When reading about this proposal the only thing that can justify it is scamming investors out of their money.
First of all this internet-packet-routing-like way of transporting goods would work only if almost every town in America had rail passing through it, or at least very near it, which isn't the case. Secondly if such a rail network were to be constructed it would pay off to just have it electrified and use these carts without a battery. Until that day what rail needs is maintenance, expansion and usage, not these silicon valley pipe dreams.
A lot of towns used to have rail service with spur lines or short lines. A lot of those have been turned into bike or walking trails. Good luck ever getting those back to their original use; re-provisioning rail service to these places will mean acquiring and clearing new routes.
I'm not sure if this is true everywhere, but I lived in a town with a "rail trail" and my understanding was that the railroad company was renting the land to the town, and could put it back into use whenever they wanted.
This decision is incredibly coherent with the fact that tracking can be done in many ways other than with cookies. Your residential IP doesn't change that much and Google keeps track of it. Google can track your navigation through websites and associate it to your google account or shadow account just by seeing if you downloaded one of their fonts through said websites.
So bravo to the Munich court for actually upholding rules against opt-out third party tracking
I might be mistaken, but at least in Europe (but I believe it's the same case for the US) reverse engineering proprietary software in order to fix critical bugs, add necessary features or port it somewhere else out of necessity is allowed, provided you don't share the modified program. Of course being able to share your fixes would be great, but in a sense Software Right to Repair already exists and is in a much better shape that the Hardware's one
The problem is that most people who would need and benefit of those changes don't have the time or skill to make them themselves. So being able to share and distribute the modified version is an absolute bare minimum for the right to repair.
Hiring your own people to branch and maintain the software for your own purposes is not "distribution". If you're a company relying on software you don't own, and you need it to do something different, you can hire coders to maintain it in your direction. That's totally different from reselling it.
No, I don't think so. If the company has the right to edit the code, then it can contract that out. If someone paid the company to clone or use the code, that would be distribution.
However, when the organization transfers copies to other organizations or individuals, that is distribution. In particular, providing copies to contractors for use off-site is distribution.
For use off-site. Hiring a programmer off-site to maintain it isn't "use". Giving it to someone to use in
a productive way in furtherance of your business or in exchange for money would be "use".
Distribution matters because it triggers legal consequences--you need a license to distribute. The FSF can't rewrite the law. So they can't say "doing X is distribution" and then claim that doing X requires a license.
So whether the FSF calls something distribution in their own FAQ is irrelevant, unless the FSF is your lawyer and giving you legal advice.
Quite. Being allowed to fix the OS yourself, but not share the result, is like being allowed to fix your car yourself, but being forbidden to set up business as a mechanic-for-hire.
I used to be able to fix a Morris Minor; but I wouldn't dream of trying to fix anything but the bodywork on a modern car.
Sorry, what farmer has the ability to repair a design problem in an engine? In reality the vast majority of fixes are just temporary patches using materials that quickly degrade and need to be constantly replaced.
In the EU it sounds like the modifications allowed are limited to "within its intended purpose", which could block some modifications, although it would be hard to discover modifications you made locally without sharing them.
It also sounds like in the US the modifications allowed are only for circumventing DRM, and only for interoperability, not for adding features or fixing bugs.
This is true in America as well. You stated it exactly. The recipient of a binary or a set of scripts who has a right to use them in production also has a right to repair them, just not to distribute them.
I don't understand what contract law has to do with this case. I was actually mildly alarmed to hear that they think using GPL software somehow enters them into a contract. If I read it correctly. That could become quite nasty and be very bad for FOSS if a court upheld the idea, since it's often corporations relying on FOSS and not the other way around.
The article clearly states that the GPL is both a license and a contract:
But many lawyers have advised us that contract law is a useful parallel avenue. This approach has the advantage of empowering users of the software who are not necessarily copyright holders. The mantra of “the GPL is not a contract” is a mistruth that has been so often repeated that it became widely accepted and typically unchallenged. (We expect you'll hear this theory repeated even more loudly now that the our Vizio lawsuit brought the question to the forefront in a federal court case.) Yet, prominent legal experts outside of FOSS social circles have long scoffed at the assertion. Indeed, case law in the USA has held the opposite. In multiple cases, courts have been convinced, specifically, that the GPL operates as both a contract and a copyright license. The law appears clear on this, and this is among the reasons why we believe our motion to remand will succeed. In short, we'll say it plainly here and now for everyone: the GPL operates both as a copyright license and as a contract; litigation can proceed under either of those legal theories. Our motion to remand in the Vizio case explains the legal details as to why that's true.
