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Re: Disassembly of arrayForth

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  Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Dennis Ruffer <daruffer@gmail.com> - 2013-06-20 21:47 -0700
    Re: Disassembly of arrayForth albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-06-21 14:34 +0000
      Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Luca Saiu <positron@gnu.org> - 2013-06-25 12:01 +0200
        Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-06-25 03:32 -0700
          Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Luca Saiu <positron@gnu.org> - 2013-06-25 12:37 +0200
            Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-06-25 05:01 -0700
              Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-06-25 15:16 +0200
                Re: Disassembly of arrayForth anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-06-25 14:06 +0000
                Re: Disassembly of arrayForth "Ed" <invalid@invalid.com> - 2013-06-26 15:58 +1000
                  Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-06-26 03:25 -0500
                  Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-06-27 15:56 +0200
              Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Luca Saiu <positron@gnu.org> - 2013-06-25 17:05 +0200
                Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Luca Saiu <positron@gnu.org> - 2013-06-25 17:07 +0200
                Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-06-25 10:00 -0700
                  Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Luca Saiu <positron@gnu.org> - 2013-06-25 21:08 +0200
                  Re: Disassembly of arrayForth hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2013-08-10 11:43 -0700
                    Re: Disassembly of arrayForth "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-08-10 21:17 +0100
                    Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-08-10 23:23 +0200
                      Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-08-11 02:13 -0500
                        Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-08-11 20:40 +0200
                          Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-08-11 17:14 -0500
                          Re: Disassembly of arrayForth anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-08-12 13:52 +0000
                      Re: Disassembly of arrayForth hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2013-08-11 23:58 -0700
                        Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-08-12 15:27 +0200
                          Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-08-12 06:41 -0700
          Re: Disassembly of arrayForth anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-06-25 12:59 +0000
        Re: Disassembly of arrayForth albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-06-28 01:54 +0000
          Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-06-28 00:37 -0700
            Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-06-28 02:53 -0500
              Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-06-28 01:34 -0700
                Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-06-28 04:27 -0500
          Re: Disassembly of arrayForth anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-06-28 15:16 +0000
            Re: Disassembly of arrayForth anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-06-28 15:43 +0000
              Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Dennis Ruffer <daruffer@gmail.com> - 2013-08-08 20:12 -0700
                Re: Disassembly of arrayForth albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-08-09 17:19 +0000
                  Re: Disassembly of arrayForth Dennis Ruffer <daruffer@gmail.com> - 2013-08-09 18:19 -0700
                    Re: Disassembly of arrayForth "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-08-10 21:45 +0100
      Re: Disassembly of arrayForth hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2013-08-10 11:52 -0700
        Re: Disassembly of arrayForth albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-08-10 19:10 +0000
        Re: Disassembly of arrayForth "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-08-10 21:34 +0100
          Re: Disassembly of arrayForth hughaguilar96@yahoo.com - 2013-08-11 23:17 -0700
            Re: Disassembly of arrayForth "Alex McDonald" <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-08-12 12:15 +0100

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#23841 — Re: Disassembly of arrayForth

I finally found the incentive to complete the full round-trip assembler/disassembler for ColorForth.  You can get the archive at:

https://code.google.com/p/vf-plugins/downloads/detail?name=cfasdis.zip

You should note that the comparison is to the uncompressed source (af), since this code started before the compression was added to colorForth. So, before the output file can be used by colorForth, the ns variable in block 18 has to be changed to be positive in the ASCII text (dsm) and then passed through cfas. Then colorForth will boot it and the source can be saved in colorForth to get back to a compressed source file.

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#23843

In article <84379f45-ac96-49b8-9688-f8649156ad1c@googlegroups.com>,
Dennis Ruffer  <daruffer@gmail.com> wrote:
>I finally found the incentive to complete the full round-trip
>assembler/disassembler for ColorForth.  You can get the archive at:
>
>https://code.google.com/p/vf-plugins/downloads/detail?name=cfasdis.zip
>
>You should note that the comparison is to the uncompressed source (af),
>since this code started before the compression was added to colorForth.
>So, before the output file can be used by colorForth, the ns variable in
>block 18 has to be changed to be positive in the ASCII text (dsm) and
>then passed through cfas. Then colorForth will boot it and the source
>can be saved in colorForth to get back to a compressed source file.

Wow, that documentation of ciasdis looks really good in pdf.

