I think that every GPL fanatic should read the article referenced in the parent post: so I'll repost it here. It's too bad that FSF's opinion is different. I would really like to see this resolved in court once and for all. Any takers? Just write a proprietary program and link it to a GPL library. And then wait for FSF to sue you.
Re:The GPL should be a little friendler.
on
Revising the GPL
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· Score: 1
> The libpng library already exists on users' > machines; it is available for other developers to use.
Yes, but only for developers of GPL software. If you use another license, you have to rewrite it. (By the way, I am using libpng only in abstract. The real libpng is not GPL licensed)
> If a company decides not to use it (because they > don't like the terms of the GPL), it is they who > are causing duplication of effort and wasted disk space.
If a company wants to make money selling software (as opposed to support or customizations), it has no choice in the matter. GPL simply does not allow one to make money off the code. So duplication of effort here is inevitable, and, according to Stallman, intentional.
> The whole point of the GPL is to tempt people into > releasing their code freely with the incentive > of access to a vast reservoir of free code
Yes, I realize that. It doesn't appear to be an effective strategy though. It is software companies' business to sell software. It is how they make money. To force them all to switch to providing only support and customization would create expenses such that would dwarf any dubious advantage they might gain from "access to a vast reservoir of free code", most of which is crap anyway. (Just browse through sourceforge dead projects and you'll see what I mean)
> The locks that require code derived from GPL > code to be released under the GPL are the reason > that software developers release their work > under the GPL in the first place.
I doubt it. Most people simply want their code to stay free and accessible, for which the LGPL is a much better choice. Only hardcore socialists like Stallman, who want all software to be worth nothing, gain any advantage from the GPL.
Re:I wish they would define "derivative work" bett
on
Revising the GPL
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· Score: 1
> then offer a GPL-licenced spell checker seperately?
But that is precisely what GPL will not allow! It would fall under the linking category and would therefore be forbidden. Whether the software is sold separately or together makes no difference whatever. And that is why I don't like GPL.
> I find the idea that someone could take my code, modify > or add a few lines of code, then go and sell it
You are thinking of the BSD license. LGPL will not allow you to sell LGPL code itself, but it will allow you to sell a program that uses it. Because the LGPL code you link to is available for free, you won't be able to "add a few lines of code" and sell it for more than $0. You'd have to write something more substantial.
Re:The GPL should be a little friendler.
on
Revising the GPL
·
· Score: 1
> There's no rule that you have to use GPL software. > If you don't want to use someone elses work, you > are free to write it all yourself.
While that is indeed true, that is not the issue. I already know I can license my own code in any way I want. The concern is that by preventing code sharing, the GPL community forces duplication of already existing capabilities. This is not a big problem for the company that has to rewrite, say, libpng, but it is a problem for the user, who now has many copies of libpng wasting his disk space and available memory. If everyone used LGPL instead of GPL for all free code, this problem would not exist, but the free code will still stay free. Think about it.
> Note that most ways of linking applications > together do not trigger GPL clauses.
Re:I wish they would define "derivative work" bett
on
Revising the GPL
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> So the way to tell if your project is a derivative > work or not is to determine whether or not, > without having received permission to distribute > the code at all, distributing your modified > version of the work would constitute copyright infringement.
This is not very helpful either. To give you a concrete example: suppose I take a GPLd spellcheck software, make modifications to it and embed it into my proprietary word processor. Recognizing that the spellcheck code was not originally written by me and that my modifications form only a small portion of the code, I would release the spellcheck module modifications under the GPL as required. But consider the word processor, which is still proprietary. Under the terms of the GPL, the word processor will now be considered a derivative work, even though it only links to the spellcheck module and contains only my own code. (This is indeed the intent of the FSF, as they explicitly state it in their rationale for using GPL for some libraries)
The copyright law does not provide for such a circumstance since it only applies to modifications made to the original work. It is because of situations like this that GPL is called "viral". I would call this theft, since it forces me to adopt GPL for my own code. The usual counterargument of "then don't use GPL code" is fine with me, and therefore I don't use any, but I think the GPL fanatics hurt themselves more than anyone else by this. If they were truly interested in having their code used, they would have licensed it under LGPL.
> Firstly, ask yourself this question - "What are you doing to get one?"
Nope. The right question a geek should be asking is: "What are going to do with her when you get her?" (And let's not mention the obvious; remember, it takes an extraordiary man to even last an hour. What will you do the rest of the time? Show her your Star Wars collection? Right...)
