What is Digg?48 Comments
- paradexes, on 08/14/2008, -1/+34This is great news!!!
- ViperCTW, on 08/14/2008, -1/+16It's amazing it took this long to happen
- tapo, on 08/14/2008, -1/+15Well, probably the way they always react. They believe that the ideal solution is to live in an environment free of copyright, where everyone can share information. They consider copyleft a 'hack' of copyright, to achieve their desired results because they can't change the system.
I may not agree with them that IP is bad, but they're not hypocrites. - Angostura, on 08/14/2008, -8/+19"Copyleft" has got to be one of the most annoying, and least useful terms ever coined. It also confuses the issue by suggesting that the issues surrounding the enforcement of open source licenses are somehow different to copyright issues. They aren't. Open source relies on copyright and the ability to license in just the same way as any other copyrighted work.
- oneoverzero, on 08/14/2008, -1/+10Why the hell have a cake for any purpose other that to eat it?
- wyrdness, on 08/14/2008, -1/+9Since they're the ones who write and use these 'copyleft' software licences, I'd imagine that they'd be delighted.
- wuwei2k2, on 08/14/2008, -0/+7This is great! But the real core of the story is how the nice open-source developers won in the end against someone stealing their code, making money off it AND THEN stabbing them in the back!
Congratulations to the open source team and project! (I am glad that nice guys can finish first.) - phaedrusnz, on 08/14/2008, -1/+8copyleft is a very useful term... it immediately shows that you use copyright law for the good of your community rather than the good of yourself. there has never been any confusion about the fact that copyleft is a specific way of applying copyright law to actually give rights rather than restrictions. it also predates the term 'open source' by a good 20 years. open source is just a name that is meant to be more business friendly as businesses often don't like either sense of the word free... that they don't charge money for something or that the consumer has freedom to use something as they wish.
- ArthurSucks, on 08/14/2008, -0/+6***** copyrights? I think you've misunderstood. A open source license or a Creative Common Copyright is an improvement to traditional copyright. It is optional for the copyright holder.
- AgmLauncher, on 08/14/2008, -1/+6And what the hell does your rant have to do with the article?
- wyrdness, on 08/14/2008, -0/+5You're correct. The appeal court overturned the decision of the lower court and ruled that a violation of the license is copyright infringement, not a breach of contract.
- Meep3D, on 08/14/2008, -1/+6Moved from the post below because it's too early in the morning to use digg's comment system...
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Yes, because we all know that closed source commercial licensing* is such a benefit to your company. You should pay _them_ to use the software. Oh wait...
* Dongles, phone home, licensing servers, per-machine vs per-instance, multi cpu etc etc - Epistaxis, on 08/14/2008, -4/+9I wonder how this will be taken by the portion of free-software-ists who hate the idea of intellectual property.
- phaedrusnz, on 08/14/2008, -1/+6applying copyright law to proprietary software is not evil... it is producing proprietary software that is evil. there are plenty of people who put in huge amounts of work to create software, and sell it to 'put food on their tables' - some of these people do it by creating free software and deserve respect, while others create proprietary software and don't - regardless of the fact that copyright laws are meant to apply to both of them evenly.
ps. intellectual property is a term invented specifically to obfuscate issues surrounding copyright law, patent law and trademark law. these are all completely disparate concepts... and none of them actually apply to property as such, in that copying something doesn't affect the original property/CD/digital source code file, copying a process or concept doesn't affect your ability to use the same process and in no way affects any physical object and trademark law is just a way of assigning names so you know that what you are buying is what you bought last week when buying something with the same name. regardless of your views on the individual laws, they aren't a single concept and they aren't actually property. - maninalift, on 08/14/2008, -1/+5I totally agree. However it did provide a catchy term, that led to quite a lot of publicity. Along with open cola.
- trogdoor, on 08/14/2008, -1/+5I.T. departments can do whatever they want with copyleft software as long as it stays in house, the restrictions only apply if you distribute the software. Google for instance has tons of proprietary derivative works of copyleft software which they use internally.
- fourty_two, on 08/14/2008, -4/+8You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
- undetected, on 08/14/2008, -0/+4It was commonly used but not tested in the court system, so a lot of people were unsure if it could actually be enforced in case of a violation.
- Waiting2awake, on 08/14/2008, -1/+4Because nature has made it so. Nature has made it so you can't bottle up an idea. It is as free to the culture that developed it, as is the air we breath. For no one has an idea in a vacuum, every idea is built upon a previous one. Generally from someone else. To stop that progress, is to stop societal progress and we have seen through recent history how that results in productivity.
Remember how active and alive the net was before these dinosaurs decided they could make cash out of it? Remember the innovation? - rkho, on 08/14/2008, -1/+4What is WRONG with you?!