One remark about the copyright though. GPL is all about egoless
programming. GPL authors do not need their name in all descendants
of their program. In particular, since you rearranged and adapted
a bunch of GPL files, you should replace all copyright message
in cfasdis.frt by a single one at the front and claim the copyright
yourself. After all, you *are* the author (and the first one to whom
questions about that source should be addressed ;-) .)
The nice thing about GPL is that it doesn't matter legally who owns
the copyright.

[You may attribute to an original author, but that is mere courtesy.
The important thing is that you respected his GPL license.]

Groetjes Albert
-- 
Albert van der Horst, UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
Economic growth -- being exponential -- ultimately falters.
albert@spe&ar&c.xs4all.nl &=n http://home.hccnet.nl/a.w.m.van.der.horst

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#23923

> One remark about the copyright though. GPL is all about egoless
> programming. GPL authors do not need their name in all descendants
> of their program.

Sorry, this is well-meaning but technically incorrect.  The purpose of
the GNU GPL is indeed to have software with no "owners"; but if you
derive a work from another work (which you can, in the case of the GPL),
then *both* you and the original author have copyright over the
derivative.

Sometimes the authors may not care, but copyright notices have the exact
purpose of showing who the author is.  Misattributing authorship is also
illegal in some countries recognizing "moral rights".  By the way, I
find it at least a due courtesy to give credit to somebody who did part
of the work, even setting aside the legal situation.  The author of a
GPL work isn't "selfish" but she might well be after fame and glory
after all.  Let her have it, it doesn't cost anything.

> The nice thing about GPL is that it doesn't matter legally who owns
> the copyright.

It doesn't matter in practice if nobody complains, until there's a
violation.  The copyright owner is usually the only one who can enforce
it in court; and the copyright situation of the work has better be clear
then.

Regards,

-- 
Luca Saiu
Home page:   http://ageinghacker.net
GNU epsilon: http://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon
Marionnet:   http://marionnet.org

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#23924

>The purpose of the GNU GPL is indeed to have software with no "owners"; but if >you derive a work from another work (which you can, in the case of the GPL), 
>then *both* you and the original author have copyright over the derivative. 

How can this be true? If software has no owners, then it's in the Public Domain. It is owned by the public.

If copyright is claimed on software, then it has an owner.

According to your example, if I take GForth, and turn it into an embedded system, both I and the copyright holders of GForth have a claim to my derivative.

How, pray tell, does that reconcile with 'The purpose of the GNU GPL is indeed to have software with no "owners"'.

GPL is FUBAR.

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#23925

> How can this be true? If software has no owners, then it's in the Public Domain. It is owned by the public.
>
> If copyright is claimed on software, then it has an owner.

You are confusing the ideas of free software and public domain software.

The GPL is a software license, implemented using copyright.  Free
software is not necessarily in the public domain -- in fact most free
software is not.  Read the GPL preamble: it's very clear.

  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html#preamble

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1)
assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving
you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

If you want more details (they can get intricated) see
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html .

Regards,

-- 
Luca Saiu
Home page:   http://ageinghacker.net
GNU epsilon: http://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon
Marionnet:   http://marionnet.org

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#23926

On Tuesday, June 25, 2013 11:37:45 AM UTC+1, Luca Saiu wrote:
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1)
> assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving
> you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I have no issue with that. What I am taking issue with is your earlier statement that 'The purpose of the GNU GPL is indeed to have software with no "owners"'. The quote above states that the purpose of GPL is to protect your *rights*. To me, that is the polar opposite of promoting software with no owners. To put it another way, if you don't own something, you can't claim any rights over it. And since GPL clearly states in the quote above that they are protecting rights by *asserting copyright* on the software, then any software that is published under the terms of a GPL licence is very much owned!

With apologies for the pedantry.

Respectfully

M

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#23929

Mark Wills wrote:

> On Tuesday, June 25, 2013 11:37:45 AM UTC+1, Luca Saiu wrote:
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>> Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1)
>> assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving
>> you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
> 
> I have no issue with that. What I am taking issue with is your earlier
> statement that 'The purpose of the GNU GPL is indeed to have software with
> no "owners"'. The quote above states that the purpose of GPL is to protect
> your *rights*. To me, that is the polar opposite of promoting software
> with no owners. To put it another way, if you don't own something, you
> can't claim any rights over it. And since GPL clearly states in the quote
> above that they are protecting rights by *asserting copyright* on the
> software, then any software that is published under the terms of a GPL
> licence is very much owned!