I wish they would define "derivative work" better
on
Revising the GPL
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
In my opinion, most GPL problems are caused by an inadequate definition of the term "derivative work". When the GPL was first written, most applications were entirely monolithic and had few dependencies on other code. These days nearly all large projects are full of components, loaded or linked to in a variety of ways, and the present wording of the GPL prohibits any contact of such nature between GPL and proprietary parts.
The LGPL does allow linking, and I see it as a much fairer license because it lets your code stay open, but does not prevent other people from licensing their own code differently. I think that the OSS community will get considerable benefit by allowing proprietary software to mingle with the free, as it allows the former to gradually convert to the latter rather than in one painful jump as the GPL requires. This way a company can still make money from its software for a while and then release the code when the work is paid for.
The problem with long-lived adventure games is all the loot you find in them. Because players love loot, the game authors usually supply it, and because loot gets collected over time, it has to be regenerated. Because most games also have regenerating money stock in stores, the total amount of money in the game keeps going up, resulting in runaway inflation. This happens in the real world too, as the mercantilist policies of the sixteenth century demonstrated by importing lots of gold and silver from the Americas.
> I once created an "engineer" class that was a combination warrior and mage
Whoo hoo! Brains AND braun in the same person? Aren't you violating the basic law of the common belief system? Before you know it, engineers will start getting laid, and that would really make the world a weird place...
I call myself a C++ programmer not because I am incapable of using another language, but because I would not want to. If someone asks me to write code in another language, I just tell them to give the job to someone else. It's just not worth the hassle. In C++ I have a friendly environment of many years of code upon which I can build; it would take a very long time to duplicate it in another language, so I just don't do it. C++ can do everything anyway, so I don't expect to ever need to.
Battle School made use of a "mind game", an adventure game designed to analyze the mind of its players. You remember it for the "Giant's Drink", which put the player in an unresolvable situation to force adoption of unconventional strategies. It is a much more appropriate analogy in this case, which uses a an FPS game for a similar purpose, except that the skills developed are pertinent to the front-line grunts rather than their commanders. "Less brains, more action" is the future slogan of the American Army.
> You can hem and haw all you want, plenty of skinny > people die from those same maladies,
Like I said before: fat people don't have a monopoly on disease, they simply have more of it than everyone else.
> they neglect themselves as much as the fat person > that suffers the same maladies does.
"Other people do it, so it's ok for me" is never a valid argument. The fact that other people less fat than you may be neglecting their bodies does not excuse your own neglect of yours.
Is it even possible to crack passwords any more? With shadow passwords, you simply can't get the password string to crack, and you can't just brute force at the login prompt, since it waits five seconds between tries. To get/etc/shadow you have to be root anyway, so what's the big deal with creating "non-guessable" passwords? It's not like any hacker would actually try more than a dozen at the login prompt. If he does, he'll just be locked out and reported. If you look at the descriptions of how computers are hacked these days, it's never by guessing passwords. It's usually done through a poorly written web page, where a buffer overflow can get you in (why don't they run the webserver on a chroot?).
> Diabetes, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure ad nasueum can affect anybody.
Sure they can, and I wasn't claiming that only fat people have those defects. Look at it this way: your house can be washed away by a flood in any part of the world, but it is much more likely to happen if you live on the coast of Florida. Likewise, being fat makes you much more predisposed to be unhealthy, even though other people can get sick too.
> I know "in-shape" fat people. They lift and hike and other such physical activities.
No you don't. Being able to walk up a mountain on a paved gentle trail does not make one "in-shape". My 70 year old grandmother can do that. If they were able to run up, that would have been something. I doubt any fat man can do it. And when he tries, he'll definitely suffer.
> A lot of the health problems from being fat in the US come from diet.... including the problem of being fat. Face it. There is no excuse for neglecting your body. You can hem and haw, but in the end only extreme denial can make one believe that being fat isn't a bad thing.
> Most normal people? Man, I can't wait till you life goes south. > In fact, why don't you do us all a favor and put that gun in your mouth NOW.
One of the desirable traits of normal people is our tendency to avoid homicidal thoughts and other similar desires that include wishing everyone who disagrees with our opinions dead.
Except diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and other risks of dying young. Or how about general difficulties of everyday motion, the strain on joints and muscles, and the resulting fatigue? Oh, and did I mention that fat makes you ugly, sweaty, and totally undate-able to most normal people?
In that movie "Catch me if you can", when Frank is in prison, FBI offers him to "Serve out the rest of his sentence as a federal employee" [at the FBI]. My parents, who are both federal employees, had a good [sad, knowing] laugh over this one.
> So what you're saying is, assembler is not code?
