lmaximus1983

LOL. This is the problem with you guys. I don't care if he is respectful

Sometimes what is right in front of your face is true. That is why stereotypes exist.

No one has addressed the point I made. Just saying it in anecdotal when I have observed it in a number of instances by myself is incorrect. I am not saying it is one personal experience. I am saying it is a pattern I have seen 5 or 6 times myself and I have seen it as a recurring theme in news etc.

BTW I have been programming computers for 15 years. There are these things called Heuristics. They are based on experience. I am sure a lot of people would be will to agree with a lot of programming Heuristics ... but when it comes to something else ... it must be much higher bar all of a sudden.

Sorry welfare dependence does cause crime.

Almost all of my step family on the Isle of Wight (this in the UK) are doing this along with most of their friends.

I know what I saw with my own eyes. I know what some women have said "I can get X amount if I have another kid". I also know that almost all of my step brothers and step sisters abuse the welfare system mainly by having children with other people.

Telling me that it doesn't happen, when I know it blatantly does and then telling me it doesn't because of some academic release that for all we know probably hasn't been peer reviewer properly. A slight aside ... some dudes managed to get Mein Karph through peer review recently by changing the wording slightly.

Also guess the arrest rate for my step family? The first day I met them they got arrested. Every-time I hear something about them one of them or their mates or both have got arrested.

You know what the connecting thing is ... they are all on welfare and their parents were drunks and lived off of welfare on the Island because there are no jobs.

Way to strawman with a first sentence. I know how a bell-curve works

My family is very large. Most aren't criminals even though we have had two very horrendous individuals.

I am sorry I just don't believe it. Even more of my iffy friends and family stopped doing things like cash in hand work and benefit fraud once they were rich enough not to bother.

It is a simply a function of circumstances and upbringing and nothing more. There might be a genetic component but I suggest that component is being more of an opportunist than actual thievery.

No it isn't. There deffo is some sort of component to it.

I have never met my Grandfather and Uncle that were thieves and another was a sex offender.

I do however like mischief and I love the feeling of thieving stuff. I used to work in Gambling and absolutely loved the idea of taking money from other people. I also have a lot of affiliate sites and I feel like I am stealing that money.

However to say it is 100% one or the other is also garbage. It is another nature vs nurture argument.

Also "Hate Speech" is another way of saying I don't have an argument. It is just a way of saying "You are bad because I don't like what you are saying". This term is destroying my country (people in the UK have been imprisoned because they have posted rap lyrics on facebook).

https://reason.com/blog/2018/04/23/she-posted-rap-lyrics-to-...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921

Err nope.

My Grandfather was a sex offender and my Uncle is a convicted Armed Bank Robber.

The rest of the family has their problems like all families do. Mostly recovering from abuse of the previous two guys.

What is a bigger problem (especially in the UK) is welfare dependence which does become a family thing.

This does sound like you are, again, saying there are circumstances where contributing "back" is legally required

NOPE. The context is the original posters words. We are talking about that and I am saying that contributing back doesn't happen magically because of the GPL.

I suggest you learn to keep the context of the argument in mind rather than keep focusing on being pedantic.

I am done with this conversation now.

The event did occur. I saw the source with my own eyes.

The point that you keep on ignoring is that the OP said "companies have to contribute back". One of my points is that they don't even do it though they legally should.

License arguments wasn't the point of my response. The point is that people will abuse goodwill and pretending that it doesn't happen is naive.

This is classic. I've been around the block mate.

Apparently I am responding to a strawman after the OP actually replied and said my assessment of what they said was correct.

This is why I dislike speaking to the FSF crowd. It is much like a religion (as far as I am concerned).

To preface the rest of my response. One of my points why the GPL isn't magic is that developers will just "steal" code if is easier and most companies don't bother checking whether the code is violating licenses when supplying to a third party.

Yes, you're reading me right, but I skipped over the question of software which is never released publicly - mmt is correct that the GPL does not require public release of works, instead it prevents you from releasing the binaries while withholding the source.

The fact it doesn't prevent you from doing that. It only really prevents large companies that people are watching.

Violations happen all the time. They just happen on smaller GPL projects.

'Secret' purely internal use of modified GPL software is not a violation - if the modified software is never distributed publicly, there's no issue.

The impression I get is that GPL advocates like yourself seem to think that the unwashed developers that work on proprietary code don't understand the GPL and have to be constantly told how a software license works. You aren't an enlightened individual because you understand a software license. I understand the license and the arguments about it just fine.

There is an issue with stuff not going back to upstream. If a defect fix only happens in downstream that is generic enough that it should benefit everyone then only downstream benefits, this things don't get contributed back and there is no improvement of upstream.

Imperfect enforcement is a valid point, but the terms of the GPL are effective at least some of the time. Major technology companies do not want copyright scandals, even if plenty of fly-by-night companies are willing to risk it.

The flyby night companies as you put it are the majority, not the minority. If it isn't a big project most companies won't get found out.

Again GPL doesn't magically make people contribute back, which was my original disagreement with your comment.

From the OP

Companies extend the BSD OSs with proprietary additions, then abandon the work and it gets lost. With Linux, everyone is forced to play nice and release under the GPL, and the work gets to live as long as people value it.

Maybe I didn't make it very clear. Each time I observed it the company I was contracting for was selling it to a 3rd party (where it was installed on premises) as a proprietary product.

The GPL doesn't mention, AFAIK, any such concept. I thought the point was freedom for users of software, not implied benefit to some "upstream" programmer.

The OP specifically said that one of the benefits of the GPL is people had to contribute back because they have to make the code public. As we have discovered they don't.

The code was compiled, so they cannot make modifications. So it is in violation.

You would be right if it was PHP / Python or something else that was interpreted.

The real point to take away is that any modifications will never reach upstream.

As that model has an intel chipset it will probably work fine. The main problem will be wireless because of Intel have the micro-code blob. IIRC you will need want to look at this:

https://man.openbsd.org/fw_update.1

It basically requires you to copy the firmware to a USB stick and run the tool and then Wireless just works.

I actually created an account as this is one of those things that gets repeated a lot and IMO it simply isn't true.

1. The BSDs adoption was severely hurt in the 90s by the AT&T lawsuit, it basically stopped several years of development while the lawsuit legal status was clarified. Linux and the GNU tooling didn't have that problem. If the lawsuit never took place it is doubtful whether the Linux kernel would have got as much interest as it did at the time.

2. If you don't keep up contribute your changes back to upstream (whatever the license) eventually you will be left behind and have to maintain your own incompatible version. It is in your interest to send upstream patches.

3. GPL code gets stolen all the time and put into propriety software. I've worked at loads of places that have just straight out cut and pasted GPL code into their own product (usually this is done without management's approval). Large projects such as the Linux kernel companies can't really get away with it. However a lot of companies don't build software for the masses, most build bespoke software that is only deployed on one or two servers on a company intranet and the general public will never see it. A lot of developers will just straight up steal code (not caring about the license) from wherever. A surprising number of companies still don't even use source control, let alone bother reviewing code.

4. Companies do contribute back to BSD licensed projects, however this is normally financially not through patches.