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Slashback GNU is Not Unix Operating Systems BSD

Slashback: Forbes, VoIP, Firefly 341

Posted by timothy from the ny-niece-could-beat-up-your-niece dept.
Sit back, read Slashback. Tonight, (another) revision to the "Hidden Agenda" collegiate games contest, torrent files for the new Mandrake release, and the by turns heated-and-cool responses to Forbes' unfriendly description of the FSF -- for attempting to protect their copyrights -- as Linux's "hit men." Read on below for the details.

Hey, this approach works for the New York Post ... digidave writes "The fallout from Dan's Linux's Hit Men article on Forbes.com has pushed Forbes.com into putting up a discussion board, where Dan [Lyons] has posted his response"

And unmadindu writes "FSF's Bradley Kuhn has responded to the Forbes article ( reported earlier at Slashdot). Read the short, but to-the-point response at Linux Today." Kuhn's response is remarkable in its restraint.

Reader Waldo Jaquith sent the text of Lyon's first posting; an excerpt serves to illustrate its tone:

"Of course the Free Software Foundation is entitled to enforce its GNU General Public License (GPL), just as other organizations are entitled to enforce their copyrights and licenses. My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux. By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."

Some of the postings in response are very impressive; I especially like this one.

Dragonfly Forum Logs are scintillating reading. drdink writes "SlashNET would like to thank Matthew Dillon and everyone who attended the Dragonfly BSD Q&A forum session. Logs are available both in text and HTML formats."

You get to keep your base. Stealthgirl writes "The Hidden Agenda Game Development Contest, which received quite a bit of interest but also a lot of flak for its IP rules, has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot. Check out this post for more info." Up to the entrants to decide if they like the rules of any contest, of course.

Leech friendly, with public Mandrake 9.2 torrents. An anonymous reader writes "Public torrents for the first two of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs are up (I and II). Anybody cares to share the third?"

Sir? It's reality calling, on line two, from Anywhere. Marcelo Rodriguez (gardel on Slashdot), editor of Voxilla.com, writes: "We've posted the complete text of Federal Judge Mike Davis' ruling in Vonage v. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Voxilla.com. ... It's pretty much a slam dunk for Vonage and VoIP. Judge Davis wrote that Congress mandates that 'that information services such as those provided by Vonage must not be regulated by state law.' He also wrote that 'State regulation would effectively decimate Congress's mandate that the Internet remain unfettered by regulation.'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slashback: Forbes, VoIP, Firefly More

Slashback: Forbes, VoIP, Firefly

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  • DragonFly != Firefly... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Teancom ( 13486 ) <david&gnuconsulting,com> on Thursday October 16, 2003 @08:00PM (#7235324) Homepage
    And thus my hopes for "Firefly taken up by SciFi" are dashed...

    On the other hand, how stupid do you have to be to get you hopes up based on a /. headline?!??!?
    • WTF!!! My god, I saw Firefly, and I was thinking, the series was coming back. lame Lame LAME! Atleast FireFly is coming to the BigScreen. So at least we can enjoy the series..

      Also, Dragonfly seems only good for older hardware, not sure why I'd use it over FreeBSD.
    • Damn it. You'd think that the community that probably loved the show the most could at lease get when to use Firefly, and when to use DragonFly!
    • Yeah, I got tricked by the headline too.

      Firefly wasn't THAT good though, they couldn't even afford the sound effects to make the
      spaceships sound like spaceships. ;-)

      Whedon really cheaped-out after Buffy.
      • Firefly wasn't THAT good though, they couldn't even afford the sound effects to make the spaceships sound like spaceships. ;-)
        And how should space ships sound like, anyways? `Whooshing sounds', like made in `Star Wars' ?

        (Remember, space tends to be devoid of air, which is a very popular medium for the propagation of sound ...)

    • Right there with you, actually.

      DVD due out on December 9th. Includes the 3 unaired episodes, and a buttload of commentaries, extra bits, even the gag reel.
  • Here I thought I'd learn something about Firefly the TV show...
    • Seeing as how they original posting dropped the ball on Joss Whedon's Firefly, here's some info for you:

      The TV show is being released on DVD, including the unaired episodes. I'm looking forward to that.

      Joss is working on a script for a Firefly Movie. It's still in the early stages, so it's still speculation if and when it might actually show up.

  • Dammit (Score:2)

    by Teese ( 89081 )
    Where's my promised Firefly [fireflyfans.net] content?