Not any more, grandpa!:) Seriously, when you hear someone say "code", he means a high level language source. A modern nontrivial application is VERY hard to figure out by looking at dissassembly output; normal people would not be able to do it at all.
> And the worst part is the tendancy in that situation > to rely on the secret to stay secret, instead of continuing to innovate.
And what incentive would you have to innovate if your competitors just steal your innovations and sell them cheaper because they don't have to pay for the research?
> Thus, when two companies are competing on features, > it is invariably faster to write a new feature from scratch
Not necessarily. It depends on what the "feature" is. If it is just a different dialog layout, sure, it's much easier to do from scratch. It's not much of an invention either. I'm talking about real inventions, like Google's indexing algorithms. If you wanted to duplicate that functionality without seeing their code, you'd have to be as smart as the person who invented them in the first place.
> the first disgruntaled employee to leave your company, and you're screwed.
Well, don't have disgruntled employees! If you treat them well, they'll treat you well. Even now, I doubt this happens all that often, since you can sue this person and possibly even get criminal charges against him, depending on how your NDA was worded.
Good code is not hard to read, and even the worst code is a million times easier to read than the output of a disassembler. So the argument is really not valid at all. If you have some copyable secrets, the only answer is to keep the code closed. Not everyone wants to use the open source development anyway. A company is much more likely to want to only take code from its employees, and so will derive no benefit from opening the code. Back to the drawing board, OSS advocates! Come up with a better argument.
> Is there is a need to have means of rewarding inventors and researchers that include the Pro-Ams
Well, you see, there was a way to do this. It was called money. The way it worked was: you wrote some software, and if anybody wanted to use it, they had to pay you some money to reward you for the great work you did. These days you are supposed to be working for free, or getting funding from benevolent rich people, or making money providing support. What the OSS community has sown, they have reaped. So quit complaining and get back to work!
> It's very difficult to get water to be at 100 degrees > Celcius and at standard temperature simultaneously.
Clearly this argument is outdated. In modern times you can get anything to happen by taking an opinion poll. Make the question: is this water at 100 degrees Celsius or at the standard temperature. Naturally, your results will show about a 48-52% split. Then, because one person's opinion is as good as another's, you will have to declare the issue "controversial" and state for the record that the water is obviously at both temperatures simultaneously. Public opinion can't be wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that every GPL fanatic should read the article referenced in the parent post: so I'll repost it here. It's too bad that FSF's opinion is different. I would really like to see this resolved in court once and for all. Any takers? Just write a proprietary program and link it to a GPL library. And then wait for FSF to sue you.
> The libpng library already exists on users'
> machines; it is available for other developers to use.
Yes, but only for developers of GPL software. If you use another license, you have to rewrite it.
(By the way, I am using libpng only in abstract. The real libpng is not GPL licensed)
> If a company decides not to use it (because they
> don't like the terms of the GPL), it is they who
> are causing duplication of effort and wasted disk space.
If a company wants to make money selling software (as opposed to support or customizations), it has no choice in the matter. GPL simply does not allow one to make money off the code. So duplication of effort here is inevitable, and, according to Stallman, intentional.
> The whole point of the GPL is to tempt people into
> releasing their code freely with the incentive
> of access to a vast reservoir of free code
Yes, I realize that. It doesn't appear to be an effective strategy though. It is software companies' business to sell software. It is how they make money. To force them all to switch to providing only support and customization would create expenses such that would dwarf any dubious advantage they might gain from "access to a vast reservoir of free code", most of which is crap anyway. (Just browse through sourceforge dead projects and you'll see what I mean)
> The locks that require code derived from GPL
> code to be released under the GPL are the reason
> that software developers release their work
> under the GPL in the first place.
I doubt it. Most people simply want their code to stay free and accessible, for which the LGPL is a much better choice. Only hardcore socialists like Stallman, who want all software to be worth nothing, gain any advantage from the GPL.
> then offer a GPL-licenced spell checker seperately?
But that is precisely what GPL will not allow! It would fall under the linking category and would therefore be forbidden. Whether the software is sold separately or together makes no difference whatever. And that is why I don't like GPL.
> I find the idea that someone could take my code, modify
> or add a few lines of code, then go and sell it
You are thinking of the BSD license. LGPL will not allow you to sell LGPL code itself, but it will allow you to sell a program that uses it. Because the LGPL code you link to is available for free, you won't be able to "add a few lines of code" and sell it for more than $0. You'd have to write something more substantial.
> There's no rule that you have to use GPL software.
> If you don't want to use someone elses work, you
> are free to write it all yourself.