The article asserts that in their opinion, it's a valid legal theory that GPL constitutes a contract. One hopes the courts will put a limit to what that "contract" entitles the users of GPL software to sue coders for.
Agreed with the second part, hopefully users of GPL software would only be able to sue for GPL violation and only be able to obtain GPL compliance, rather than damages of any kind. Also, at least with GPLv3 there are some ways to get the license back by coming into compliance.
They are absolutely looking to create precedent on the "third-party beneficiary of the GPL" idea, which will be great for users of GPL software if it happens.
As IANAL, I'm unable to judge if the cases they cite in the motion back up the "GPL is a contract too" idea though.
I think we're on the same page, as I'm no fan of allowing intermediaries to copyright something that was copied left. But the idea that a third or even a second party can treat GPL as a contract ... doesn't that potentially create enormous liability for the creators of the original code? I mean I guess "as is" is plain enough, but...
After Log4J this was the first thing that jumped at me, not the anticapitalist argument.
The case is simply about giving a second way for GPL compliance to be enforced. The copyright holders (the original authors or probably their employers) have always been able to enforce the GPL against violators, but when a large portion of the electronics industry is violating the GPL on Linux, it becomes infeasible to enforce it against every company, so outsourcing that enforcement to people actually affected by that GPL violation, and possibly even opens up GPL enforcement via class actions, which makes things much more even again. I don't think the creators of the original code would have any liability and anyway as the original authors who chose the GPL as a license, they probably know how to comply with it and are already in compliance.
In Europe, I understand it as only legal to reverse engineer to fix bugs, thats it.
Now Copyright is a bit more difficult, because the process of reverse engineering code to fix a bug can also mean copyright can be discovered, ie learning how something works, like a driver for some hardware to work in an operating system or app.
You are allowed to add necessary features or port the software as well. Of course, what counts as a "necessary feature" is always up to debate, but if you for example own a software that only runs on Microsoft DOS and you want to port it to Windows 10, that's allowed.
Also, as far as copyright/patents are concerned those aren't a Problem with reverse engineering. If you reverse engineering something and you then discover copyrighted code while fixing a bug that's not a problem. Knowing of that code is not copying it.
If you were to copy that code or use knowledge you gained by reverse engineering to build your own product that would be an issue though.
I dont think I've ever sold software, just a licence to use said software, so I think my old dos programs will be safe.
> If you were to copy that code or use knowledge you gained by reverse engineering to build your own product that would be an issue though.
And thats the hard part, how do you prove a thought process existed before you had your thought confirmed by seeing it used in some code that you are reverse engineering? Even if I had written such thought down, proving the date & time on the piece of paper isnt back dated is also tricky.
> In Europe, I understand it as only legal to reverse engineer to fix bugs, thats it.
Yep. AIUI doing such things as reverse-engineering to analyze malware (or to detect otherwise malicious behavior, such as breaches of GDPR) is not permitted.
It's not something you can learn in a fortnight. You first have to learn C and Assembly for the architecture you're using, then you need to study how different OSs on different hardware manage to make themselves boot and then you need to use this knowledge to study the SoC's documentation and implement the stuff there. If documentation were perfect maybe you'd only need to know how to program and simply follow the specification, but in these cases experience with a large number of cases is a must to navigate the environment.
Could you please explain to me the logical link between the scientific evidence that alchol is harmful in any quantity and the concepts of "having fun" and being a "slave to society"? Let's also overlook your dogwhistle regarding "eating the bugs"
If you don't want your children to be molested via the internet don't give your children access to the internet, end of story. You'd never let your 10yo child hang out at the skater park because the moment you are not there present someone might abduct him, but letting your child create accounts on every social media imaginable and giving him unfiltered access to the network is somehow acceptable and the rest of the world should suffer because of it?
Children don't need to own smartphones, computers or internet access, just like they don't need to listen to death metal or watch gore movies. Those things will come with time and maturity and your lack of parenting is never going to excuse the government snooping on everything I do
I agree with this, but this is something that needs to be done on the societal level. Doing this individually will be nearly impossible without impacting the social life of the child involved, which no parent wants to do.
I think the vast majority of people agree that unrestricted screens and online communication are bad for kids, so I think this idea could get pretty widespread support. It shouldn't be the norm that a 10yo has an iPhone.
It's like giving them a Land Rover instead of a Hot Wheels. But of course, the Hot Wheels of phones doesn't exist right now. Maybe it should. A smartphone dedicated for children, which can only install a small number of safe apps?
