"It's hardly sensible to develop open source software in order to provide solutions people don't want."
Its sensible for volunteer programers to provide solutions that they want, if by co-incidence other people also want them then thats great, they get a freebie.
In a capitalist society its exploitation to expect programers to work for free doing something purely for other people. If you pay someone to work on open source then you get to dictate priorities.
One day needy end users and corporations who depend heavily on open source projects are going to realise thats its in their mutual best interests to accept a level of responsibility for the software they use, they will start to understand its not the free beer, its the free speech that makes it good. (But then again, one day the sun will engulf the earth)
Taking responsibility for software doesnt mean just bossing people around, which both individuals and groups of corporations tend to do a lot of.
The buisness world is on a very good wicket. They are getting us to make the tools they use to enslave us.
Just becasue something is free as in beer doesnt mean it is devoid of all responsability from the users behalf.
If a company's buisness model is dependent on free software then its in their companies best itnerest to be very generous to the programers who maintain the software they require.
It sounds like the GPL v3.0 is trying to make the commercial world a little bit more responsable.
Developers have their own community within the broader FOSS community, we need to discuss the ethics and technical merit of our tools, licensing and the products we develop for users.
Users need a community to discuss and clarify what they need and feed this information back to developers in the form of CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, bug reports, maybe even some volentary financial support for developers.
The user community can see the internals of the deceloper community, and cant understand what the developers are going on about or why, this should be expected, they are users, not developers.
My advice to users who complain about the way developers achieve their idealistic goals is to go away (notice i said it politely) and concentrate on doing something positive for the user community.
Stop trying to undermine the developer community, if you win you have nothing.
So many companies will never give a crap about ethics, about the philosophy behind Free software, to them its all about getting something for nothing.
Free software is good because developer equality creates strong communities.
Quite often companies wont afford their employees time to integrate their work with the community, this minimises the contributions the company can make to the community.
Free software is a long term benefit, this causes a conflict of interest with buisness as they are usually not capable of looking further than 3 months ahead.
Many individuals who release software under the GPL dont have the resources to defend it, so the license is practically meaningless.
If you are considering using the GPL you should seriously consider assigning copyright to the FSF, they have the resources to defend it.
If you want to stand up to corporations choose a non commercial license.
If you want higher quality software choose a free software licence.
Determining if something is a derivative work or not has to be determined on a case by case basis as there is no clear legal definition that applies broadly.
The test above is in the above post is about as good as you will get.
Determining if its a derivative work cannot be done mechanicaly, its has to be done by a person, so it would be naive to try and beat the system by putting useless code in there that makes a feeble attempt to be independent of the GPL.
The "best tool for the job" depends on the timeframe your looking at.
In the short term the easiest method is the best tool for the job as you cant justify overheads of learning a new tool.
In the long term retooling costs are insignificant and the best tool for the job may even involve making a custom tool for yourself.
Software Freedom enables long term solution, plans to be made in regard to maintenace and development to ensure long availablility and reliability.
Closed source software is a consumable, its not reusable, its long term maitanance and reliability is beyond your control, its nothing more than a short term solution.
Free Software should be seen as a form of infrastructure that indirectly benefits all of society.
There are two shops, shop A sells a product for $2, shop B sells the same product for $3.
If i buy the product from shop A for $2, i am depriving shop owner B of a $1 profit.
This "free market" thing is a driving force of capitalism, its what drives innovation.
The music idustry is a cartel/monopoly and the free market doesnt exist, there is no choice. It is duty of government to protect consumers against such corporate abuse.
The music/movie industry has no ethics, they are screwing consumers for all they can get. While they are screwing us they are telling us to be nice to them.
Your getting screwed and liking it, dont expect others to be so stupid.
Copyright violation (unauthorised sharing via p2p) isnt stealing, its a different law.
Why is it legal to take someone photograph without their permission, but illegal to duplicate that photograph without the photographers permission.
Face it there is nothing moral or ethical about current copyright laws. Its about taking as much money from consumers and artists and giving it to the middleman.
Slashdot Mirror
And you have open source drivers for the SD card reader ?
It says it uses SD storage, that almost guarantees there wont be open source drivers.
Usually SD slots can be used with open mmc cards.
Poor choice of storage...
"It's hardly sensible to develop open source software in order to provide solutions people don't want."
Its sensible for volunteer programers to provide solutions that they want, if by co-incidence other people also want them then thats great, they get a freebie.
In a capitalist society its exploitation to expect programers to work for free doing something purely for other people. If you pay someone to work on open source then you get to dictate priorities.
One day needy end users and corporations who depend heavily on open source projects are going to realise thats its in their mutual best interests to accept a level of responsibility for the software they use, they will start to understand its not the free beer, its the free speech that makes it good. (But then again, one day the sun will engulf the earth)
Taking responsibility for software doesnt mean just bossing people around, which both individuals and groups of corporations tend to do a lot of.
Less talk more code.
And if you were financially contributing to the developers in question they might give a crap what you think they should be doing.
If you havent noticed, open source software doesnt exist just to give you what you want.
s/embrace open source/embrace other peoples open source/
5 years ago people speculated that the best way for microsoft to compete would to bring out there own distribution.
If you cant beat them (or buy them all), join them.
MS has definetly entered a new phase, looks like they realise we are a formidable competitor.
Perhaps in a few years they will embrace open source.... 5 years too late.