  • Mandrake Torrent Links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zelet ( 515452 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @08:05PM (#7235360) Journal
    Disk 1 [emptylogic.com]
    Disk 2 [lagalot.com]
    and Disk 3 [lagalot.com]

  • GPL == Communism, and I like it that way (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Thursday October 16, 2003 @08:09PM (#7235390) Journal
    Despite DashingLeech's long, yet vapid, response to the article claiming that Linux is somehow cheaper than BSD and that Lyons didn't conduct a cost/benefit analysis, he misses the essential point.

    Linux is Free Software.

    This is misread by almost everyone in the business community and seriously almost everyone in the OSS community. Even the originator of the concept doesn't fully grasp the depth of the statement as he has become one of the proponents of what I call "the Free Software Lie". The Lie is that the "Free" in Free Software is freedom for the developer. It is NOT.

    The Freedom referred to in Free Software is freedom for the software under the GPL. Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.

    It is precisely unfit for business for exactly the things that Lyons says in his article. Companies can't imprison or hide the software and remain in the good graces of the GPL and copyright law. If you want a license that grants developers rights, then stick with the BSD (UnFree) license. If you care about the Freedom of Software, then go with the GPL.

    • Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.

      Please see "exploit [reference.com]". As inigo would say, I do not think that word means what you think it means.

      I think what you really mean is appropriate [reference.com].

    • Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense.

      Please go read Selling Free Software [gnu.org].

      It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.

      Company's aren't people, so there is no "personal gain".

      It is precisely unfit for business...

      Don't tell IBM and RedHat that. They seem to doing a very fit business with GPLed code.

    • Because of the license, the Software has gained Freedom from being exploited in a commercial sense. It is Free from the possibility of being exploited for personal gain of a company.

      I work as a contractor teaching RHCEs for Red Hat, based on Red Hat Linux, which is mostly Open Source Software (I think Pine's still included in the current release). I wouldn't use the word exploited (its correct, but has negative connotations) but Red Hat gains from Open Source software (they also give a lot too, but that's
      • You mean you are motivated to promote F/OSS for something less than tens of billions of dollars?!

        Not only does Mr. Lyons mischaracterize the value of software; but he then goes on to claim that the FSF appropriates that value. We all appropriate that value, not just the FSF. That's the whole friggin' point.

        Mr. Lyons also overlooks the obvious: if you don't like free software, don't use it. No one's holding a gun to your head. Use non-free software, and benefit from the rich ecosystem which characteriz
    • Yes, if you are in the bussiness of selling software to _third parties_, of course you can't 100% free ride on everyone elses works under the GPL and keep everything secret.

      If that's your case, you should either ship the full sources, modularize your code (so you don't need to ship GPL code for your clients) or pay for a non-GPL version of the code, which many companies do.

      If you are not redistributing, you could do whatever you want with the GPL code. And no, it's not comunism, if I code under the GPL, I
    • Open source software is not unfit for business. It is unfit for being the thing that differentiates your buisiness from everyone else. However in the task of performing you primary business you will find need to do all sorts of tasks that support your business but aren't what makes it special. You will need to maintain payroll, and inventory systems. You will need to provide software, printing services, internet, and shared file locations to your workers so they can be more productive. You will have to have
    • Argh, not the "communism" analogy again. This loaded term has a lot of bad associations for much of the public, and it's an unfortunately an epithet that is getting effectively tossed out often by anti-Open-Source people.

      In suggesting that it doesn't apply to software in the sense that you're using it, please consider that the de-facto property rights for entity X don't get eliminated under communism, the just get shifted to the Communist Party.

      I think the notion you're conveying would be more well-rec
    • Here's another long, vapid response for you.

      Despite DashingLeech's long, yet vapid, response...

      I can honestly say I've never been described as vapid before. My approach was to respond to a poor business argument in a manner that business people, like Mr. Lyons and his readers, would understand. Cost/benefit analyses are important for making these types of choices, and Mr. Lyons seems to have overlooked it. (Sure, it's a dull subject for non-business people, but I wouldn't call it vapid.)

      ...claimi

    • Using the GPL and LGPL on software is for extremely selfish, greedy, and capitalistic reasons. It means the author retains control over the software, while still letting people use it. Others cannot modify the and sell the software without the original author having the ability to see those modifications. But the original author retains the right to do anything with the software, including making closed-source modifications and selling them! In fact the GPL could be a very powerful way for a corporation to

    • No. The GPL doesn't protect the users' rights, it protects the developers' rights. I know this is contrary to both the FSF's line and RMS's fervent belief. With all due respect, they're wrong, too.

