Stephen <mcavoysAT@aolDOTcom> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:15:48 EST, "Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
>
> >
> >Forgive my ignorance, what program did you use to convert from 3ds. Is it
> >free/open source I currently only know of one shareware program, and I am not
> >particularly keen on using it since it goes against my hippie philosophy of
> >promoting open source.
>
> That is three of us voting for PoseRay, which can be run under Wine, if you are
> using Linux. There is no mention of a licence that I can find.
>
> http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/
>
> And this old hippy wants to know what's wrong with "open source"?
> --
>
> Regards
>      Stephen

Nothing is wrong with open source. I am a big believer in open source. I get a
lot of slack from my friends for using say gimp versus photo shop.

Anybody who's taken an economic course probably knows of Adam Smith who said
that economic market effiency is determined by everyone acting in their own
self interest, Way back in the 1700s. I however don't like this dog eat dog
perspecitive on life.

Not alot of people agree with Adam Smith's way of thinking. The fact that the
communist model failed, the strongest evidence to date that what he said is
true. I believe that open source is the most successful model that condradicts
Adam Smith.
Mainly I believe open source is proof that his views are not universal, and it
is possible for market effiency to happend with people working as a group
rather than against each other. I.e the more successful open source projects
(such as povray and openoffice) are successful because there are multiple
people involved in them, as oppose to projects that last about 6 months an only
has a single person.

Please, I did not mean any offense. I consider myself a hippie of "the next
generation"

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"Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Anybody who's taken an economic course probably knows of Adam Smith who said
> that economic market effiency is determined by everyone acting in their own
> self interest, Way back in the 1700s. I however don't like this dog eat dog
> perspecitive on life.

I don't like this perspective either, but transitioning from it to a dog help
dog mentality is far from trivial. Too many aspects of life involved -
performing this transition only in a single area alone will create problems at
the interfaces.

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On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:30:31 EST, "Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote:

>
>Nothing is wrong with open source. I am a big believer in open source. I get a
>lot of slack from my friends for using say gimp versus photo shop.
>

I misunderstood what you meant, then. Phew!

>Anybody who's taken an economic course probably knows of Adam Smith who said
>that economic market effiency is determined by everyone acting in their own
>self interest, Way back in the 1700s. I however don't like this dog eat dog
>perspecitive on life.
>

Adam Smith, he was from Kirkcaldy. A Fifer, they are all strange there.

>Please, I did not mean any offense. 
>

I don't think that anyone thought that you meant offence and it opened up an
interesting discussion.

>I consider myself a hippie of "the next generation"

A New Age Traveler? :P
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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nemesis wrote:
> If I were you, though, I'd instead simply not link with libpng (is it
> really GPL rather than LGPL?).

I think libpng is essentially BSD-licensed.

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clipka wrote:
> But that's exactly the problem: With LGPL it wouldn't be that much of a
> hassle. But GPL says: If your product has *any* GPLed code in it, *all*
> the product software must be GPLed - every single byte of it. If you sell
> the thing, that is.

Incorrect. If your program links to GPL code, all of it has to be GPL or
compatible (you can make your program BSD-licensed and link it to GPL
libraries, for example).

Ubuntu has lots of GPL code. And also distributes stuff like unrar (source
available but you can't write the compression algorithm based on it),
povray (you know its terms; source avilable but definitely not
GPL-compatible), nvidia driver (binary only), etc.

Just because you distribute GPL software doesn't mean all the software in
your "product" has to be GPL.

If you use a Linux kernel and run your own proprietary car-controlling
application on it, you're fine. If you *modify* the kernel to... do
something to the car, you have to release those modifications. I'm not sure
where proprietary device drivers fall (I think Linux has a special
licensing exception for that).

If you compile your application with gcc, it doesn't have to be GPL, even
though gcc is GPL. gcc even necessarily links your application with some
GPL code (the standard C library!), but there is also a special exception
for that.

If your application links with a GPL library, your code has to be GPL or
compatible. If your application links with a LGPL library, your code can be
under any license, but you have to allow your users to modify that LGPL
library and relink your app with it. This can be done in three ways:
release your app's code, release your app's object files (compiled but not
linked yet), or link to the library dynamically.