While that is indeed true, that is not the issue. I already know I can license my own code in any way I want. The concern is that by preventing code sharing, the GPL community forces duplication of already existing capabilities. This is not a big problem for the company that has to rewrite, say, libpng, but it is a problem for the user, who now has many copies of libpng wasting his disk space and available memory. If everyone used LGPL instead of GPL for all free code, this problem would not exist, but the free code will still stay free. Think about it.
> Note that most ways of linking applications
> together do not trigger GPL clauses.
Yes they do. Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html .
> So the way to tell if your project is a derivative
> work or not is to determine whether or not,
> without having received permission to distribute
> the code at all, distributing your modified
> version of the work would constitute copyright infringement.
This is not very helpful either. To give you a concrete example: suppose I take a GPLd spellcheck software, make modifications to it and embed it into my proprietary word processor. Recognizing that the spellcheck code was not originally written by me and that my modifications form only a small portion of the code, I would release the spellcheck module modifications under the GPL as required. But consider the word processor, which is still proprietary. Under the terms of the GPL, the word processor will now be considered a derivative work, even though it only links to the spellcheck module and contains only my own code. (This is indeed the intent of the FSF, as they explicitly state it in their rationale for using GPL for some libraries)
The copyright law does not provide for such a circumstance since it only applies to modifications made to the original work. It is because of situations like this that GPL is called "viral". I would call this theft, since it forces me to adopt GPL for my own code. The usual counterargument of "then don't use GPL code" is fine with me, and therefore I don't use any, but I think the GPL fanatics hurt themselves more than anyone else by this. If they were truly interested in having their code used, they would have licensed it under LGPL.
> Firstly, ask yourself this question - "What are you doing to get one?"
Nope. The right question a geek should be asking is: "What are going to do with her when you get her?" (And let's not mention the obvious; remember, it takes an extraordiary man to even last an hour. What will you do the rest of the time? Show her your Star Wars collection? Right...)
In my opinion, most GPL problems are caused by an inadequate definition of the term "derivative work". When the GPL was first written, most applications were entirely monolithic and had few dependencies on other code. These days nearly all large projects are full of components, loaded or linked to in a variety of ways, and the present wording of the GPL prohibits any contact of such nature between GPL and proprietary parts.
The LGPL does allow linking, and I see it as a much fairer license because it lets your code stay open, but does not prevent other people from licensing their own code differently. I think that the OSS community will get considerable benefit by allowing proprietary software to mingle with the free, as it allows the former to gradually convert to the latter rather than in one painful jump as the GPL requires. This way a company can still make money from its software for a while and then release the code when the work is paid for.
The problem with long-lived adventure games is all the loot you find in them. Because players love loot, the game authors usually supply it, and because loot gets collected over time, it has to be regenerated. Because most games also have regenerating money stock in stores, the total amount of money in the game keeps going up, resulting in runaway inflation. This happens in the real world too, as the mercantilist policies of the sixteenth century demonstrated by importing lots of gold and silver from the Americas.
> I once created an "engineer" class that was a combination warrior and mage
Whoo hoo! Brains AND braun in the same person? Aren't you violating the basic law of the common belief system? Before you know it, engineers will start getting laid, and that would really make the world a weird place...
I call myself a C++ programmer not because I am incapable of using another language, but because I would not want to. If someone asks me to write code in another language, I just tell them to give the job to someone else. It's just not worth the hassle. In C++ I have a friendly environment of many years of code upon which I can build; it would take a very long time to duplicate it in another language, so I just don't do it. C++ can do everything anyway, so I don't expect to ever need to.
Battle School made use of a "mind game", an adventure game designed to analyze the mind of its players. You remember it for the "Giant's Drink", which put the player in an unresolvable situation to force adoption of unconventional strategies. It is a much more appropriate analogy in this case, which uses a an FPS game for a similar purpose, except that the skills developed are pertinent to the front-line grunts rather than their commanders. "Less brains, more action" is the future slogan of the American Army.
> You can hem and haw all you want, plenty of skinny
> people die from those same maladies,
Like I said before: fat people don't have a monopoly on disease, they simply have more of it than everyone else.
> they neglect themselves as much as the fat person
> that suffers the same maladies does.
"Other people do it, so it's ok for me" is never a valid argument. The fact that other people less fat than you may be neglecting their bodies does not excuse your own neglect of yours.
Every girl in Constantinople
Is in Istanbul, not Constantinople.
So if you're for days in Constantinople
Show me how to get to Istanbul!
Clearly the Stan is a boy, and is, therefore, in Constantinople.