- Jack8274, on 08/14/2008, -4/+7The cake is a lie!
You knew it was coming a mile away... - DrPh0bius, on 08/14/2008, -1/+4Frustrated with the rules?
The defendant stripped out anything that would identify the author of the software and then distributed it as if it was their own. That isnt confusion, that is stupidity.
Like trogdoor said above, you can pretty much do ANYTHING you want with the software as you use it in house. It is a matter of redistribution, and generally, the only thing that is ever asked in redistribution is to see that credit is given to the author and that the "licensing," which states that you need to leave all of that and the authors info attached if you redistribute the software, is left in tact.
*****. It is FREE software, is it too much to ask that someone give credit to the person who wrote the software? - kwilliam, on 08/14/2008, -0/+3An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?
- init100, on 08/14/2008, -0/+3"But I was under the impression that the GPL and its ilk are specifically NOT contracts?"
That's the intention of its authors, but a court can always overturn that and declare that a license is a contract, regardless of the intention of the authors of a license. The lower court previously declared that the Artistic License is a contract, not a license, but fortunately this decision has now been overturned. - Pecheckler, on 08/14/2008, -5/+7This is also a victory for the "not-free" software companies, as many company I.T. departments which use free software may get frustrated with these rules and switch to paid alternatives with more suitable license agreements.
- Meep3D, on 08/14/2008, -0/+2Ooops. This comment was meant to be on the post above.
- loquax, on 08/14/2008, -0/+2Not really, if you look at the actual transcript from the court, all they would have to do is "use it internally" if they want to modify it and not share. Most companies can use the stuff as-is, the 1% who want to modify it can without any problems until they go to sell the application outside the company.
The real victory here (IMHO) was the decoupling of copyright from some kind of presumed economic/commercial benefit. The court essentially said that just because someone isn't primarily selling use of the copyrighted product doesn't mean squat as to the validity of the copyright. The attitude of the defendant was "if you don't use it (commercially) you loose it." The court recognized that there were several commercial and economic benefits for copyright holders to release their product as open source but still want to maintain control over the copyright. - Travelsonic, on 08/14/2008, -0/+2Amg,
"yo you're saying people don't deserve to earn a living by developing software"
No, I am saying you are blind. Where the ***** did you get that idea? Well, logically speaking, yo do have a right to try and make a living making software, but nowhere in common sense can it be said that it will and should always be successful, as that would seem to go against reality, where even the best laid ideas go wrong, or flop in some way or another.
Good luck with your other thoughts, free speech pisses you off, but this is America. Live with it. - csplinter, on 08/14/2008, -0/+2"Oh god! Copyright, copyleft, who the hell could make sense of all this!" Are you kidding. This isn't that hard.
- wigren, on 08/14/2008, -0/+2Actually, it's Asus, and I think they're properly licensed.
- level10, on 08/14/2008, -1/+2You cannot eat your cake and have it too.
- buckrogers1965, on 08/14/2008, -0/+1Copyleft agreements over source code have nothing to do with EULA's over compiled programs.
- zeeohsix, on 08/14/2008, -0/+1"Stanford's Center for Internet and Society"
i bet they got some crazy stuff going on down there - phaedrusnz, on 08/14/2008, -0/+1"So you're saying people don't deserve to earn a living by developing software."
Not at all... there are plenty of people who make a living by developing free software. I even spelled it out explicitly in my post - "some of these people do it by creating free software and deserve respect, while others create proprietary software and don't" - to try and avoid some ignorant hyperbolic reaction to my comment. I can only assume you are either too slow to ever grasp this concept, or are ignoring it on purpose in an attempt to troll... either way it appears your problem, not mine.
"K mate, whatever job it is you have, I don't think you have a right to earn money from it. Go find a different way of putting food on the table OK? Sound fair?"
No, that doesn't sound fair at all. It is also not all accurate as an analogy of the situation. In fact your statement is significantly more like a proprietary model than a free model. With proprietary software you are generally saying that other people can't work, or earn money, with your software unless you pay a licensing fee... and even then you're not allowed to modify it to be more useful or redistribute it either non-commercially or commerically. Software released under the GPL (and some other free software licenses) grants you the right to put food on your table by selling my work, and it still allows me to make money by selling my work myself. You should read up a bit on free software and what it means before commenting publicly and revealing your ignorance. There is plenty of information about on the web about it, and who knows you might find it interesting and enlightening.