      If I'm a developer I will choose the license of my software based on whether (a) I want to make money from it, and (b) whether I want anyone else to make money from it. That last point is something that a lot of the "BSD good, GPL evil" folks don't get. If I want to give code away as a gift, I may not want someo

    • Of course the GPL gives developers 'freedom', namely the freedom to see and modify the source of the software on which they base their work. The cost of that 'freedom' is simply that it be available to the next developer who comes along to base his/her work on that by the current developer.

      Your point correctly applies to the very first developer who started to write code from scratch, but what percentage of current FOSS code falls in this category?

      And saying GPL == Communism is nonsense. Software, and mor
    • From my perspective the GPL is not communism at all. As a developer I view it as a totally capitalistic endeavor.

      I sell/license my product and I charge exactly what I want. You, as the consumer, choose to purchase it for the price/terms under which I sell it.

      I have never understood equating the GPL with communism.
  • FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product.

    Not always - people still will buy boxed software and services from open source companies, and this seems to be working out quite nicely. Companies like Red Hat and Lindows seem to be doing quite a nice job of keeping their software within the GPL's terms and still profitable. Granted, it's not a model that would work for everything - I can't see something like Half-Life becoming open source, because nobody
    • Half life would work great under the GPL. People buy half life for the models, graphics, sounds, etc. These don't have to be GPL'd. Quake, and Quake 2 engines are GPLd
      • ONLY once all licensees had an opportunity to produce their product and bring it to market. Only then, once ID Software has released their product and enjoyed the profits Copyright provides them, and all their engine licensees have enjoyed their profits, do they release the engine to the public domain under the GPL.
      • true, but on the other hand, the moment they released quake and quake2, there was such a huge influx of cheating, that it pretty much killed the left over communities... plus dont forget that you dont see id releasing quake3 or doom3's source... they only released quake and quake2 because they dont see that they will be making any respectable amount of money off of it anymore...

        sure, there were some really cool versions released like tenabrea etc.

        if done correctly it *might* be lucritive, but from an onl
        • true, but on the other hand, the moment they released quake and quake2, there was such a huge influx of cheating, that it pretty much killed the left over communities... plus dont forget that you dont see id releasing quake3 or doom3's source... they only released quake and quake2 because they dont see that they will be making any respectable amount of money off of it anymore...

          I've noticed that Id tends to release the source to an engine a year or two after releasing a new engine to third party developer

  • Bad Press == Good Press (Score:4, Funny)

    by JohnFluxx ( 413620 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @08:20PM (#7235494)
    So let me get this straight...

    Forbes posts an article that is highly controversial and incorrect, and in return they get a huge number of people rushing to their site?
    Doesn't exactly discourage posting such articles...
    I look to the future for "Why Bill Gates such be knighted" and "Is Linus Trovalds actually a pseudo-name for a drug-running FBI-sponsored company?"

  • Like IBM, they write software to facilitate the sales of their hardware. That's where their money is made.

    Unlike IBM, they are being pretty sleazy about this. They understand the GPL very well, they know exactly what they are doing. I've spoken at length with members of the development and managment teams about it on other products. I'd feel different if this were and oversite but they know exactly what they are doing. They are stealing code and then what's even worse, they are putting the companies

  • Mandrake 9.2 Disk 1 of 3 [gunny.org]
    Mandrake 9.2 Disk 2 of 3 [lagalot.com]
    Mandrake 9.2 Disk 3 of 3 [gunny.org]

    MD5SUMS are as follows:
    40c8812dce7b9f8fb0a3b364af62b974 MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk1of3.i586.iso
    e07fe7b1474eb 3ba35cac3dfd479777e MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk2of3.i586.iso
    2b6ffc5957533 c927f14197ec99a0372 MandrakeLinux-9.2_disk3of3.i586.iso

  • Lyon's Response (Score:3, Informative)

    by hoeferbe ( 168081 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @08:30PM (#7235567)

    The article didn't have it, but here is Dan Lyon's response [forbes.com] to the outcry about his column.

    • He quite obviously still doesn't get it, does he? I don't know, I can barely hack together two lines of Python, but it doesn't seem that difficult to me.

      What in the name of goodness do you do with these idiots?

    • But some people question the wisdom of this policy

      Any idea whom he is refering to?

      Darl , BillG, McNealy or Cheney?

