Wrong, I don't need a Tivo to use their code.

That is beside the point. This isn't about *you*.

This is about the 99.99% of people who use Tivo code, use it on a Tivo, and as a result they are denied the particular freedoms the original authors of the code it is licensed under intended for them to have.

Granted 98% of them don't care about the license or about changing the code. But the authors of the original code AND the license cared a great deal about it.

A loophole that clearly many authors wanted and have accepted as "by design".

Absolutlely not an outcome the authors of the license wanted. And I'm skeptical you can find any developers who expressly WANTED the GPL for tivoization... i mean if you want that, then use the BSD or something. There are lots of perfectly suitable licenses for that use.

What realistic scenario can you put forth where the developer actively wants to license their code under the GPL and simultaneously doesn't want people to be able to modify the code they received to run on on the equipment the code is installed on?

Seriously. Find one.

And no, Tivo itself doesn't count, they didn't author original code and actively select the GPL... they merely took the GPL code that was out there because it was out there and used it, and ran a legal end run around the authors intentions.

Not everybody who uses the GPLv2 (or any FSF license) subscribes to the FSF ideology,

There does have to be a fairly substantial overlap with FSF ideology though, otherwise you'd pick something else, like BSD.

in fact some of the most prominent ones (Linux for example) explicitly do not.

By "Linux" I assume you mean Linus? And while its clear he disagrees with the FSF on some key points, you'd be hard pressed to demonstrate that he actively approves of Tivoization. At best I'd say he doesn't like the GPLv3's method of trying to prevent it. But I could be mistaken. I'm not Linus.

Not at all - by including an "or later" clause you also open your code to being re-licensed under GPLv666

Maybe. It'll still be available under GPLv2 though.

So don't buy a TiVo then. "Tivoization of your code" is nonsense because Tivoization doesn't have anything to do with the code, in fact you can get the code here licensed under GPLv2 and use it under those terms just as you would any GPLv2 project.

Read the preamble to the GPLv2 or the philosophy of the FSF. Tivoization is a legal end run around the philosophical purpose the license.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

"Specifically, free software means users have the four essential freedoms: (0) to run the program, (1) to study and change the program in source code form, (2) to redistribute exact copies, and (3) to distribute modified versions."

Tivoization of GPL code preserves those 4 rights, but withholds the implicit desire of GPL users to be able to exercise those rights on the hardware the software is running on.

Tivoization is a manifestation of "what good is your right to a phone call, if we take away your ability to speak".

When the GPL2 was written no one had conceived that you might receive GPL code installed on a device, be allowed to run it, be allowed to change it, be allowed to redistribute it... but NOT be allowed to run the changed software on the original device.

It was a loophole that was implicitly intended by the GPLv2, but not made explicit. The GPLv3 attempts to close the loophole.

And as an aside, the AGPL3 is mean to meant to close another loophole that wasn't originally conceived of... developers would use GPL code, and distribute only access to the code running remotely rather than copies of the code itself, thereby exempting them from the need to share the source.

What good would that do? Their bank doesn't know if the customer's credit card is valid.

By their "bank" I mean their merchant processing account. And they absolutely can validate the card, and/or contact the customers bank themselves if necessary.

This is the proper documented process. Look it up.

The poster I was responding to got it right.

Bank calls the customer to advise them of the need to communicate, gives the customer a ticket number, and simply asks the customer them back.

The customer must call the bank back at a "trusted number" they have for the bank -- not a number the person calling them gives them, but the one on the back of the card the customer is carrying, or the one on their bank statements, etc.

If "GPLv2 only" is silly, then you might want to alert all the Linux kernel developers.

Your kidding right? Alert them of what? Something they all already know?

As the kernel has no centralized copyright authority; the license is stuck where it is regardless of what anyone contributing to it wants or doesn't want.

Linus has been quoted saying he doesn't care for GPLv3 himself, and has no plans to change the kernel over; which is fine...(especialyl as its would be a fuckton of work -- due to each contributor to the kernel ever all having to either agree to the change or have their contribution pulled out and recoded from scratch). However it doesn't really answer the question of whether Linus actually objects to "GPLv2 or later" -- since it doesn't put any additional constraints on him; or anyone else contributing to the kernel -- the only upshot is that someone somewhere downstream might at some point create a gplv3+ distro based on the kernel. I'm really not sure Linus cares about that; if he doesn't care about Tivoization, what does he care if RMS and the FSF put together a pure gplv3 distro?

To me, at least, the choice of GPLv2 for the kernel instead of GPLv2 or later seems like, an oversight at best, that really can't be fixed now. After all, the kernel was one of the earlier works to use the GPL; it was still pretty new at the time. And Linus was not making a statement about Tivoization or GPLv3 or anything else when he didn't include the "or later" clause.