No, the GPL is using the copyright system to establish its copyleft system.  
The software has no owner, and the GPL prohibits anybody from becoming an 
owner in the sense of what copyright thinks an owner is: somebody who has 
exclusive rights.  The "copyleft" term is there for a reason: This is 
exactly the opposite of a copyright.

However, as propper attribtion is just a sort of code management problem 
(and DVCSes are pretty good at it), the GPLv3 allows you to require propper 
attribution if you wish.  It has to be noted explicitely that you want that; 
if there aren't such terms, you waived that right.  Attribution does not 
mean "you own it", it just means "you wrote it".  It is still free.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

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#23930

Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> writes:
>The software has no owner, and the GPL prohibits anybody from becoming an 
>owner in the sense of what copyright thinks an owner is: somebody who has 
>exclusive rights.

Copyright does not think.  And the copyright law talks about
"holding", not "owning" copyright.  There are "intellectual property"
propagandists who want to extend the rights of copyright holders and
want us to think of copyrights (and patents etc.) like we think of
physical property, at least in certain contexts, so that we transfer
some of the ideas about physical property to copyrights.  And
therefore they want us to think of copyright holders as "owners".

But they don't us to transfer all the ideas about physical property to
copyrights.  E.g., when you buy some software and want to sell it to
someone else, many of the software companies who are on the forefront
of "protecting intellectual property" are very quick to point out that
they did not really sell you the software, they sold you a license to
use the software, and despite selling you the license, they still want
to have as much control about it as the law allows, and they work hard
(and pay much) at many fronts to change the laws so they get even more
rights than they have now.

- anton
-- 
M. Anton Ertl  http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
comp.lang.forth FAQs: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/toc.html
     New standard: http://www.forth200x.org/forth200x.html
   EuroForth 2013: http://www.euroforth.org/ef13/

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#23939

Bernd Paysan wrote:
> ...
> No, the GPL is using the copyright system to establish its copyleft system.
> The software has no owner, and the GPL prohibits anybody from becoming an
> owner in the sense of what copyright thinks an owner is: somebody who has
> exclusive rights.  The "copyleft" term is there for a reason: This is
> exactly the opposite of a copyright.

GPL is a license which uses copyright to give it teeth.  Copyright in
turn requires there be an owner (or owners) of the work.  The more
owners of the work there are, the harder it becomes to pursue
infringements in a court of law.

GPL is a tool of the FSF.  Thousands (if not millions) of hobbyists
use the GPL license.  While GPL affords little protection to authors,
it promotes the FSF and gives it a greater say and legal status than
it would otherwise have.  Free advertising at its best.

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#23941

Ed <invalid@invalid.com> wrote:
> 
> GPL is a tool of the FSF.  Thousands (if not millions) of hobbyists
> use the GPL license.  While GPL affords little protection to authors,
> it promotes the FSF and gives it a greater say and legal status than
> it would otherwise have.  

Hmm.  Companies like Oracle and IBM that release GPL'd software might
be a little surprised that the FSF has a say over them.

> Free advertising at its best.

That's one of the principles of free software: people get credit.  The
FSF gets credit for the GPL, a brilliant example of hacking the legal
system for social purposes.

Andrew.

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#23976

Ed wrote:
> GPL is a license which uses copyright to give it teeth.  Copyright in
> turn requires there be an owner (or owners) of the work.  The more
> owners of the work there are, the harder it becomes to pursue
> infringements in a court of law.

Nope, as GPL-Violations.org has shown, one single owner is completely 
sufficient.

The GPL is a "hack" of the legal system, because copyright's intention is 
exactly opposite to copyleft's intention.  In the 18th century, benevolent 
people in the US bought slaves to release them.  They still had "owners" in 
the legal sense, because black people were required to have owners, but 
their owners allowed them to be free.

If there was no copyright, you would be allowed to do all the things the GPL 
permits you anyways.  You might not be able to get at the source code, 
because it might be kept secret.  So the teeth the GPL uses copyright for is 
against secrecy; it however fails for cloud-based server products (and other 
inhouse projects), which is why I choose the Affero GPL for net2o.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

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#23931

> I have no issue with that. What I am taking issue with is your earlier
> statement that 'The purpose of the GNU GPL is indeed to have software
> with no "owners"'. The quote above states that the purpose of GPL is
> to protect your *rights*.  To me, that is the polar opposite of
> promoting software with no owners.