  • Public mdk 9.2 torrents: eating our own young. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DenialS ( 21305 ) on Thursday October 16, 2003 @08:32PM (#7235591) Homepage Journal
    I admit that I'm disappointed with the evident glee that some of my peers appear to be taking in posting public torrents for Mandrake 9.2. Mandrake is a company that has contributed a great deal to the open source community, but it is a company that must pay wages to living, breathing people. They made two small changes to their release process for 9.2 to try to ensure that those people continue to be able to put food on their table and contribute more skill and knowledge to our community:
    • Sponsored ads during install and preset bookmarks
    • Delay availability of the 9.2 release to all but MandrakeClub members and Mandrake developers / translators

    As a member of MandrakeClub for the past year, with a renewal for the next year, I have ponied up and contributed US$120 towards the continued survival of Mandrake the company--and by extension, those who eke out a living contributing to and pulling together this excellent product.

    In addition, I have submitted bug reports, contributed to the technical support forums, and tried (unsuccessfully, alas) to contribute an rpm to the Mandrake contribs.

    It bothers me that some of my peers clearly don't respect the approach that Mandrake has taken to attempt to supplement its meagre revenue. Some of the attitude, I assume, is an adoption of the "The net sees censorship as damage, and routes around it" perspective. I would argue that prematurely sharing the Mandrake 9.2 release images is a misapplication of that perspective. Delaying the release of the 9.2 images is a reward for those who contributed directly to the latest release, and the images will be made officially available to everyone else in a matter of weeks.

    There is one case that merits consideration. In the same way that Red Hat chose leading Linux developers to receive shares of its IPO years back (ah the good old days), there are undoubtedly many developers whose code is being used and distributed by Mandrake. It would be nice if Mandrake also invited those developers to access the early 9.2 torrents--although with so many packages, tracking all of the developers and ensuring that they have authorized IDs might require an entire company in itself.

    Some of it is pure selfishness, in the manner of a child's tantrum: "I want this free, and I want it NOW!"

    I suspect some of the attitude is also a simple fascination with the ability to adopt technical measures to overcome business policy. While setting up a BitTorrent offers a bit of a gee-whiz factor, I predict that overcoming Mandrake's business policy by removing one of their two means of increasing revenues will have one of two effects, neither one particularly pleasant:

    1. Mandrake will increase the use of sponsored ads and bookmarks, making their presence more invasive (imagine your OpenOffice assistant rendered as a Bawls Guarana beverage, offering an additional tip linking to the Bawls site every time you invoke help) and harder to overcome
    2. Mandrake will give up trying to produce a commercial product, stop paying its developers, and one more source of open source innovation will dwindle away. Aggressive adoption of the first tactic might eventually lead to this outcome as well, as users tire of ads in their face.

    So I'm asking everyone out there sharing unofficial Mandrake 9.2 ISOs: please consider the larger ramifications of your actions. In isolation, what you're doing might not seem all that important--but when you're posting (and publicizing, and taking advantage of) torrents on Slashdot, your actions will have a detrimental effect on the company that's making the very distribution you're so keenly sharing.

    And that distribution simply might not be available to share in the future...

    • On the face of it what you say seems quite reasonable.

      However, I can't help feel it's missing the point. If Mandrake want to try and survive by simply selling boxed CDs of Free software, good luck to them. Most other vendors (SuSE, RH et al) have long since come to the conclusion that that's a mug's game. The money is in support, customisation, extension, integration (and buzzword implementation in general). I'm sure Mandrake's an excellent distro (though from what I've read on 9.2 so far doesn't appe

    • Personally I want to try Mandrake 9.2 out, but don't have the money to pay for mandrakeclub. Of course I will be fair and wait for official public release.
    • 60 bucks a year to keep current, you would through a fit, wouldn't you?
  • I tried to go to the Forbes site, but I got some strange cyclical redirection. Sort of auto-slashdotting.

    It turned out that you have to enable Javascript in your browser, otherwise you will just follow the cyclical redirections.

    It's a shame that some sites are so clueless about coding so they don't work without javascript being turned on.
  • has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot [slashdot.org]

    Ohmygosh, I'm famous! Now I have something to brag about to the ladies. I'll have to beat them off with a stick!

    [scurries off to add "driving force behind rules change for programming contest" and "subject of slashback" to resume]

  • Which is more evil, hiddenagenda.com or www.hiddenagenda.org [hiddenagenda.org]? The game designers seek to design games in which imaginary people are killed; Hidden Agenda the band write songs in which both real and imaginary people are killed. Advantage: Hidden Agenda.org.