Teach them to read real books, on paper, by real authors. Given them lots of unstructured time in nature with other children, with a watchful parent nearby (this requires investment of a parents' time, but I can't think of a better investment).
Sorry, mine wasn't a plain boomer rant, there are plenty of "real" books I would never let my child read. Most classics are very mature and talk very vividly about violence, death, sex and atrocities. Children should be exposed to nuanced stuff that isn't dumbed down, it's just that these nuanced things should be in the realm of a child, leaving the more mature stuff to older people. A book talking about the friendship between two children in a complex way is cool and good, a book talking about the friendship between two drug addicts might be more suitable to someone who knows a bit more about life.
How about we replace these shitty, indecent, saddening middle-low tier restaurants with canteens? I go to a restaurant to feel served and cared after, if you can't provide that feeling of welcomeness you should downgrade all the way and just become an automated buffet with pastic chairs and plastic dishes so people can have a warm meal for pennies and do everything by themselves.
yes, let's route billions of people through Tor when we are already scraping by on bandwidth because exit nodes get shut down left and right. and no, the companies themselves shouldn't set up exit nodes to expand the network because then they would still know everyone's IP address and could give that info to the police. either the Tor network gets reinforced on a completely independent basis or nothing
you are protected from infection only if you have a huge number of antibodies since they can immediately overpower the virus when it gets in. when the antibodies are few and the virus comes in you have to wait for the trained t-cells to produce enough of them to again overpower the virus, so you get sick for a short time and then get better.
of course the quality of a vaccine determines how quickly and effectively the dormant t-cells are able to produce antibodies, so a very very very good vaccine can even protect from infection years after inoculation, and that's why the CDC has recently asked for more research in order to produce these kind of vaccines for the long term
I wouldn't even call it "very very very good vaccine". It's just a different problem each vaccine has to solve. Some problems are inherently harder: flu, coronavirus, hiv
Interesting point I heard about why we don’t (yet) have a vaccine for HIV where we do for COVID - the human body can fight COVID. Ie we mount an immune response and some people survive and recover on their own. This is largely not true with HIV - the human body hasalmost no ability to mount its own response.
Making a vaccine is more straightforward (ie we expect to be able to) when we know there is a response by our own immune systems - hence we expected to be able to make a COVID vaccine (although the time scale is still an amazing accomplishment - thanks 20+ years of mRNA research!). And we are still working on a vaccine for HIV.
I know, but with the technology we are able to employ nowadays I think it's reasonable to push for vaccines that protect people for 20 years like the one for hepatitis. Hell, now we can even think about curing cancer with mRNA, I think a strong flu/corona virus might be within our limits
Compiling your own software is a really humbling experience. When it takes way more time to compile a browser than a full fledged OS or you find out that seemingly simple programs need to pull a mind boggling amount of dependencies you really start to question the state of the software world
I think the main reason browsers are so extremely slow to compile is the heavy templating.
But, I agree, I can compile my entire OS including user-space software and desktop environments in about the same time it takes to compile chrome.
Which is scary.
But then again, people want it to do everything (WebUSB, WebGL etc; etc; etc;). So it stands to reason that it's inherently complicated and difficult to compile.
I wonder if the high iteration time hampers development...
> I returned to Microsoft as a Program Manager on the Edge team in mid-2018, unaware that replatforming atop Chromium was even a possibility until the day before I started. Just before I began, a lead sent me a 27 page PDF file containing the Edge-on-Chromium proposal. “What do you think?” he asked. I had a lot of thoughts (most of the form “OMG, yes!“) but one thing I told everyone who would listen is that we would never be able to keep up without having a cloud-compilation system akin to Goma.
Maybe you already know, but in case not or someone else needs this:
try with --no-install-recommends, it skips a lot of bs.
I don't recall exactly what it was, but I remember installing something like a tiny library and it wanted to also install mysql-server or something like that >_<
Why is that not good advice for a novice too? I do this by reflex every time I install Debian or Ubuntu, and to my experience it did not create a situation that needed "expertise in apt".
Gentoo was fun, too bad I don’t have time for it anymore. I used to go for nice walks when Firefox was compiling. Great opportunity to go outside and take a break.
USE flags in Gentoo also allows for a much more configurable system.
First of all this internet-packet-routing-like way of transporting goods would work only if almost every town in America had rail passing through it, or at least very near it, which isn't the case. Secondly if such a rail network were to be constructed it would pay off to just have it electrified and use these carts without a battery. Until that day what rail needs is maintenance, expansion and usage, not these silicon valley pipe dreams.