No, they kill them in the the name of science, they need acurate scentific data to keep the whales healthy.
The scentific process involves
1) Kill all the whales to determine how old they are.
2) Cart the whale meat thousands of miles back to the mainland
3) Prepare the whale meat for scientific analysis by cunsumers in restaraunts.
A clueless newbie should never consider there OS to be secure, they dont have the knowledge to make a judgement on it.
Maybe a lot of the demographic this distro is targeting doesnt even know what root is.
Plus, there is a saying (from the *BSD folk i think) "without physical security there is no security"
Get a bit of perspective, you need knowldege to have security, its not just a configuration issue.
We arent that desperate.
We shouldnt need to use "product placement" style advertising to demonstrate the usefullness of FOSS software.
If companies that use free software are more profitable then market forces will decide.
If companies try and avoid using FOSS because it encourages competition then its only a matter of time before they crumble.
"These companies are the brightest hope for Free Software."
How much source code have they released ?
The buisness world is on a very good wicket. They are getting us to make the tools they use to enslave us.
Just becasue something is free as in beer doesnt mean it is devoid of all responsability from the users behalf.
If a company's buisness model is dependent on free software then its in their companies best itnerest to be very generous to the programers who maintain the software they require.
It sounds like the GPL v3.0 is trying to make the commercial world a little bit more responsable.
Developers have different goals to users.
Developers have their own community within the broader FOSS community, we need to discuss the ethics and technical merit of our tools, licensing and the products we develop for users.
Users need a community to discuss and clarify what they need and feed this information back to developers in the form of CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, bug reports, maybe even some volentary financial support for developers.
The user community can see the internals of the deceloper community, and cant understand what the developers are going on about or why, this should be expected, they are users, not developers.
My advice to users who complain about the way developers achieve their idealistic goals is to go away (notice i said it politely) and concentrate on doing something positive for the user community.
Stop trying to undermine the developer community, if you win you have nothing.
Do you mean quite often there is less bloat ?
You could have just said "less bloat"
"you have failed to define a 'derived' work in a way that ..."
No copyright holder has the right to define what is or isnt 'derived'.
A court will consider wether its 'derived' on a case by case basis.
A Copyright holder may agree to never enforce their license to the full letter of the law, which in effect gives licencee's a fuzy legal position.
How does the GPLs stand up to corporations ?
So many companies will never give a crap about ethics, about the philosophy behind Free software, to them its all about getting something for nothing.
Free software is good because developer equality creates strong communities.
Quite often companies wont afford their employees time to integrate their work with the community, this minimises the contributions the company can make to the community.
Free software is a long term benefit, this causes a conflict of interest with buisness as they are usually not capable of looking further than 3 months ahead.
Many individuals who release software under the GPL dont have the resources to defend it, so the license is practically meaningless.
If you are considering using the GPL you should seriously consider assigning copyright to the FSF, they have the resources to defend it.
If you want to stand up to corporations choose a non commercial license.
If you want higher quality software choose a free software licence.
Determining if something is a derivative work or not has to be determined on a case by case basis as there is no clear legal definition that applies broadly.
The test above is in the above post is about as good as you will get.
Determining if its a derivative work cannot be done mechanicaly, its has to be done by a person, so it would be naive to try and beat the system by putting useless code in there that makes a feeble attempt to be independent of the GPL.
The "best tool for the job" depends on the timeframe your looking at.
In the short term the easiest method is the best tool for the job as you cant justify overheads of learning a new tool.
In the long term retooling costs are insignificant and the best tool for the job may even involve making a custom tool for yourself.
Software Freedom enables long term solution, plans to be made in regard to maintenace and development to ensure long availablility and reliability.
Closed source software is a consumable, its not reusable, its long term maitanance and reliability is beyond your control, its nothing more than a short term solution.
Free Software should be seen as a form of infrastructure that indirectly benefits all of society.
"Unlawful" according to which sides laws ?
Hi koody, in response to one of your earlier posts (cant reply to it now).
Have you modified the firmware on your hub ?
E-mail me, perhaps we can work on it together, update a few things.
Pull the platters of hard disk drives and make wind chimes.
The torrent link at knopper.net links to the provided bitorrent url.
"I work for musicians...they don't get paid anywhere near the amounts people think they do"
Thats because the record company is taking most of the profits, musiciians are just a cash for for the record companies.
If musicians choose to be exploited by record companies then there is not much consumers can do to help them.
There are two shops, shop A sells a product for $2, shop B sells the same product for $3.
If i buy the product from shop A for $2, i am depriving shop owner B of a $1 profit.
This "free market" thing is a driving force of capitalism, its what drives innovation.
The music idustry is a cartel/monopoly and the free market doesnt exist, there is no choice. It is duty of government to protect consumers against such corporate abuse.
The music/movie industry has no ethics, they are screwing consumers for all they can get. While they are screwing us they are telling us to be nice to them.
Your getting screwed and liking it, dont expect others to be so stupid.
Copyright violation (unauthorised sharing via p2p) isnt stealing, its a different law.
Why is it legal to take someone photograph without their permission, but illegal to duplicate that photograph without the photographers permission.
Face it there is nothing moral or ethical about current copyright laws. Its about taking as much money from consumers and artists and giving it to the middleman.
Its immoral to obey an unjust law.
It makes it hard to appreciate when you can only get 1 fps.