I pay for everything cash, so I have a low credit score. How the fuck does that work?

Sure, you might be independantly wealthy and just buy everything with cash... or maybe you live day to day off the money you make turning in aluminum cans. In other words, your score is low because they can't tell you from hobo.

I paid for my car cash, I pay my rent cash, I pay the cable company cash.
I have over $30k in the bank and I have monthly paychecks.

None of which is reported to a credit scoring agency.

So I should have a much higher credit rating than someone who is constantly paying with credit cards in my opinion.

You are probably more credit worthy, and probably deserve a higher score, but you aren't playing the game to get one.

I wouldn't even mind so much, except that when renting a house they do a background check, and they expect to find a credit history, which I don't have.

So get one. Apply for a card, buy some stuff you were planning to buy anyway, pay it off... costs you NOTHING. And you get a higher score on the credit rating game, for when you need it.

Party A expressed their opinion about this scenario when they chose the license. GPL v2 Only means they don't want to prevent it.

Selecting GPLv2 or later ALSO allows for downstream Tivoization of your code. So choosing "GPLv2 only" OR "GPLv2 or later" makes no difference to Tivoization.

The only difference between "GPLv2 only" or "GPLv2 or later" is the or later can be mixed with GPLv3 or later, while GPLv2 only.

So the ONLY statement anyone picking "GPLv2 only" is making, is that they don't want their code mixed with GPLv3 which honestly... is pretty silly.

Tons of issues, mostly with very lacking library support, tooling.

Agreed -- not that I know about about Erlang in particular, but library availability, maturity, (and cost) while not a reflection of the language design itself are HUGE factors in whether or not a given project is practical in that language.

In one case, I had a guy tell me online "hire me as an Erlang consultant and then I will help you".

Pretty sure you can find an example of THAT guy in ANY community.

We rewrote this 9 months of Erlang development in 3 weeks (!) using one senior Java developer.

That can mean a lot of things really. For example, a rewrite hot off the tail of the original project benefits from the fact that all the requirements, data model, information flow, features etc are actually pinned down. You jump straight to the implementation phase, and can do it all in one programming iteration -- no meetings, no feature creep, no discovery of unspecified requirements, no backtracking...

Essentially its the perfect project, a good developer is effectively handed a complete and accurate spec.

Everything is immutable is beautiful for fairy tales, but not for real-life software (trying building a DOM in a language which is 100% immutable).

Yeah, its a paradigm shift... but I'm skeptical that its really that difficult. As I said, I don't know Erlang ... but I recall the first time I dipped my hand into lisp and it was like trying to make water run uphill until it just clicked and I was correctly thinking in terms of recursion and things that seemed mind bogglingly complicated to do in lisp suddenly became simple.

. You can reasonably assume that the phone number you have on file for me is valid.

For what its worth, I would never say that is a reasonable assumption. Half the time I do anything major with the bank i have to update all sorts of outdated contact information. You can rightfully argue that I should be more on top of advising them when things change -- but the bank can't reasonably assume that I've done so.

They absolutely should verify they have reached who they intended to call.

That said, you, of course, are 100% correct in that you shouldn't ever hand over your SSN to some yarbo calling you claiming to be from your bank either. So everything about what you did was correct -- the only point I'm making is that your argument that the bank should reasonably assume they've reached the right person wasn't valid. They absolutely need to validate they are speaking to the right person too.

it is up to the cashier to hold the card, read the number and call it themselves

It is up to the cashier to call THEIR OWN BANK.
They are not supposed to call the number on the back of the customers card -- for reasons that should be pretty bleeding obvious.

Nobody is campaigning to keep the homosexuals unable to marry

Uh, yes, lots of people are campaigning for exactly that. Entire organizations exist for that sole purpose.

they are unable to do so already.

And people are campaigning to keep it that way.

Not because they have no right â" only because they have no ability.

I honestly can't parse this. Of course they have the "ability" to marry; they ONLY obstacle is policy, change the policy and they can get married.

Contrast with: No amount of policy change is going to help a paralyzed person do karate.

Not any more so, than a quadriplegic is deprived of the right to practice karate.

The guy in the wheelchair may be deprived of his ability to practice karate, but its not because his fellow citizens are campaigning and voting to keep him from doing it.

That's a pretty significant difference.

Tizen is the german word for dingleberry-- those pieces of crap that cling to the hairs of your butt. I think if they ever intended to ship they might have checked that.

No he failed to comprehend that people have found that particular method of calculating ratio of compression over time is proving to be *useful*.