Is it even possible to crack passwords any more? With shadow passwords, you simply can't get the password string to crack, and you can't just brute force at the login prompt, since it waits five seconds between tries. To get /etc/shadow you have to be root anyway, so what's the big deal with creating "non-guessable" passwords? It's not like any hacker would actually try more than a dozen at the login prompt. If he does, he'll just be locked out and reported. If you look at the descriptions of how computers are hacked these days, it's never by guessing passwords. It's usually done through a poorly written web page, where a buffer overflow can get you in (why don't they run the webserver on a chroot?).
> Diabetes, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure ad nasueum can affect anybody.
... including the problem of being fat. Face it. There is no excuse for neglecting your body. You can hem and haw, but in the end only extreme denial can make one believe that being fat isn't a bad thing.
Sure they can, and I wasn't claiming that only fat people have those defects. Look at it this way: your house can be washed away by a flood in any part of the world, but it is much more likely to happen if you live on the coast of Florida. Likewise, being fat makes you much more predisposed to be unhealthy, even though other people can get sick too.
> I know "in-shape" fat people. They lift and hike and other such physical activities.
No you don't. Being able to walk up a mountain on a paved gentle trail does not make one "in-shape". My 70 year old grandmother can do that. If they were able to run up, that would have been something. I doubt any fat man can do it. And when he tries, he'll definitely suffer.
> A lot of the health problems from being fat in the US come from diet.
> Most normal people? Man, I can't wait till you life goes south.
> In fact, why don't you do us all a favor and put that gun in your mouth NOW.
One of the desirable traits of normal people is our tendency to avoid homicidal thoughts and other similar desires that include wishing everyone who disagrees with our opinions dead.
> There is nothing wrong with being fat.
Except diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and other risks of dying young. Or how about general difficulties of everyday motion, the strain on joints and muscles, and the resulting fatigue? Oh, and did I mention that fat makes you ugly, sweaty, and totally undate-able to most normal people?
In that movie "Catch me if you can", when Frank is in prison, FBI offers him to "Serve out the rest of his sentence as a federal employee" [at the FBI]. My parents, who are both federal employees, had a good [sad, knowing] laugh over this one.
> So what you're saying is, assembler is not code?
:) Seriously, when you hear someone say "code", he means a high level language source. A modern nontrivial application is VERY hard to figure out by looking at dissassembly output; normal people would not be able to do it at all.
Not any more, grandpa!
> And the worst part is the tendancy in that situation
> to rely on the secret to stay secret, instead of continuing to innovate.
And what incentive would you have to innovate if your competitors just steal your innovations and sell them cheaper because they don't have to pay for the research?
> Thus, when two companies are competing on features,
> it is invariably faster to write a new feature from scratch
Not necessarily. It depends on what the "feature" is. If it is just a different dialog layout, sure, it's much easier to do from scratch. It's not much of an invention either. I'm talking about real inventions, like Google's indexing algorithms. If you wanted to duplicate that functionality without seeing their code, you'd have to be as smart as the person who invented them in the first place.
> the first disgruntaled employee to leave your company, and you're screwed.
Well, don't have disgruntled employees! If you treat them well, they'll treat you well. Even now, I doubt this happens all that often, since you can sue this person and possibly even get criminal charges against him, depending on how your NDA was worded.
Good code is not hard to read, and even the worst code is a million times easier to read than the output of a disassembler. So the argument is really not valid at all. If you have some copyable secrets, the only answer is to keep the code closed. Not everyone wants to use the open source development anyway. A company is much more likely to want to only take code from its employees, and so will derive no benefit from opening the code. Back to the drawing board, OSS advocates! Come up with a better argument.
> when I see Laura Croft tv commerical, I pay attention. ;)
If you paid attention, you would have known that her name is Lara Croft.
> What planet do you live on where women commit gun crimes?
Venus, of course.
> Is there is a need to have means of rewarding inventors and researchers that include the Pro-Ams
Well, you see, there was a way to do this. It was called money. The way it worked was: you wrote some software, and if anybody wanted to use it, they had to pay you some money to reward you for the great work you did. These days you are supposed to be working for free, or getting funding from benevolent rich people, or making money providing support. What the OSS community has sown, they have reaped. So quit complaining and get back to work!
> It's very difficult to get water to be at 100 degrees
> Celcius and at standard temperature simultaneously.
Clearly this argument is outdated. In modern times you can get anything to happen by taking an opinion poll. Make the question: is this water at 100 degrees Celsius or at the standard temperature. Naturally, your results will show about a 48-52% split. Then, because one person's opinion is as good as another's, you will have to declare the issue "controversial" and state for the record that the water is obviously at both temperatures simultaneously. Public opinion can't be wrong.