Linux-Advocacy Digest #683, Volume #32 Wed, 7 Mar 01 03:13:05 EST
Contents:
Re: Patch to Kulkis_Sig_10.1 now ready for downloading (Ray Chason)
Re: Crimosoft will get off scot-free (Tim Hanson)
Re: Do Windows developers settle? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Sometimes, when I run Windows... (Tim Hanson)
Re: GPL Like patents. ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: GPL Like patents. ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: GPL Like patents. ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: GPL Like patents. ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: GPL Like patents. ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Do Windows developers settle? (Donn Miller)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ray Chason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Patch to Kulkis_Sig_10.1 now ready for downloading
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 06:03:27 -0000
Tim Cain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Unfortunately, as is the case with many large monolithic sigs,
>errors do creep in and then propogate from one release to the
>next until somewhere down the line we're standing around the
>terminal, scratching our heads and wondering what the hell the
>damn thing's supposed to mean.
As if we're not already. Those of us who haven't plonked Kooklis,
that is.
--
--------------===============<[ Ray Chason ]>===============--------------
PGP public key at http://www.smart.net/~rchason/pubkey.asc
Delenda est Windoze
------------------------------
From: Tim Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.destroy.microsoft,alt.microsoft.sucks
Subject: Re: Crimosoft will get off scot-free
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 06:05:41 GMT
Bloody Viking wrote:
>
> Tim Hanson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>
> : Allthough I agree with you, I was using Beowolf as an example only.
> : Incidently, the Microsoft clustering solution goes all the way up to
> : (brace yourself) 32 nodes, at only $3,000 per node. You work for
> : government? Want the price on toilet seats?
>
> Even government has limits, believe it or not. With all the cutbacks, NASA was
> driven to take a Slackware album and make Linux Extreme with it. Now, the
> military is another story, with the $1,000 toilet seat. Financially, the DoD
> can afford Windows, but not operationally when ships go Blue Screen Of Dead In
> The Water.
Well folks, my agency just got done sending $120m to Redmond for Windows
Evewywhewe.
>
> : Shooting one's mouth off is something that is not done at Microsoft, in
> : my opinion. I think it is likely that JA is making a play for Congress
> : to limit the use of GPL in federal projects because it can be done with
> : little legislation and, for possibly the last time in the next twenty
> : years, the climate looks good for getting it through.
> :
> : > Microsoft's traditional "crush-kill-destroy" strategy won't work against
> : > GPLware, so now their only recourse is legislation. (Actually, their
> : > "value-added" recourse is still there, as it always has been, but they
> : > apparently have religious qualms against relying on it. It's Capitalism's
> : > greatest shame that a company sitting on a pile of gold the size of MS's has to
> : > compete by destroying the competition directly, rather than actually generating
> : > a better product. I suspect I could have rounded up about 1000 associates and
> : > produced a pretty darn fine suite of products from scratch within a couple of
> : > years, if I had the money that MS spent on marketing alone last year.)
> : >
> : > At any rate, it's certainly in JA's best interest if governments buy MS trash so
> : > he and his cronies can pocket the money, rather than letting those governments
> : > use stuff that they get for free (and often even give back in improved form).
>
> : I work for government and I can tell you that, except for
> : military-industrial, a huge gravy federal contract is the kiss of slow
> : death for an enterprise.
>
> : >
> : > Bobby Bryant
> : > Austin, Texas
>
> : --
> : Johnson's First Law:
> : When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
> : most inconvenient possible time.
>
> --
> FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 100 calories are used up in the course of a mile run.
> The USDA guidelines for dietary fibre is equal to one ounce of sawdust.
> The liver makes the vast majority of the cholesterol in your bloodstream.
--
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Do Windows developers settle?
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 00:12:15 -0600
"Donn Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I have this theory that Win programmers don't really enjoy Win
programming,
> and that they'd be much happier developing on Linux, Solaris, or *BSD.
You
> may be in hell at work, but coming home, it's pure heaven!
I guess that depends entirely on the programmer and on the job at hand.
If I were doing socket programming, i'd prefer Unix, since it's a little
more straight forward, however GUI programming is much easier and straight
forward on Windows than X.