The GPL is written from the point of view of the *user*, not the author.

The word "rights" in the GPL preamble refers very clearly to the
*user*'s rights to share and modify the software.  A practical way of
ensuring that the user has these rights is by explicitly permitting such
activities, using a copyright license.

Equating "ownership" with copyright makes very little practical sense in
this case.   See for example http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html .

I'd say to stop it at this point, as we're already way off-topic for the
group.  You and I are arguing about nuances in the meaning of the word
"ownership"; others may even be getting confused.

Best regards,

-- 
Luca Saiu
Home page:   http://ageinghacker.net
GNU epsilon: http://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon
Marionnet:   http://marionnet.org

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#23932

On 2013-06-25 at 17:05, Luca Saiu wrote:

> I'd say to stop it at this point, as we're already way off-topic for the
> group.  You and I are arguing about nuances in the meaning of the word
> "ownership"; others may even be getting confused.

Not the others responding in this thread, of course :-).

-- 
Luca Saiu
Home page:   http://ageinghacker.net
GNU epsilon: http://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon
Marionnet:   http://marionnet.org

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#23933

Thanks. When read from a users viewpoint it does make more sense.  And yes, we're way off topic.  My fault.  Thanks for the clarification and for not taking offence to my pedantry! 

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#23937

On 2013-06-25 at 19:00, Mark Wills wrote:

> Thanks for the clarification and for not taking offence to my
> pedantry!

Of course, no offense taken :-).

-- 
Luca Saiu
Home page:   http://ageinghacker.net
GNU epsilon: http://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon
Marionnet:   http://marionnet.org

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#25093

On Tuesday, June 25, 2013 10:00:16 AM UTC-7, Mark Wills wrote:
> Thanks. When read from a users viewpoint it does make more sense.

The GPL is essentially communism --- the users own the rights --- a worker's labor is owned by the community (in practice, the state) rather than by himself. 

The GPL was invented primarily to prevent the scenario in which a programmer writes some software and puts it in the public domain out of altruism, and then somebody else comes along and copyrights it such that the copyright prevents anybody else (including the original author) from having any right to the software.

In China, there are a lot of entrepreneurs working on the side from their regular jobs; they typically manufacture something in their home and sell it to their neighbors (given the severe shortages of goods in China, even simple stuff like brooms and cooking equipment can be manufactured and sold). Entrepreneurship is highly illegal however. The worker's labor belongs to the state, so when he uses his labor for his own profit, he is stealing his labor from the state. If you make a broom in your house in your free time and sell it to your neighbor, this is no different from stealing a broom from a broom factory and selling it to your neighbor --- there is no such thing as "free time" (although some part of everybody's day is allotted to entertainment and/or family time, as it is impossible to make people work 24/7).

As a libertarian I am opposed to communism. OTOH, I don't consider the GPL to be bad because I see it as volunteerism. Nobody is holding a gun to anybody's head and forcing them to write software and put it under the GPL. By comparison, in China if you refuse to work at whatever job has been assigned to you, men with guns will show up at your house and take you away to be "reeducated".

I worked as a programmer with a Cuban (Luis), and he had mixed feelings about communism. In the early days, the people were happy to be out from under Batista, and they sincerely wanted to make something of their country. In this context, pretty much everybody was willing to volunteer to help the community, and they made a lot of progress quickly. For example, Luis's mother had volunteered to teach in Che's literacy program, which she was very proud of having done (she described the experience as the best days of her life). But everything went bad when they began forcing people to "volunteer." It was inevitable though. In every society, about 2% are sociopaths. Even if there is only 1 in 50 who refuses to volunteer and who just lives off the benefits without contributing anything, he is going to stick out like a sore thumb --- the other 49 are going to notice, they are going to become filled with hate, and they are going to demand that the government force him to work --- and thus starts the downhill slide into oppression in which everybody is being forced to work, which is what they had hoped to escape from.

Right now, Bill Gates is Batista. After Microsoft goes bankrupt (and Microsoft will eventually go bankrupt because their low quality), GPL will become the norm. At that time, we have to be careful that we don't make the mistake of the Cubans and begin forcing people to GPL their software. This could easily happen. Anybody who tries to sell software would get arrested on the charge that he had used GPL software during the writing of his own software, and hence he is a thief deserving of jail.

