I think its a completely different thing. In stonehenge, there was no mega-river which flooded the entire area. While making things difficult in some way, the flooding allowed the Egyptians to move heavy stuff easily because of the Archimedes principle.
They had boats and knew everything about locks and irrigation.
Stonehenge? I think that's a different matter.

I imagine some archeologists can't either. They just don't understand physics... yet the method of construction seems clear to me.

They where moved by irrigation.
the flats around the pyramids are perfectly flat. And where flooded with water when the Nile was at a yearly peak.
The water was trapped inside. The fence to keep the water inside is still standing
A corridor in the middle towards the pyramid was build and had dams to move the ships upward
The signs of the dam plates are still there in the corridors
The pyramid itself was a water basin, with the outside walls keeping the water inside
That's why they are all perfectly level
The ships moved the bricks in and lowered them to fill the pyramid. as a result the water rises.
However, water evaporates, and the movement of the ships upwards needs a water displacement at least equal to the mass moved up
So the ancient egyptians left clues everywhere to explain how they did it: everywhere, in the tombs in the pyramids, and even in New Kingdom in the Valley of the Kings, they drew how they accomplished it: by carrying buckets of water on their head.
That's how they build the pyramids; by putting water in the top of the pyramid, till all the ships with the stones where there.
Now, was that so hard to figure out? Stupid archeologists!

I made a chart of the public data available by the WHO. Both the cases and the deaths are matching a lot with the exponential curves onto them. I've put it online here: https://plus.google.com/+Jaspe...

They could.

But the weapon manufacturers would have to look elsewhere for their software.

And the implications for such a law would go much further than OpenSource software.

It would be valid for any commercially developed software too.

I would be very surprised if the US government would pass a law to contradict the software industry to such an extend!

Would you agree with such a law?
How are they going to define a 'OSS' license?
Don't you think we will find a way around that to create another license not fitting that description and rendering that executive order useless.
No president would issue an executive order if it also hurts the software industry in the same way.

But I guess it's a valid point and something to be taken into consideration when drafting such a GPLv4.
Also don't forget that the GPLv4 goes a lot further than only the US...

We make software for a reason. Not to just give it away for free as in beer. But to provide freedom.

For that reason we ask people to release the changes to the code back to our collection of software which provides more freedom.

While certain companies are concerned about competitors getting to see their code, the disadvantages are much less important than the advantages of being able to stand on the shoulders of the giants in the opensource community.

We limit the freedom of people who want to use our code without giving back, so we can ensure a future in which we can access data without having to depend on one company. Together we are building that future.

Yet we see that our code is being used for mass surveillance.
To snoop upon all our communications.
To invade our privacy.
To datamine our meta-data and to possibly make far-reaching conclusions.
And to build weapons of mass destruction.
I don't want to contribute to such a future.

Developers have the choice to license their software under licenses as they choose appropriately.
Certainly the BSD license can still be used for such applications, even GPLv3 and GPLv2 licensed programs - in the far fetched assumption that the GPLv4 would become the 'good public license'.
And changing the law to remove clauses out of a software license,... well I think it's highly improbable and very difficult to implement in a law. Yet nothing is impossible. And it would probably lead again to a new software license (and a lot of relicensing work).

As we currently limit the freedom of those who want to create DRM-protected GPLv3 linux appliances. Or as we limit the freedom of people who would like to redistribute a Linux derivative in a proprietary format.

Certain freedoms have to be limited to protect our interests and preserve our own freedoms and even our privacy.

I can't speak for Russia, but Germany is very strict about copyright regulations.

Just as the current license is very good respected, and for certain embedded applications the GPLv3 is avoided, they would certainly not want to risk any software license violation.

While an arms race might have been important in the past, it isn't what drives current civilisation.

And I hope it will stay that way.

At least in my country most of the intelligent Linux developers don't want to work for the weapons manufacturer. So they build less good soft/hardware as they could have otherwise.

Just like good developers don't want to work for Microsoft, because who wants to be associated with that?

The key thing is that I don't want to personally decide what is 'evil' and what is not.

But we are doing that right now with the GPLv3 already.

I believe that the EFF has a wonderful opportunity there to form a committee to make that definition and implement it legally.

Don't you think someone would leak it?

And if they would use it, at least we could sue them...

My bet is they would not. And that they would have to rely upon outdated crappy software. Or pay a lot more for their software development.

Or just use software with older versions of the GPL only.

One could limit the scope of 'evil' to weapons of mass destruction.

I guess that's a valid debate.

And it will still be possible to make them without our software... I just don't want to have helped them!
We make software because of that warm fuzzy feeling. Not to know that it contributes to killing people (from whatever country).

Again I call for the GPLv4 to become the 'good public license'.
Cannot be used for weapon manufacturing or mass surveillance... or anything defined as 'evil' by a FSF committee.

I don't want to be part of the evil masterplans of those basards.
Currently 'patent protection' is defined as evil. But I think most of us agree there are more fundamental evil for which our software can be used...

Wake up RMS!

The should not be allowed to have it both ways: protect the source code because it's "valuable" but not support is any more because it has become worthless crap - and hell yes - why not make it a more general law: If you drop support for old software; your company should be enforced to open the source. This has several advantages:
1) Old hardware can still be supported, so there is less e-waste
2) Customers are not forced into anything
3) Even more world domination for Open Source software!

Whatever license, as long as it's OSI approved.

And I can't resist to post a link to our press release done today.