That's one of the reasons I like BeOS, the best of both worlds. A
consistent and easy to program UI, and a strong Unix-like backend. If only
BeOS were more popular, I would program for it full time.
MacOS X holds some benifit here, however, it's infected with Apple API's,
which are an even worse design than X API's.
------------------------------
From: Tim Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sometimes, when I run Windows...
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 06:15:14 GMT
Frank Crawford wrote:
>
> > Besides, UNIX never was on the desktop. Now it is. They haven't succeded
> > in killing off anything, and now with Linux+GNU+GPL, they never will.
>
> I totally agree. Never have I known so many people using unix on a
> desktop. Previously `unix-desktop' meant some sparc nightmare or other, now
> it means linux. And I don't mean just engineers and scientists (like
> myself) I've seen lots people from marketing / product design etc.. using
> linux because of the applications available (e.g. GIMP). Less computer
> lirate people who work in environments where sharing files between
> themselves is their only concern now find the Linux+StarOffice
> combination a `breath of fresh air'.
>
> Unix on a desktop was never very available to people until now.
Unix _anywhere_ was never very available to people until now. I
remember in the late eighties, in my early DOS days, being a little
curious about what it would take to experiment with Unix. You no doubt
know how far that went without a University or employer account. Until
Linus came along, no one could afford the hardware, and no one could
afford the software.
Well, that isn't totally true; FreeBSD was around after it became legal,
but Linux was definitely the groundbreaker.
--
Be security conscious -- National defense is at stake.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: GPL Like patents.
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 00:19:10 -0600
"Roberto Alsina" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:982ug0$2bhn$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > If you statically link code into your program, then your program
contains
> > GPL code. If you dynamically link to GPL code then your program does not
> > contain GPL code.
>
> The program at runtime makes no distinction between statically and
> dynamically linked code. Why should the way it's stored on disk define
> whether they are part of a greater work or not? The GPL doesn't say that
> the way they are stored is meaningful as a litmus test. Neither does the
> law.
And, if this were the case, glibc need not be distributed under LGPL, as it
is. LGPL is a statement that dynamic linking is still making the work part
of the whole, but they are making a special case.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: GPL Like patents.
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 00:24:10 -0600
"Craig Kelley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > That has no foundation whatsoever, you are trying to pull yourself up
from
> > your shoelaces.
>
> Then why did the libstdc++ folks put an exception into their license?
Ahh.. I should have read the whole thread, I just made the same point a few
minutes ago (but with glibc and the LGPL. Making the library LGPL is a
statement that GPLing it would make it unuseable to non-GPL'd code).
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: GPL Like patents.
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 00:28:49 -0600
"mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > <RMS>
> > Static or dynamic linking makes no difference regarding the GPL.
> > Even if the user himself does the linking, it is still the same
regarding
> > ther GPL.
> > </RMS>
>
> I have never seen him say this. Have a URL? It seems counter to the
meaning of
> the GPL. To be honest, I see a lot of "quotes" from RMS that I would like
to
> see in a full context from an authoritative source. I'm not saying anyone
is
> lying, I am just skeptical about the origin of these quotes, many sound
like
> urban legends.
The LGPL would not exist and would not be applied to shared libraries if
dynamic linking were not considered "linking" in general.
glibc could be completely GPL'd without problem if what you said were true,
but it's not... it's LGPL'd. Why?
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: GPL Like patents.
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 00:43:30 -0600
"mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> And I have said many times, the author is not authoritative when it comes
to
> contract law. The GPL is a contract. There are many court cases where the
> "intent" as testified by an author are rejected because the agreed
contract,
> being binding, override the author.
That's true when one party of the contract can be reasonably considered to
not fully understand the intent. The problem is, that when the intent is
clear and reiterated in thousands of places, you can't reasonably say "I
didn't know what the intent was".
Take for instance, the Sun vs MS case over Java. The wording of one
paragraph was at issue, in which it was written:
"Licensee shall confine the names of all VAOPs to names beginning with
"COM.ms" and shall not modify or extend the names of public class or
interface declarations whose names begin with "java", "COM.sun" or their
equivalents."
