FC4 or FC5

[jdow]

From: "Ric Moore" <wayward4now at gmail.com>

> On Sun, 2006-06-18 at 16:27 -0700, jdow wrote:
>> As to who and how the GPL hurts people or companies making it good,
>> evil, agnostic, confused, or anything else that is a view each person
>> can make for herself or himself. Whether it hurts developers or not
>> is up to the opinion of the developer. It actually simplifies my life.
>> I develop for Windows and keep the Linux system alive as a server for
>> various networking needs. 
> 
> The point could be made that you avoid paying for a network license, not
> just 'simplifying your life', so the bottom line is that you get
> something that works well for free and profit by it? 

Alas, I cannot contribute back in any meaningful way without going
on too stringent a diet and illegally tapping power somewhere under
a bridge.

>> I don't feel any compulsion to develop for
>> two quite different environments. Besides even if I could charge for
>> software such as I make under a Linux environment I could not make
>> near as much as with the Windows environment. 
> 
> I hope you sock it to 'em. :)

So far only as much as it cost to produce the stuff. I'm actually
foolish enough to stick my actions where my mouth is with regards
to my ethics. And I don't believe in "gouging."

>> But I would like to
>> share the tools with Linux folks for roughly the cost of creating it
>> for Linux folks. No can do. So I don't. 
> 
>> The losers are arguably
>> the Linux USERS not me.
> 
> I have a fully functioning system, how does your not contributing make
> me, or any of us, losers? Ego check, please. I'm surviving the loss and
> resent the label loser.  

In my case if you actually had a use for my widgets that could
conceptually be used with Linux you perforce have to invent it for
yourself. So far I've not noticed a Linux competitor of any note.
(The one competitor for my partner's products has sort of died away
with the death of its founder and main programmer. He did the software
control program for one or more of the animated figures and fountain
shows at Caesar's Palace. It was exceptionally hard software to work
with, too.) (Somehow the lack of maintenance the figures in the
fountains "enjoyed" fit with the software running them in an ironic
sort of way.)

>>  (Which leads me to an observation that Linux
>> users who try to make Linux into a USERs machine rather than a server
>> must be into self abuse in other nasty ways, too. {^_-})
> 
> As I mentioned before, such projects as the $100 laptop and GoodWill
> Industries installing Linux to sell used computers for $100, just might
> enable someone to do something that we all can benefit by, as opposed to
> being robbed, beaten, abused in some fashion by someone who could only
> afford $100 or have a machine gifted by someone with a cast-off machine
> become denied of the bargain and a chance at self-advancement, if
> everyone had the mindset that they ALWAYS get paid. I used to have that
> mindset myself. Winners vs Losers. I liked to win, way way too damn much
> in a 26 year career in the chemical industry and it almost cost me my
> life. So, please grep /dev/human empathy and see if it can still be
> found. 

Hey, since I have a reputation for negativism - I wonder how many of
those machines will be used to send 419 scams? {^_-}

> Please understand, all I know about you is what you write. I understand
> you contribute much. I understand you carry some weight. I also
> understand the English language and you have said you owe no one
> nothing, that you will do nothing without some freight, and we're losers
> because of your non-contributions. 

I do brief small things. My ex and the way former employers raped the
pension funds saw to it that I cannot afford to do much charity work.
I rather wish I could. But after being scored off of so many times it
is REALLY hard to feel charitable until there is a very nice bank
surplus. And I can't bring myself to "charge what the traffic will
bear." So I charge what seems fair and once the costs are covered
drop the price.

> Objectification. A good word for people with a very close affinity for
> machines to explore thoroughly. You must create yourself as an object
> (winner) before you can objectify others (losers) and proceed to hurt
> them, in some fashion, due to an object's inherent lack of rights. Do
> winners beget losers or do losers beget winners? I am using my talents
> and the talents of others, to develop a system to reduce recidivism. I
> could soak the states and the feds for plenty. If it works successfully,
> the public would demand it and so would you. Probably could wind up
> making a killing! Instead I have GPL'd it, and shall give it away so it
> be available to those who can least afford it and really need it; the
> 2.3 million locked up in the US. I hope half the world jumps in to help
> develop it... 

