zuzu wrote:
I love your passion for open source. I love open source too.
*BOOOP* *BOOOP* i think we're passing the buoy horns announcing
we're leaving ruby topic waters... 
zuzu wrote:
[snip]
users have a right to understand the code they are running.
[snip]
What specific code do they have the right to understand? All code? I
want to have that "right to understand" too! Where can I obtain it?
i hesitate to offer an absolute, but for now i will say all code
running on computing hardware you own. you can obtain it by
exercising your right in doing so.
I wish that were true but the law would disagree with you.
Possession != lawful ownership (car thieves realize this when they're pulled over by the cops--imagine the judge listening to thieves argument about exercising their "right" to take possesion of the car). They illustrate what happens to people that go thru life insisting they are right and the law is wrong.
Sadly, most software is LICENSED and not actually SOLD. When consumers BUY products, they have been GRANTED OWNERSHIP. When consumers LICENSE products, their rights are restricted to those in the LICENSE AGREEMENT.
The good news is that if consumers don't like the LICENSE they can choose not to buy the product. Better news is that if consumers could not see the license before purchasing (like shrinkwrap) they can receive a refund.
Was that "right to understand" conveyed by law or a private contracts?
rights are supposidly innate, not granted by law. for example, the
american bill of rights does not grant rights, but defines which
rights the government may not legislate against.
however, in practice, rights are defined by the process of exercising them.
Perhaps your definition of "rights" is different from mine. In the context of OWNERSHIP, a "right" means "legal claim" which means to "lawfully own" something.
If you meant something other than "legal claim" when using the term "right" then the conversation was silly because we're talking about different things.
I suspect by "right" you probably mean "choice". We can "choose" to do anything we want but that can lead to a dramatic loss of future choices if we go to jail/prison for ignoring the law. Car thieves "choose" to drive other people's cars but they don't have a "right" or "legal claim" to those cars so they end up in jail.
What if the user is too stupid to understand the code?
the ability for the human mind to learn is defined by biological
hardware (the brain). in fact the biological purpose of the brain is
to learn to adapt to its environment faster than the dna that composed
it can. read 'the human use of human beings' by norbert wiener,
'cosmos' by carl sagan, and 'age of spiritual machines' by ray
kurzweil for starters.
Does the
developer have to simplify the code until it could be understood by all
users?
no, but statistically the developer's best interest for the code to
improve, adapt, and extend (aka evolve) by presenting the code "as
simply as possible, but no simpler". http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EinsteinPrinciple
If the developer refuses to simplify the code, are they
criminals or merely commiting a breach of contract?
neither, a license is not a contract.
The GPL Is a License, not a Contract [LWN.net]
That articles proves my point.
More correctly, a license is not a contract IF AND ONLY IF there is no exchange of obligations.
Traditional licenses had no exchange of values--rights were granted with nothing expected in return--so they weren't a contract. The article simply argues that the GPL fits that description.
But most other software licenses DO NOT fit that description because they require certain things "in consideration" for granting certain rights to the licensee.
article: "A contract, on the other hand, is an exchange of obligations, either of promises for promises or of promises of future performance for present performance or payment. The idea that 'licenses' to use patents or copyrights must be contracts is an artifact of twentieth-century practice, in which licensors offered an exchange of promises with users: 'We will give you a copy of our copyrighted work,' in essence, 'if you pay us and promise to enter into certain obligations concerning the work.' With respect to software, those obligations by users include promises not to decompile or reverse-engineer the software, and not to transfer the software."
....
"The GPL, however, is a true copyright license: a unilateral permission, in which no obligations are reciprocally required by the licensor."
The article clearly states that software licenses that require certain obligations from users are in fact contracts.
So if the license does not specifically "grant ownership" of the software to the user, the user is not the lawful owner of the software. To make this abundantely clear, most commercial software license agreements explicitely state something like:
"The SOFTWARE is licensed, not sold. AUTHOR reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this EULA. "
[snip]
(and ironically, the GPL proves that most
people do not, in fact, steal licensed code.)
[snip]
How does GPL prove this? I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying
to understand how the GPL proves that fact.
foremost, i mis-stated "steal", as theft denotes denial of use. i
meant license infringement, as i wrote for the rest of that email.
that said, GPL as an *example* statistically seems to support my
proposed hypothesis.
I reread the GPL and I couldn't find any statistical data comparing
number of people who steal vs comply with licensed code. All it contains
is a bunch of terms and conditions--no quantifiable data on theft.
again, not the GPL itself. i made a personal observation comparing
the total volume of code under the GPL license available on the
internet compared to number of accusations of GPL infringement as
reported by the slashdot(.org) news aggregator, whose content
specifically covers such matters. with reasonable certainty, if
anyone with web access has observed a GPL infringement, that
observation will be reported on slashdot.
People would have to find out about infringement before making accusations. Also, people who find out might not be willing to make the accusation because it's their employer or they fear a slander/libel lawsuit.
Perhaps the GPL is obfuscated so that the statistical data on theft is
hidden from plain view. ASCII stenography? Hmmmm.
i find this statement asinine.
I think many people will find many statements in this thread very asinine.
obfuscation is a tool of oppression to secure a monopoly on an idea. (even copyrights are
supposed to be TEMPORARY.)
Well, I don't like oppression and I don't like monopoly (but the game
"Monopoly" is kinda fun).
"how can a thimble be a landlord?"
LOL.
Obfuscation is a tool of oppression? Like airplanes are a tool for
terrorism?
sure. tools are amoral. humans choose how they are used and for what purpose.
Should they both be banned?
of course not. however, by rule of law, some human activities are
deemed illegal within the boundaries of jurisdiction.
So you agree that obfuscation can have practical purposes other than "oppression to support a monopoly"?
···
On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 14:18:50 +0900, Randy Lawrence <jm@zzzzzzzzzzzz.com> wrote:
Hmmm, it could mean fewer
visits from the mother-in-law...maybe not a bad idea!
To be fair, we can probably imagine at least one undesirable use for
every invention known to humankind.
as i said.
It doesn't mean it is the only use
for the inventions--maybe it just means we need to use our imagination
to think of more positive uses.
I wouldn't use obfuscation for oppression. I'd use obfuscation to hide
passwords when full-blown encryption isn't very practical or necessary.
For example, obfuscating a script that contains a database connection
password that I'm hosting on a shared server just in case an
unauthorized person gains read access to the script.
obfuscation, or rather, steganography as one form of obfuscation,
serves a different purpose than cryptography. cryptography relies on
probability and mathematical difficulty. obfuscation is applied
socially as disguise.
ps
Data needs to be overwritten between 9 times (DOD 5220.22-M standard) -
27+ times (Guttman) before it is safe from modern HD recovery tools.
Encrypt (or at a minimum, obfuscate) data you don't want to become
public (anything useful for id theft or credit card fraud). Most of us
don't consider this when selling our computer or changing web hosting
providers.
http://www.gnupg.org/
(also one example of software which *must* be Free to do its job.)
-z