This can and does parse to read that only the names cannot be modified or
extended, however, the judge agreed with Sun that their intent was to
prevent modification of the interfaces or extension of the names and granted
Sun's injunction based on a likely win based on that intent.
> A contract is a lasting entity. The opinions and objectives of an author
can
> change. The GPL is 10 years old. There is no court which would entertain
legal
> action that wasn't in a clear legal violation of a 10 year old establish
> "standard" contract, regardless of the author's current "intent."
It's not the "current" intent. Since before the current version of the GPL,
RMS has made the intent widely know. This has always been his intent, and
there are public records going back 10 years proving that.
> > Are you dense, or are you not reading? If you disagree, o so, but stop
> > asking the same thing, quoting the same paragraph over and over as if I
> > never answered.
>
> Maybe I am dense, but I am reading. I have been over the GPL for a long
time
> now, and in reading it, I don't see your points as being products of the
GPL.
> Perhaps they are the hear-say of RMS, but his words are not legally
binding.
So what you're saying is that you don't believe the GPL upholds the
requirements that the author of the contract believes it to, and as such,
you feel fully justified in violating the intent of the contract based on
technicality wording.
And you bitch about MS?
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: GPL Like patents.
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2001 01:21:44 -0600
"mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > I don't consider extracting one function out of a program and including
it
> > in mine to be "modifying the program". The original program is intact
and
> > unmodified, I'm merely reusing the code. Of course, that's still
covered
> > under the license.
>
> Yes, here we go this is the fundamental place where I agree with the GPL.
What
> right do you have to take someone's work and incorporate it into your
program?
> None, nada, zip, and you shouldn't. This is EXACTLY what the GPL is for.
One
> function or set of functions can be the core of an entire package, and you
> could be stealing from an author. Think compression, the one compressor
> function is important.
The whole "free as in speech" thing is silly anyways. "Free speech" means
"I have the freedom to express myself verbally or in writing in virtually
any way I see fit, so long as it's not violating the law" (as in libel, or
violating national security). "Free Code" used in the same vain, would be
"I have the freedom to write whatever code I want and expres it in any way I
see fit, so long as it's not violating the law".
Now, let's apply the GPL to written or expressed words. Suppose I write a
book, but claim that anyone that reads my book and later comes up with some
idea inspired by that book must then publish any all future works that might
possibly be considered to have originated from something I write for all the
world to read". Do you think such a book license would hold up in court?
> If you don't like the GPL, DON'T USE GPL CODE. Take the function out of
> Microsoft code.
Ahh, but what about this? I have expanded and completely rewritten the
application which originally used the GPL'd code. Removing the GPL'd code
is not enough, I now have to remove 1 million other lines of code simply
because they were once derived from the GPL'd code.
> > > Listen, this is not unreasonable at all. If someone didn't publish the
> > source,
> > > you wouldn't have it in the first place, so get over it.
> >
> > Not a problem. The problem I have is when someone says "Nay nay, i've
got
> > code, and you can only use it if you agree to be my willing slave, but
the
> > code is free as in speech".
>
> It is not about "willing slave" it is about "using" not "stealing." You
are
> free to use my GPL code in the manner in which I have shared it. You can't
> incorporate my code into your code, UNLESS you make your code GPL or
compensate
> me for my efforts.
Willing slave is quite appropriate. In order to use the code, you have to
give up your rights to any code you write that links to it.
> > It's not. You are requiring that they give up
> > their rights to their own code in order to make use of the "free" code.
>
> No, the GPL defines HOW they can use the code, and what the compensation
is. If
> the compenation is not what they wish to pay, i.e. release their code as
GPL,
> then they are free not to use it.
In other words, they give up their rights to decide exactly how the code
should be used simply because they linked one part of their program to GPL'd
code.
> > That's extortion, and not "free as in speech". Imagine if the US
government
> > said "You can say anything you like, so long as you only speak in public
> > where everyone records your every word". That's not free speech, that's
big
> > brother.
>
> Cute analogy, no relevence, of course, but cute.
It's completely relevant. The GPL says "If you use the GPL" (live in the
GPL country) "You *MUST* never keep any expression secret and must share it
with the world, not matter how insignificant or poor, and if you don't like
it, you can go somewhere else" (move to another country).
