Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 2nd Sep 2009 12:41 UTC, submitted by nitsudima
David Chisnall casts a critical eye over the GNU General Public License and asks whether it's done more harm than good for the Free Software movement. "Looking back, has the GPL been a help, or a hindrance? And will it continue to be a help or hindrance in the future?"
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 14:35 UTC
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/11/13 17:07 UTC
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/10/13 23:13 UTC
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/08/13 14:57 UTC
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/07/13 11:40 UTC
This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/04/13 12:45 UTC
Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
Linked by nfeske on 05/31/13 10:12 UTC
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/29/13 16:59 UTC
At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 17:26 UTC
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!More Features »
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The author doesn't like the GPL, but fails to give convincing real world arguments as to why. Instead, he:
- confuses technological limitations with licensing issues. Ex: Apple is moving to clang not because of GPL issues but because it can be used as a library whereas modifying gcc would be very painful. On top of this they want LLVM because of the possibility of compiling to intermediate code and producing machine code on demand on the users' computers (think OpenCL);
- assumes companies are willing to publish changes when that doesn't contibute to their bottom line. They may run away from using GPLed code, but they also take BSD code into their products without giving any credit to the original project whatsoever. In many cases, this credit is more important that actual code;
- talks about how GPL can be circumvented which is totally beside the point. Just because it has flaws, that doesn't mean we have to choose the alternative (making those flaws the rule);
- confuses the FSF's agenda for the GPL with the actual reasoning of the developers for using it. These are completely different views, as proven by the utter failure of the GPLv3.
I don't think the GPL is the end-all be-all of the free software licenses. In fact, I mostly choose the MIT license (an even more permissive license than the BSD) for the code I publish. If it's something small, I don't care much about what people do with it. But if it is something bigger (i.e. something in which I spent more than a couple of hours), I don't want people to go around distributing modified versions without giving me credit and/or letting me see what those changes are (and use them, if I find them useful).
The more permissive licenses give freedom to the code, the GPL protects the developers' rights over their code (while giving mere users all the rights to do whatever they want with it). That's why the GPL is *very* popular, and why there wouldn't be any open source movement if it didn't exist.
Now, did I mention that the GPLv3 doesn't fit this scenario and that's why it is a failure?