I'm pleased people have gt something out of the opening
cahoter of TBoS. But the book was never designed to be read online, except
as a preview and a quick lookup/reminder of features.
For intensive prolonged reading, the route to purchasing
the hardcopy is linked to the front page.
Anybody discouraged from buying by the very limited hurdle
getting the book will completely fail at the more substantial
hurdle of understanding it.
Expecting everything for free, and creators giving in to
that demand shapes character. Systems
which reward minimal effort, maximal demand,
and zero reciprocity end up selecting for the worst traits
in both readers and communities.
It wasn't at all what I was expecting. The thread actually opened with a conversation on post-WWII British aircraft manufacturing of all things and got in automated reasoning. ChatGPT made a clever remark on group theory which prompted the paper. From then on the rest followed very quickly. The whole thing was mind-blowing really and archiving it and going away was the only thing to do. I was getting sleep problems.
As regards the research I think the best thing to do in these cases is to feed ChatGPT the paper and start where we left off. This seems to work but it is a bit too early to gauge how well this will work.
What happens when a scientist spends a week in continuous, serious dialogue with an artificial intelligence — and finds their health, their thinking, and even their loyalties changed?
I skimmed these responses, I'd say that most of them are the result of not reading the material in the
essay or nit-picking or ad hominem remarks. I really tried to find something of real worth.
'His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable." When most people refer to Open Source Software, they're referring to serious projects
like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. They're not referring to random crap on Github.
I'm afraid this in an attempt to redefine open source and is an example of the 'isolated points fallacy' covered in the essay. Open source includes everything with an open source license. To say OS is successful by defining all projects that do not succeed as not part of OS is simply to coin a tautology.
'Is there any special reason to believe that closed source is any better? If we can count the sea
of abandonware on Github, then we get to count the mountain of "interesting" code that remains
internal to large companies, or worse, the stuff that actually got released on unsuspecting customers.'
Again covered in the essay
'Proprietary software vendors typically make money by producing software that people want to use.
This is a strong incentive to make it more usable. (It doesn’t always work: for example, Microsoft, Apple,
and Adobe software sometimes becomes worse but remains dominant through network effects. But it works
most of the time.)
With volunteer projects, though, any incentive is much weaker. The number of users rarely makes any financial
difference to developers, and with freely redistributable software, it’s near-impossible to count users anyway.
There are other incentives — impressing future employers, or getting your software included in a popular OS —
but they’re rather oblique.'
What an absurd dichotomy. Even if you work full time on open source, you probably can't be a major contributor
to more than a handful of large projects, at most; many people specialize in just one. But you probably use dozens to hundreds of open source programs. So for any project with a modicum of popularity, of course the number of people who use the software without contributing dwarfs the number of contributors.
That would be true even if everyone worked full time on open source.
A giver is a person who gives as much or more than he takes. A taker is one who takes more than he gives.
Define it in relation to open source as a whole and the dichotomy is valid. There are users and corporations
who take far more from OS collectively than they give back. Is this hard to grasp?
'The vast majority of comments that take issue with it in this thread thus far are nitpicks about minor points,
and almost none address the essential thrusts of Tarver’s argument, all of which are actually quite cogent.'
That's basically right and that's why after 20 years the OS movement is still stuck where ESR left it.
Your understanding is wrong I'm afraid. You cannot license software you have not written or over which you have no ownership. It is unfortunate that some people believe that the BSD license in itself gives people the rights to relicense the work under GPL. It does not.
This misunderstanding arose from a deliberate attempt by the FSF to co-opt the open software movement by trying to relicense BSD work under GPL without seeking the author's permission. The attempt was successfully challenged by Theo de Raadt in 2007 (http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20070913014315) and the ensuing discussion in which Stallman was thoroughly educated in the law of copyright can be found here.
Of course you can license code you don't own. Otherwise there would be no way to have a license that allowed its recipients to redistribute and then allowed the people who received the code from them to redistribute it themselves.