    Besides, I doubt anyone in the game design contest ever recorded songs like "Kurt Cobain is Dead and I Wish It Were You" [hiddenagenda.org], "England's Plastic Rose" [hiddenagenda.org], "Attack of the Giant Space Hippies" [hiddenagenda.org], or "Proud to be The Great Satan" [hiddenagenda.org].
  • BillG: "None of the security problems recently affected people who had their software up to date..."

    Oh. You mean how my laptop, despite having the latest security patches, managed to contract the Qhosts Trojan? You know, the one that exploits the flaw that Microsoft didn't totally fix in Internet Explorer? Thanks, Bill. I had fun removing that one.

    Glad to know I wasn't affected because I was up to date on my patches. You put my mind at ease.
  • "By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."

    This is absolutely correct. Code where the source is freely available has a value that approaches zero very quickly. The only people who pay for Linux code, for instance, are those who are too impatient to download it, and then pay for the cds. Everyone else downloads it for free.
    • This is absolutely correct. Code where the source is freely available has a value that approaches zero very quickly.

      Nonsense. You are making the implicit assertion that the only value in the world with any sort of utility is monetary value, i.e. alienated labor value, value composed of autonomous capital.

      TO ME, and I am of course much of what matters to me, the value of Linux and other free software is very great indeed, though I have never "paid" for any of it. Much of this value comes from the fact tha
  • license. ;-)

    Linksys made a decision. The article doesn't seem to take that into account. Obviously the GLP'ed code had more value to them then the rest of the available options. They decided to steal the code and should be held accountable.

  • And the point is?? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by moocat2 ( 445256 )
    My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux.

    That is an interesting but very myopic comment. One could just as easily say that the pardoxical effect of charging money may be to impede the adoption of Windows.

    But no with half a brain would ever make that point. The goal of a corporation is to make profit and adoption of their software is simply a means to an end.

    And my experience with my friends who license w
    • I guess I have half a brain.

      Sure, charging money would impede adoption but it has to be done from a business standpoint.
      I would also submit that piracy has helped MS more than it has hurt.

      I agree with Mr. Lyons, though the view is not popular.
      The FSF goals is to rid the world of proprietary software no? The GPL was designed for this to take hold.
      Moves like this by the FSF will scare businesses away, that may not matter to the average linux user, but it matters to the FSF.
      I think they should have waited un
    • Hmm. Interesting. However, if the goal of using the GPL is to invoke change, but that selfsame change discourages people from using your software, then what have you won? It's something like building a perfect village and then having aggressive rules to enforce that perfection. Would people move there? Is it still utopia if it has no citizens?
    • I don't normally correct spelling unless I have something do go with it, but this is such a corner case I might as well.

      And my experience with my friends who license with GPL is that their goal is to affect a social change in how software is used and distributed.

      You actually want effect, not affect. Despite what schools teach, both can be used as verbs. Affect means "to modify", whereas effect means "to bring about" or "to cause", as in a change.
  • "My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux."

    Doesn't matter. The point of the FSF is not to further the adoption of Linux. The point of the FSF is to make sure Free Software stays Free. They're doing what's right, not what's popular. They don't care about any software's adoption, they care about protecting the rights of the creators. Microsoft's method of "charging money" for Windows 2003 Server impedes its ado
    • This is a very interesting point. The question remains however, about what happens when nobody uses the free software, because of the license that keeps it free?

      I know, people use Linux. A lot. However, his point suggests that the FSF might cause Linux to remain a hobbiest OS, by and large.
    • great comment. You should write Forbes.

  • The rebuttal completely misses the point. The point of the Forbes article is that the software written using GPL has a market value of near $0, since anyone can download it for free (as in beer) and compile it themselves. That's why you don't see many sw companies writing OSS. The ones that do are usually selling hardware as their primary income (Apple, Sun, and even Linksys). Linksys could probably release all their modified code and probably still make money as the rebuttal insists, but it will make it ea
  • Of course Forbes is entitled to ask any price they want for their magazine, just as other organizations are entitled to charge for their publications. I'd simply point out that the paradoxical effect of this "reading tax" may be to impede Forbe's circulation and reduce the number of readers exposed to their capitalist ideology.

    Doug Moen

  • What if we replaced "Linux" with "Windows" in the Forbes article. By making that change (and a few others), we get this article [duke.edu]

    A sample:

    For several months, officials from the Microsoft Licensing Department have been quietly pushing Cisco and Broadcom for a resolution. According to Microsoft Licensing Department Executive Director Bradley Kuhn, the foundation is demanding that Cisco and Broadcom either a) rip out all the Microsoft code in the router and use some other operating system, or b) make the

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