All I can say is you have a wish for "Good luck" because all the
years of my life lead me to suspect achieving such a reduction in
recidivism is going to be a REALLY tough row to hoe barring what
would amount to perpetual incarceration. {o.o}

> My personal motive? I cannot pay back, I can only pay forward to the
> people I've run over in my life. I am not alone in this, everyone else
> can acknowledge their own mistakes and I doubt anyone's list is short.
> So, the only way for me to balance the spiritual books is to do what I
> can with whatever gifts and talents I may have left to me. Sure, you
> have to serve yourself first, in order to have the surplus to serve
> others. Making a buck is not bad at all. It becomes a personal choice
> though; when have you served yourself -enough- to be free to be of
> service to others. Were it not for Linux, the $100 laptop would be a
> $300 dollar laptop. Then a $100,000 project of 1,000 laptops becomes
> $300,000 and that may be a show stopper for a social experiment in a
> state budget. To not see Linux for Users is to limit it's use to the
> 'gearheads', as has been remarked upon in mainstream magazines such as
> Newsweek. That is not only very lousy press, it is a sad commentary on
> our community and I hope Linux can become more very user friendly, as we
> improve our empathy skills. 

I've pretty much already paid my dues. Had I as much resource now
as I reasonably should have had without pension plan manipulations
and my ex's predations I'd have the money to sit back, retire, and
produce stuff for free just for the fun of it. I'm unfortunately
sitting at about 1/3 of what was "promised" and had 1/2 of what
might have been there "donated" to my ex by the court. At the time
I was the one working with a nominally nice paying job. So I got
screwed by the People's Republic of Kaliforicate.

> We are getting there. I just installed FC5 from CD's, and I was on the
> net without doing anything. I followed Stanton's instructions to the tee
> and even the 'bad' stuff works now. I watched a Dvd movie without
> breaking sweat and pouring over man and doc pages. Linux is arriving.
> But without the empathy for users from folks like Stanton, I'd be
> feeling pretty stupid and frustrated. There is a bunch of giving on this
> list and some of us need it. 

The MPEG decoder you used is not legal if you are in the US and did
not pay proper royalties. There are royalties due on such software in
the US. Technically it does not matter that it was produced outside
the country. You are in violation if you did not pay the royalties
one way or another. {o.o}

> The heckuvit is that if your family is not abused on a given day,
> because an inmate got successfully treated by the program and able to
> make better decisions, you wouldn't know it. Maybe what you contribute
> made it possible. So, do you stop giving? No one has a -clue- as to how
> what you contribute will come back to you, but it is universally
> believed that it does. It does take a measure of faith to go down that
> path. So, you do what you can whenever you can, with whatever you have.
> The next step is to learn to love the unlovable. Jimmy Carter said both
> of those. I don't know exactly where he got it, but I suspect it's
> open-source'd as well. I ripped it and now it's here. Pass it on. 

Each day has 24 hours. I'm between messages to a customer at the
moment. (He has a "Windows peculiarity" problem he uncovered in a
fix for a denial of boot attack for XP that exists since SP2 that
I had to work around to avoid triggering.) There is not enough time
to do the paying work and the Linux charity work as well, yet. Maybe
that will change someday. I rather hope it will.

> So, the GPL only hinders those who receive and use free gifts to produce
> a derivative work, and then demand payment. I'm good with that. Plain
> and simple, end of story. Pay for your tools, receive payment on
> investment. Plain and simple, end of story. Ah! But I paid to develop my
> MIND! Well, if you really took advantage of educational opportunities,
> you probably received more than you paid for. 

My problem is that GPL's definition of derivative neither makes sense
nor is one I can deal with. So if I do anything it is likely to be
off FreeBSD.

{^_^}   Joanne