I'm afraid you don't really understand licenses. A license like BSD gives you the rights to distribute the software subject to certain provisions. It does not give you the right to change the license. I can't really spend any more time on this but I'm sure people around you can point you in the right direction.
Harold is I'm afraid bullshitting you. I really have to say lying, because at this stage there is no other word to use. Check for yourself, the files are all 3 clause BSD.
Except of course the master license file. The language you added to the 3 clause BSD language means something, otherwise you wouldn't have put it there.
We have a difference of opinion on a legal matter, where neither of us is a lawyer, let alone in the same exact legal system. I submit that doesn't rise to the level of "lying".
Again Harold, a falsehood. Since you have contributed to two threads with the same misinformation, I'll make this clear, not for you, but for everybody else.
Shen is under BSD and anybody who downloads it can see this. The 1/3 page of comment in the pdf is simply pointing out copyright law, mainly for platform holders (and you're not one having sent no code). Everything was thrashed out in fine detail and agreed on before the change.
For other hackers, none of this will register with Harold who will simply continue to spout as he likes to do and write emails to me, but everybody else can find out for themselves by downloading.
I'm not going to feed your self-importance by entering into public correspondence with you. This is all I'm going to write. If others want to get down with you, they can.
This is no different as if the master license text had a "comments" section which said that the license was only for non-commercial use. This has happened many times before, and the legal consensus for it as been more or less the same: The work is under a inconsistent license.
What happen if a person download Shen from a redistributor who had only included source files and no master license file? Can that person then write changes under GPL without being under threat from copyright violations? What if distribution like debian got a GPL package that depend (i.e. links) on Shen?
A lawyer would ask a simple question: What is the authors intention with the license? If it is "changes can be under any license except GPL", then it do not matter if its the authors interpretation of copyright or an explicit license requirement. If the intention is "no changes which is licensed under GPL", then that is the wishes of the author and the legal requirement a distributor has to follow.
Perhaps I should limit myself to pointing out that:
"Everything was thrashed out in fine detail and agreed on before the change."
Is demonstrably false. About a day before the planned release of "BSD licensed" Shen 17, we were presented with this language for the master license:
The Shen license
Shen is under a 3 clause BSD license from 2015.
[ The standard language. ]
This license appears in the file BSD.
This license applies to all derived versions of Shen, including all versions derived from the sources provided whatever the method of compilation and the object code generated. This is the reason for clause 2 in the BSD. Such derived works should carry the above license on those source files generated – or with the files if they are binary. Any original code specifically written by the programmer which not derived from the sources supplied is and should be copyrighted to that programmer. This work may be placed under any license of choice except GPL because of the viral condition (see next paragraph)
There is no legal right to relicense or sublicense BSD code or any derived version to another license (e.g. GPL). The power to place a license on a work belongs to the copyright holder.
A person does not assume copyright over a work by making a small change to it. Only if the change is substantial to be deemed intellectually significant can such a claim be made and then only over the change itself. Hence if changing code, if you wish to retain copyright over your changes and they are intellectually significant, offset these changes under your copyright.
[ And Shen certification stuff. ]
There was no prior discussion that I can remember of adding language to the master license file, let alone "hashing out", and after multiple protests, the added language was retained with the 2nd paragraph appended to the 1st and the certification stuff moved to another file, with the following reframing. The initial two lines were changed to:
The Shen License = 3 Clause BSD
Shen is under a 3 clause BSD license from 2015. This license appears in the file BSD in the sources.
And the transition after the BSD license text was given this title:
> There was no prior discussion that I can remember
Actually, Harold, you are either very stupid or have Alzheimer's or are a liar. In fact there was a very long discussion, initiated by me, about GPL and BSD to which you contributed a long irrelevant rambling reminiscence about Stallman. In it I discussed this very point and there was no dispute from you - nor from anyone else as to the legal point I was making.