> > > That is just stupid thing to say or think. They made LGPL available
for a
> > > reason. Use it if you want, but don't be an idiot and say it is not an
> > option.
> >
> > They made it available because it was the only way they could get people
to
> > use GPL'd compilers. If they have their way, LGPL will go away.
>
> who is "They" and do you have a URL?
"They" is the FSF.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html
"This is a free software license, but not a strong copyleft license, because
it permits linking with non-free modules. It is compatible with the GNU GPL.
We recommend it for special circumstances only."
And further, they link to this:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html
Want to read something else that's rather chilling?
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html
"Copyleft also helps programmers who want to contribute improvements to free
software get permission to do that. These programmers often work for
companies or universities that would do almost anything to get more money. A
programmer may want to contribute her changes to the community, but her
employer may want to turn the changes into a proprietary software product.
When we explain to the employer that it is illegal to distribute the
improved version except as free software, the employer usually decides to
release it as free software rather than throw it away."
RMS is literally condoning, sanctioning, and encouraging the blackmailing of
corporations by their employees into releasing their code as GPL.
> > > Then don't use the code base. It is that simple. If I didn't release
the
> > > source, that would be your only option, so suck it up. I make
something
> > > available for free. If you use it, you must use it by the rules
provided.
> > If
> > > you don't want to deal with the rules, go do it yourself.
> >
> > Sorry, but saying "Accept my terms or bugger off" is *NOT* freedom.
>
> It is, because when it is my code, I say how it is used. Freedom is a
matter of
> perspective. Just because you can't legally walk into a jewelry store and
take
> a ring without paying, does not mean you are not free, it means that the
> jewelry store owner's freedom is protected.
But that's just it. The GPL is designed to preserve the code's freedom, not
YOUR (the programmers) freedom. In your example, if it was claimed that the
jewelry were "free" (as in freedom), what would that mean? The concept of
the GPL can't apply to physical property, but only intellectual property,
since IP doesn't exist physically.
> > > Don't use it. Write your own.
> >
> > No, I don't claim that the GPL is too restrictive. I complain that it
is
> > falsely, and fraudulantely claimed to be "free".
>
> Free as in freedom, not free as in beer.
Duh. I never claimed it was at no cost.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 02:22:11 -0500
From: Donn Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Do Windows developers settle?
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
> I guess that depends entirely on the programmer and on the job at hand.
>
> If I were doing socket programming, i'd prefer Unix, since it's a little
> more straight forward, however GUI programming is much easier and straight
> forward on Windows than X.
I've just started using Cygwin32. It's pretty neat. I opted to install
the man pages, and now I'm in heaven. Of course, man, groff, and less
run really slow because of the unix emulation layer. I imagine Cygwin
has a wrapper around the Windows socket calls, so it may be possible to
use standard nix socket calls on Windows this way. Did you try Cygwin?
It's nice, but sluggish, on Win ME. Don't know what it's like on Win
2000 / NT 4.0.
> That's one of the reasons I like BeOS, the best of both worlds. A
> consistent and easy to program UI, and a strong Unix-like backend. If only
> BeOS were more popular, I would program for it full time.
That's just it: in an ideal world, I'd program for BeOS in a second.
But, it simply isn't popular enough for me to want to use it. And, you
can bet that the job market for Be programmers is even smaller than that
for unix programmers, when you group Linux, BSD, and Solaris. I imagine
Solaris programming jobs are the most numerous, followed by Linux as a
very close second. FreeBSD would be a distant third.
> MacOS X holds some benifit here, however, it's infected with Apple API's,
> which are an even worse design than X API's.
Well, X isn't that bad -- it's just got a lot of detail in it, because
of its "mechanism not policy" philosphy. So, yes, you'd be programming
quite a lot of lines of code just to open a window that writes "Hello,
world!" in the center. And, that's not even taking into account the
code required for WM hints, such as the window title, icon size, icon
file location, etc. Finding the appropriate X toolkit would help. But
then, there's just so many X toolkits, I'd be afraid I'd be investing a
lot of time learning one toolkit, only to find out I like another
better.
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