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#25096

on 10/08/2013 19:43:23, Aguilar wrote:

> 
> The GPL was invented primarily to prevent the scenario in which a
> programme r writes some software and puts it in the public domain out
> of altruism, an d then somebody else comes along and copyrights it
> such that the copyright prevents anybody else (including the original
> author) from having any right to the software.

Your understanding of the law of copyright & public domain is flawed. 

This is not possible in the US and in many other places. "Until ...
copyrights expire, there is no mechanism in the law by which an owner of
software can simply elect to place it in the public domain."
http://www.rosenlaw.com/lj16.htm

Hence CC0 (the Creative Commons licence)
http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0. Even with that, it's not possible
for any other person to subsequently copyright the work. How could they,
since the original allows copying & derivative works without limit?

The reason for the GPL is well documented, and it's clearly not as you
state. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html
   
[Aguilarism's snipped]

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#25099

hughaguilar96@yahoo.com wrote:

> On Tuesday, June 25, 2013 10:00:16 AM UTC-7, Mark Wills wrote:
>> Thanks. When read from a users viewpoint it does make more sense.
> 
> The GPL is essentially communism --- the users own the rights --- a
> worker's labor is owned by the community (in practice, the state) rather
> than by himself.

In the GPL case, this "(in practice, the state)" is not true.  So if the GPL 
is communism, it's not the perverted Stalinist/Maoist one, where the state 
enslaves the people.

> The GPL was invented primarily to prevent the scenario in which a
> programmer writes some software and puts it in the public domain out of
> altruism, and then somebody else comes along and copyrights it such that
> the copyright prevents anybody else (including the original author) from
> having any right to the software.

Yes.  So this protects the altruism, and prevent people from stealing 
altruistic work.  If that's communism, I'm communist.

> In China, there are a lot of entrepreneurs working on the side from their
> regular jobs; they typically manufacture something in their home and sell
> it to their neighbors (given the severe shortages of goods in China, even
> simple stuff like brooms and cooking equipment can be manufactured and
> sold). Entrepreneurship is highly illegal however.

We don't write 1970, we write 2013.  About half the Chinese people who 
aren't just farmers on their own rice paddies are employed by someone, and 
the other half work as "entrepreneurs".  Well, they usually have a small 
shop or so.  It is highly legal, and the amount of regulation is small.  
That's why so many people have planned to work for a few years for a big 
company, save the money, and return to their village, starting their own 
business - which they did.  Often, when it is not very difficult to make 
things, the work is actually organized by small entrepreneurs rather than 
large companies.  Most blue jeans are sewn by companies with 20 or less 
employees.  It's not difficult to make a blue jeans.  Though I'm sure most 
Chinese will wonder why they have to make blue jeans for people in the US 
where a whole Chinese family (including grandma) can fit into.

And there is no shortage of goods, either.  China has not actually the same 
living standard as the US, but the difference is much less than in 1970.  I 
think you should really get out of your cave; but in this case, too many US 
citizens just think the world outside the US doesn't really exist, or, like 
you, they have severely outdated informations.

> As a libertarian I am opposed to communism. OTOH, I don't consider the GPL
> to be bad because I see it as volunteerism.

Ok, so you now contradict yourself.  But this view is certainly closer to 
the truth.

> Nobody is holding a gun to
> anybody's head and forcing them to write software and put it under the
> GPL. By comparison, in China if you refuse to work at whatever job has
> been assigned to you, men with guns will show up at your house and take
> you away to be "reeducated".

Actually no.  China has significantly less prisoners (nearly half) in total 
than the US, with 5 times more population.  The last remaining gulag country 
is the one you are living in.  Most inmates are people who don't much more 
than refusing to work and smoking a little marihuana or so.  A very 
significant portion of the inmates in US prisons is there, because they just 
didn't pay their depts.

> Right now, Bill Gates is Batista. After Microsoft goes bankrupt (and
> Microsoft will eventually go bankrupt because their low quality), GPL will
> become the norm. At that time, we have to be careful that we don't make
> the mistake of the Cubans and begin forcing people to GPL their software.
> This could easily happen. Anybody who tries to sell software would get
> arrested on the charge that he had used GPL software during the writing of
> his own software, and hence he is a thief deserving of jail.

