zuzu said:
I love your passion for open source. I love open source too.
*BOOOP* *BOOOP* i think we're passing the buoy horns announcing
we're leaving ruby topic waters... ;-)
zuzu wrote:
[snip]
users have a right to understand the code they are running.
[snip]
What specific code do they have the right to understand? All code? I
want to have that "right to understand" too! Where can I obtain it?
i hesitate to offer an absolute, but for now i will say all code
running on computing hardware you own. you can obtain it by
exercising your right in doing so.
I wish that were true but the law would disagree with you.
Possession != lawful ownership (car thieves realize this when they're
pulled over by the cops--imagine the judge listening to thieves argument
about exercising their "right" to take possesion of the car). They
illustrate what happens to people that go thru life insisting they are
right and the law is wrong.
Sadly, most software is LICENSED and not actually SOLD. When consumers
BUY products, they have been GRANTED OWNERSHIP. When consumers LICENSE
products, their rights are restricted to those in the LICENSE AGREEMENT.
The good news is that if consumers don't like the LICENSE they can
choose not to buy the product. Better news is that if consumers could
not see the license before purchasing (like shrinkwrap) they can receive
a refund.
rights are supposidly innate, not granted by law. for example, the
american bill of rights does not grant rights, but defines which
rights the government may not legislate against.
however, in practice, rights are defined by the process of exercising them.
Perhaps your definition of "rights" is different from mine. In the
context of OWNERSHIP, a "right" means "legal claim" which means to
"lawfully own" something.
If you meant something other than "legal claim" when using the term
"right" then the conversation was silly because we're talking about
different things.
I suspect by "right" you probably mean "choice". We can "choose" to do
anything we want but that can lead to a dramatic loss of future choices
if we go to jail/prison for ignoring the law. Car thieves "choose" to
drive other people's cars but they don't have a "right" or "legal claim"
to those cars so they end up in jail.
the ability for the human mind to learn is defined by biological
hardware (the brain). in fact the biological purpose of the brain is
to learn to adapt to its environment faster than the dna that composed
it can. read 'the human use of human beings' by norbert wiener,
'cosmos' by carl sagan, and 'age of spiritual machines' by ray
kurzweil for starters.
no, but statistically the developer's best interest for the code to
improve, adapt, and extend (aka evolve) by presenting the code "as
simply as possible, but no simpler".
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EinsteinPrinciple
neither, a license is not a contract.
http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/
That articles proves my point.
More correctly, a license is not a contract IF AND ONLY IF there is no
exchange of obligations.
Traditional licenses had no exchange of values--rights were granted with
nothing expected in return--so they weren't a contract. The article
simply argues that the GPL fits that description.
But most other software licenses DO NOT fit that description because
they require certain things "in consideration" for granting certain
rights to the licensee.
article: "A contract, on the other hand, is an exchange of obligations,
either of promises for promises or of promises of future performance for
present performance or payment. The idea that 'licenses' to use patents
or copyrights must be contracts is an artifact of twentieth-century
practice, in which licensors offered an exchange of promises with users:
'We will give you a copy of our copyrighted work,' in essence, 'if you
pay us and promise to enter into certain obligations concerning the
work.' With respect to software, those obligations by users include
promises not to decompile or reverse-engineer the software, and not to
transfer the software."
....
"The GPL, however, is a true copyright license: a unilateral permission,
in which no obligations are reciprocally required by the licensor."
The article clearly states that software licenses that require certain
obligations from users are in fact contracts.
So if the license does not specifically "grant ownership" of the
software to the user, the user is not the lawful owner of the software.
To make this abundantely clear, most commercial software license
agreements explicitely state something like:
"The SOFTWARE is licensed, not sold. AUTHOR reserves all rights not
expressly granted to you in this EULA. "
[snip]
(and ironically, the GPL proves that most
people do not, in fact, steal licensed code.)
[snip]
How does GPL prove this? I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying
to understand how the GPL proves that fact.
foremost, i mis-stated "steal", as theft denotes denial of use. i
meant license infringement, as i wrote for the rest of that email.
that said, GPL as an *example* statistically seems to support my
proposed hypothesis.
I reread the GPL and I couldn't find any statistical data comparing
number of people who steal vs comply with licensed code. All it contains
is a bunch of terms and conditions--no quantifiable data on theft.
again, not the GPL itself. i made a personal observation comparing
the total volume of code under the GPL license available on the
internet compared to number of accusations of GPL infringement as
reported by the slashdot(.org) news aggregator, whose content
specifically covers such matters. with reasonable certainty, if
anyone with web access has observed a GPL infringement, that
observation will be reported on slashdot.
People would have to find out about infringement before making
accusations. Also, people who find out might not be willing to make the
accusation because it's their employer or they fear a slander/libel lawsuit.
i find this statement asinine.
I think many people will find many statements in this thread very asinine.
"how can a thimble be a landlord?"
LOL.
sure. tools are amoral. humans choose how they are used and for what purpose.
of course not. however, by rule of law, some human activities are
deemed illegal within the boundaries of jurisdiction.
So you agree that obfuscation can have practical purposes other than
"oppression to support a monopoly"?
