland? Vista hasn't failed yet.
Thank god steve came back and saved us!
They did. They called it "Darwin".
Gosh - that is sooooo true - Darwin==OS X and OS X==Darwin.
Anyone who thinks OS X is not open source is insane.
I agree with you completely!!!!!!
Sorry, I replied too quickly and didn't understand what you were getting at.
When I said:I meant that a work that links to GPLed software becomes derivitive at the time of linking.
When I use the word derivative (which I have been mispelling), I mean purely in the sense of the GPL. So, if some writes a filesystem (in 1982, under foo license) and later links it to the linux kernel - it must be GPLed & becomes a derived product (just like free, derived can have two meanings)
I understand where your coming from with your example - but it doesn't give any licenses, so doesn't fit with my (admittedly poorly explained) comment.
Nice to see someone so gentlemanly on /.
Steve Jobs would never use my nickname.... no matter how much he deserves it :-)
the author believes that Microsoft will unleash an abundance of next-generation applications that will take everyone by surprise.
No - thats the way Apple works (taking people by surprise with cool new stuff)
Microsoft announces products years in advance in an attempt to stop people buying the competitors products. When MS's software finally arrives, it tends to be..... dissapointing.
people (and I don't mean technology enthusiasts) will continue to purchase Microsoft products simply because of the sheer familiarity and comfort levels (BSoD et al) that they have with Microsoft software.'
No, this should read:
people (and I don't mean technology enthusiasts) will continue to purchase Microsoft products simply because of vendor lock in - they will continue to need to run specialised applications that only exist on the windows platform.
Quotes from the article:Gosh, that's the worst mispelling of six years I've ever seen!Thats just the problem - no new features compelling people to upgrade from office 2000 (or 97 for that matter)The only feature on Live Local I like is the birds eye view - and it doesn't work where I live! (large US cities only). A pity - as virtual earth problaby has better data then google earth, its just that google earth presents it nicer!Riiiight...just like IE7 will mean no need to install firefox!
Analysis like this presents Google as the only competitor to MS - but the fact is their market is being chipped away from all sides, by a multitude of competitors.
God, he used a simple (rot3) substitution Cipher, with not even a Vigenère keyword and didn't expect it to get broken?
People have been using frequency analysis for over a thousand years to crack substitution ciphers!
Again quoting Eblen Moglen Maybe I don't understand the legal and ethical questions - but I'm sure Eblen Moglen does.
I believe the OP was not referring to me as a Jackass, rather they were referring to the person I was referring to in my sig.
It's [war] always an option, and it's generally a better option than capitulation.
Aaah, spoken like someone who's never served in the armed forces. Nothing like committing someone else to die in a pointless war is there?
(But I DO agree with everything you say!)
I will save us a good deal of time, by quoting Eblen Moglen (co author of the GPL v2, & General counsel for the FSF & Founder of the Software Freedom Law Center)
Looks like I misread your original post - thanks for the clarification.
You're of course completely right - the user can do whatever the hell he likes with any GPLed code.
Linux should be *open* to using either. If not than it's not really a "open" tool.
Are you sure about that?
Linux is distributed under a very specific license, that does not allow linking to closed code.
Unfortunately, linus decided to use a different definition of the word 'derivitive' to everyone else & created a grey legal area (and lets face it, its not like anyone is going to press for a GPL violation case involving the linux kernel without linus's support).
The real question is: Should we buy hardware with closed source drivers.
The answer is 'no' - but sometimes market pressure is not enough. It would be better for linus to tell these comapnies that the party is over & allow no more closed source drivers in linux.
Proprietary drivers should never have been allowed to link to the linux kernel - doing so makes them a derivitive (yes, even those drivers that predate the linux kernel). Allowing them to link has diluted efforts to create free drivers, diluted the GPL's effectiveness (in the kernel) and allowed Nvidia & ATI to appear to be contributing more then they actually are.
I'm lucky (hah!) enogh to be using a driver from a vendor who shows a little more support for OSS, but while the software is quite stable, the actual hardware is crap (and utterly useless for games).
Seriously - is this worth Bruce wasting his time on?
We all know that all the vast majority of high performing websites run Apache on a free unix-like O/S.
Who cares if Microsoft can claim an extra 5%? Do such stats ever influence companies choosing a platform?
In an earlier post, I asked you to debate the topic, or conserve bandwidth. I now extend that invitation to you again.
:-) *ruffles TMM's hair*
:-)
*heh* Someone with your sig asking me to conserve bandwidth?
You're so cute!
Oh - and thanks for your definition of spelt (even the American Heritage Dictionary agrees with my definition). Still I guess you're just aspiring to be a slashdot editor - so its not like spelling's going to be *really* important for you
Glad to see you've got so much time on your hands!
Gee...mabye it is hard to be so insightful and informative...but actually, it's back up to +1 now, pretty much invalidating your argument.
:-)
Well, its -1 now, pretty much invalidating your argument.
You know - you'd think someone using the handle "trip master monkey" wouldn't take themselves so seriously
You are so right, I attacked everyone else who responded to that thread!
/. for some time & have noticed your irritating tangentially ontopic comments appearing close to the top of the comments for some time.
:-)
Gosh it must be hard being as insightful and informative as you are.
Anyway, I've lurked on
As you seem to have no apparant agenda, I presume its because you're unemployed & bored that you post so often to slashdot, including anonymous (with a shallow attempt to cover your writing style) appeals to get yourself employed as an editor (deny it all you like, noone can really confirm or deny an anonymous post)
Lastly, I note the link you provided is currently modded -1 flamebait. I see at least some of the slashdot community agree with me that you're a whiney windows fanboy
(smiley added so you have a chance to grab the joke as it wooshes over your head)
As for me 'flaming' you for a 'simple mistake', exactly which mistake are you referencing?
Which mistake was I referencing? I bolded it for you! (and you have the gall to accuse me of a lack of reading comprehension)requesite
Here's the mistake for you: Disregarding for just a moment what a 'tiny laptop retard' might me.....
Seeing you didn't see the bolding last time, I'll point out you spelt the word "mean" with only half the needed letters (and that was simply the most glaring of a number of errors you made in your post)
WMF: Call me whiney all you like.
TMM: Since that's what you've chosen to call yourself [slashdot.org], I will, thanks.
Cripes! And you tell me that I can't see a joke! (You seem completely bamboozled - do you understand humour?)
Dear God,
There is no problem that Trip Muster Monkey could not make worse.
Do we really need his half-assed offtopic copy/paste barely thought out stream-of-conciousness on the front page?
Bad enough to see it modded up to +5 often enough.