It is quite likely that a copyleft regime will replace the current copyright 
regime - when something is perverted and abused too much, it is likely to 
flip over to the other extreme.  However, you wouldn't be arrested.  
Copyright allows you to claim some exclusive rights; in a copyleft world, 
this allowance would not exist, rather your customers would have rights - 
the right to get the source code.  Like customers of physical goods have a 
warranty right, you, as vendor, can't deny them this right.  If you don't 
comply, you would go out of business, but not into jail.  Ok, this assumes 
the gulag prison state in the US would be stopped at the same time; 
otherwise, you are probably right.  But this is unlikely; the revolution 
against the current totalitarian US regime will not go into that direction.  
You might go into prism after the revolution if you were a bankster, because 
that's really big stealing.

And BTW: you can legally sell GPL software.  RedHat makes a billion dollar 
per year, essentially selling GPL software.  Oh, they sell subscriptions to 
their maintenance program.  But that's selling GPL software; it is possible, 
it is just a little different from Microsoft's way.  It's not entirely fair, 
as RedHat doesn't do the big part of maintaining all these packages; they do 
the little part of maintaining them within their distribution.  It's mostly 
work done by others, and RedHat doesn't share their profits.  But they are 
not required to.  Other people make cheaper distributions, and for servers, 
I much prefer Debian - that's the volunteer distribion.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

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#25101

Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> wrote:

> It's not entirely fair, as RedHat doesn't do the big part of
> maintaining all these packages; they do the little part of
> maintaining them within their distribution.

That misrepresents what we do, really.  We don't maintain everything,
or even the majority of programs in a GNU/Linux system, but we do
maintain a lot of stuff.  A lot of GCC is ours, and GDB, and a fair
bit of the kernel work.  And I'm porting OpenJDK.  There are lots of
other things.  I think we spend more time working on upstream programs
than we do customizing packages for our own distro.  I'm pretty
confident we give more than we take, but of course it's impossible to
prove that.

Andrew.

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#25104

Andrew Haley wrote:

> Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> wrote:
> 
>> It's not entirely fair, as RedHat doesn't do the big part of
>> maintaining all these packages; they do the little part of
>> maintaining them within their distribution.
> 
> That misrepresents what we do, really.  We don't maintain everything,
> or even the majority of programs in a GNU/Linux system, but we do
> maintain a lot of stuff.  A lot of GCC is ours, and GDB, and a fair
> bit of the kernel work.  And I'm porting OpenJDK.  There are lots of
> other things.  I think we spend more time working on upstream programs
> than we do customizing packages for our own distro.  I'm pretty
> confident we give more than we take, but of course it's impossible to
> prove that.

The whole point of free software is that everybody takes way more than they 
give.  That's how it works, because taking is much easier than giving - 
giving means developing software, taking just means deploying software.

The question whether you give more than you take is much more complicated.  
One problem e.g. with GCC is that the GCC code base is IMHO pretty bad.  
I've done some GCC patches in the past to a particular port (Sharc DSP), and 
tried to figure out if I could patch some other problems like the computed 
goto stuff.  My explanation of why GCC is such a mess is that Cygnus came up 
with the business modell of GCC maintenance, and to keep competition out, 
they obfuscated GCC, so a good deal of the knowledge how to maintain GCC is 
now outside of the sourcecode, but within the Cygnus team, which is now part 
of RedHat.  I'm not quite sure if it was like that, because during the 
Cygnus days, most of the work was done at Cygnus, but the maintenance leader 
was Richard Kenner, who didn't work for Cygnus.  That might have caused too 
many frictions.  However, the last Kenner GCC (2.95.2) is still the best 
compiler for Gforth on x86.  Quality went way down with the EGCS series.

In contrast, I also did write some Linux kernel drivers, for another Analog 
Device processor, the Blackfin (the GCC port to Blackfin was good enough so 
that I didn't need to patch it, but the Linux kernel was missing an audio 
driver for the sound port).  This code base is much better organized, and I 
think it's that way, because in the Linux kernel, nobody tried to monopolize 
maintenance.  There are ugly parts in the Linux code base, but in general, 
the code is easy to jump onto and adapt it for your needs.

IMHO it's a bad idea if one company maintains a core part of the free 
software world, and GCC is indeed a core part.  This is not the Forth world, 
where a compiler can be maintained by just one person.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

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