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Incorrect. If your program links to GPL code, all of it has to be GPL or
> compatible (you can make your program BSD-licensed and link it to GPL
> libraries, for example).

.... which, AIUI, means that I can combine code covered by any of the two
licenses - as long as I release the result under the GPL...

> Ubuntu has lots of GPL code. And also distributes stuff like unrar (source
> available but you can't write the compression algorithm based on it),
> povray (you know its terms; source avilable but definitely not
> GPL-compatible), nvidia driver (binary only), etc.

I bet the Ubuntu distribution qualifies as an "aggregate" in this respect, so
that's a whole different story.

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clipka wrote:
>> Ubuntu has lots of GPL code. And also distributes stuff like unrar
>> (source available but you can't write the compression algorithm based on
>> it), povray (you know its terms; source avilable but definitely not
>> GPL-compatible), nvidia driver (binary only), etc.
> 
> I bet the Ubuntu distribution qualifies as an "aggregate" in this respect,
> so that's a whole different story.

My point was that running a proprietary app on a GPL kernel can't possibly
be a violation.

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> My point was that running a proprietary app on a GPL kernel can't possibly
> be a violation.

My point, however, was about libs, not kernels. And I'm not talking about glibc.

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>
> > I see it more as an inevitable response to some vicious and sustained
> > attacks by a small number of huge, disreputable commercial interests with
> > very large and well funded legal teams against altruistic individuals and
> > groups without the necessary financial backing to fight back.
>
> Nay. It may have started that way, but from what I see now, it has gone
> overboard.
>
> For the cause of protecting free software developers' rights against commercial
> piracy, in the case of libraries I see no valid reason to require that *all*
> parts of commercial software must be open sourced if they use that library -
> except for "political" purposes.
>

What has been termed as viral marketing is a protection mechanism for
"transparency". In theory I have no problem with people charging for software
(although I personally perfer to support open source by using it solely).
However as people have pointed out piracy comes in many forms. When a
commercial entity uses an open source library, even if they they make available
the library, they are still benefiting monetarily off of the good intentioned
work of others. A less apparent method would involve changing around a few
lines of code in the library, at which point the commericial entity calls it
its own. At what point do you say that the commerical entity's version is no
longer a derived work? That's more difficult to say.

If I had no idea how PNG files were read and written, and then after using say a
GPL program that did this, I came up with completely different algorithms for
reading and writing in the PNG format. Even though the code is completely
different is it new? Because Its the difference between having a PNG library
and not having a PNG library should it be considered derived?

Also, let me put forth an argument that is not universal due to the fact that
not everybody has the same set of values and morals. Isn't closed source giving
commerical apps a free ride? Let me try to explain.

Put another way alot of people trade MP3s over the internet. I don't because its
wrong (not a universal attitude) and I could go to jail (still not universal but
alot more accepted). I purchase from say iTunes even though mp3s are available
for two additional reasons a) commerical formats sound better, b) I wish these
artist to produce more good songs.

Shouldn't (in a perfect world in which I know we do not live)  apps that are
commerical, not be paid for because they are proprietary, but because people
wish to support them, and possibly more relevantly they can do the job better
than the open source version? I feel as though making commercial apps closed
source is essentially giving them a free ride since they are not continually
forced to make revisions and enhancements that make them superior to theire
opensource alternatives?

One final thing I thought I would bring up, there will always be people that
leach off of open source. If you search on ebay for microsoft office you will
see a tone of people selling "alternatives to microsoft office" on cd. While
they only cost a penny, sellers make up for it with "shipping and handling". If
you look you will see that screenshots of these programs are actually those of
openoffice, but without any reference to that offical name. Viral licensing
could be though of as a way to decrease the leaching effect.

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"clipka" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> "Woody" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> > Anybody who's taken an economic course probably knows of Adam Smith who said
> > that economic market effiency is determined by everyone acting in their own
> > self interest, Way back in the 1700s. I however don't like this dog eat dog
> > perspecitive on life.
>
> I don't like this perspective either, but transitioning from it to a dog help
> dog mentality is far from trivial. Too many aspects of life involved -
> performing this transition only in a single area alone will create problems at
> the interfaces.


I prefer the "Dog Betters Dog" perspective.

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