Brettus - People who create proprietary software do not deserve respect for creating proprietary software. They may be fantastic people, who are generous to their community and volunteer every day at a soup kitchen to feed the poor... but this doesn't alter the fact that creating proprietary software is not a good thing. Producing free software to do the same function would be a good thing, as this would allow people to share it with other members of their community, or modify it to be more suitable to their needs, or port it to other platforms or do many other things that create further positive effects for people in general. A blanket statement like mine is nothing like a statement about race, as people choose to create proprietary software but don't choose to be their race. In addition, there is no race which is inheritly good or bad, whereas there are obvious moral differences between free and proprietary software. I also agree that there are some groundbreaking developers our there that have developed proprietary software... but after they broke the ground they built a fence around their development site that excludes people who want to know how it works and why it's so awesome. Computing has always progressed by 'standing on the shoulders of giants', and creating non-free software retards the speed at which computing can progress. For example, if Microsoft Windows was to release their source code it would be like a free textbook in how not to implement an operating system... keeping the software non-free means that other people might end up making the same mistakes as Microsoft do. - Vich, on 08/15/2008, -0/+1Dugg for image included with license conditions in caption.
...and for the article content. - whisperneki, on 12/04/2008, -0/+0Hmm this is a really interesting story. I've always liked open source and this shows that there's a future for it
http://www.curemysweatypalms.com - DrPh0bius, on 08/14/2008, -1/+1I enjoy a good pun... and that was nothing like a good pun! :D
I dugg you one up out of the hole for the effort of making a pun... unfortunately it will be wasted on a majority of people here. - TrellSaracen, on 08/14/2008, -1/+1From the article: "The lower court had found that redistributing software in violation of the terms of a free software license could constitute a breach of contract, but was not copyright infringement."
But I was under the impression that the GPL and its ilk are specifically NOT contracts?
http://lwn.net/Articles/61292/
Or is this "Artistic License" something different? - falstaff, on 08/14/2008, -3/+2Good for the original author of the software, but in the wrong hands, this ruling could have some bad consequences. If another judge (perhaps one friendly to the BSA, for example) decides that this means all EULAs are strictly enforceable, the rights of users could be severely hampered.
It's not necessarily a given that the ruling could be used for that, as discussed over at Techdirt ( http://techdirt.com/articles/20080813/1655461968.s ... ), but it's by no means a simple issue. - Brettus, on 08/14/2008, -3/+1"...some of these people do it by creating free software and deserve respect, while others create proprietary software and don't "
phaedrusnz - that has got to be one of the stupidest things I have read on digg. To suggest that people who create proprietary software don't deserve respect is rediculous. A blanket statement like that is just as dumb as a statement against a certain race or ethnic group. There are plenty of groundbreaking developers out there who developed some kick ass proprietary software, and these people deserve just as much respect as Joe Blow who creates Crappy Calculator v1.5b in VB. Suck one, sir. - Meep3D, on 08/14/2008, -5/+2Yes, because we all know that closed source commercial licensing* is such a benefit to your company. You should pay _them_ to use the software. Oh wait...
* Dongles, phone home, licensing servers, per-machine vs per-instance, multi cpu etc etc - maninalift, on 08/14/2008, -5/+2I'm surprised this is news. I thought that it was well established that "copyleft" type restrictions were legitimate clauses to include in a copyright.
- AgmLauncher, on 08/14/2008, -5/+1So you're saying people don't deserve to earn a living by developing software. K mate, whatever job it is you have, I don't think you have a right to earn money from it. Go find a different way of putting food on the table OK? Sound fair?
If I come up with an idea, and that idea allows me to earn a living, then any mother ***** that thinks they have a right to tell me it's "evil" to make that idea proprietary can ***** themselves off a cliff. God damn communists..... - kirado4, on 08/14/2008, -9/+4gee.. people infringing copyrights of free software.. that's nice, so.. basically as usual an uneducated judge decided that copyright can only apply to sold items.. What utter *****.. it's like applying copyright rules selectively.. good thing this was overturned.. Why should big companies get to steal and commit piracy and get away with it..?? WTF.. more reasons to download movies.. if I can't sue people for the same ludicrous amounts for infringing copyright as the RIAA.. tell me why I shouldn't pirate stuff?
- DeceasedVirus, on 08/14/2008, -6/+0So are they going to have that scare with acer, over the modified OS they put on the Eee???? or is this not the same because Acer had to modify it?
- AgmLauncher, on 08/14/2008, -10/+2So this is why the word irony was invented. I get it now.
It's amazing how people are saying it's a good thing that the law protects the intellectual property of FREE software, but as soon as the same basic laws apply to people who put food on the table by creating and selling software, it's evil. Nothing like good old double standards :) - Atomic1fire, on 08/14/2008, -14/+4This ruling is copyright with me (hehehe ok stupid pun), probably the first time many diggers will be happy to say copyright infridgement
- Macpunk, on 08/14/2008, -12/+0NOOOOOOOO. ***** copyrights are becoming legal. :-'(
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