In fact there were two weeks of open discussion in which I went into detail reiterating the same points several times and leaving the space open for debate precisely so we could have a common understanding. And we all, that is, everybody who actually is making a code contribution, came to an agreement about the law. And strangely we did not miss your sunny personality one bit.
And after that Shen went to BSD and these copyright points were put into a brief paragraph to remind the people involved what copyright law means and we discussed how to present this to be clear. After we went to BSD. And you were and are mainly irrelevant to that process.
And really these paragraphs are not written for you, because I regard you as pointless. It is written for those on the outside. Shen is BSD.
"We had a long discussion about copyright and licensing and I've brought it together under a document which will be incorporated into the sources. You can find it here"
Which then pointed to the master licence file I quoted above for the first draft.
This is all I'm going to write. (From the message from you before this one I'm replying to.)
And here we have another example of your making a promise you were unable to keep.
Yes, it does Harold and this is not the first or probably the last time you have placed misinformation about the Shen project online. All the files have the same standard 3 clause BSD license.
But it is the very last time that I will have any public connection with you and whatever you have to say on this thread or in email will not be read by me.
A small change to a large body of work does not give you copyright over the work itself. no matter how original your change is. At most only over the change itself.
Stallman's statement 'The FSF is not involved in this dispute' (about the appropriation of BSD under GPL) might be interpreted as a statement of ignorance (I don't know what is going on) or as a disclaimer of involvement (I know what is going on, but the FSF is not involved). I find both interpretations to be straining the bounds of credibility and certainly Stallman knew after Theo wrote to him.
But this is not the important issue that the thread is focused on - which are the relations between BSD and GPL. Stallman defends the appropriation of BSD code under GPL (at great length) based on a faulty interpretation of law and that interpretation needs to be put right.
The analogy of any of this to 9/11 or slavery seems rather silly.
The posted discussion thread is rather silly, so if you find the analogy silly, it only comes as a result of an silly "2 Minute Hate of the FSF/GPL/RMS".
I also find it strains the bounds of credibility that someone accuses people of being involved when they has nothing to support the accusations. This is what the term conspiracy theory was created for, like "it must be aliens who did it" or "A shadow Government". Its nutjobs that talk to other nutjobs, creating their own reality in order to feel good about themselves.
But sure, lets talk to the real issue. BSD permit that changes to copyrighted work be placed under a different license. This explicit permission is why proprietary software developers like BSD/MIT licensed software, since they can do changes and then add a proprietary license to the then created derivate work. GPL do not permit this, and thus we have the difference between GPL and BSD. The question about what defines derivate work is originality, which the word "small" or "big" has no impact on. A small change to a large body of work has similar impact as a green change to a yellow body of work. Originality do not care about sizes, it cares about creativity (in the United States).
In the linked mailing list, there is also some discussion if an redistribution of a work can add a license without doing any changes at all, which is how the apple app store does it. Apple puts puts work that is under BSD, with no changes, and redistribute it in the app store under the terms of app store license. The legal view by most lawyer/apple/fsf and others is that apple is legally allowed to do so under BSD license, since the requirement for distribution has been followed by Apple. If there is a change in consensus regarding this, the proprietary software distributors would be the first to react and the small number of BSD work that get distributed under GPL, while still retaining the BSD notice, would be quite small in comparison.
Not really the same. That's rather like saying because I have a chassis and some wheels and an engine piled in the garage, I have a car. They have to be connected together in the right way to make Shen. Shen is available under Clojure and has been for about 2 years.
I'll also add that IMO there is a difference between having these features in a library and having them in the language standard. Common Lisp for instance, has had pattern-matching in various forms, but if you look at the code contributions on comp.lang.lisp these extensions are not often used.
Anybody discouraged from buying by the very limited hurdle getting the book will completely fail at the more substantial hurdle of understanding it.
Expecting everything for free, and creators giving in to that demand shapes character. Systems which reward minimal effort, maximal demand, and zero reciprocity end up selecting for the worst traits in both readers and communities.