No, because copyright law explicitly allows this type of copying!

In my day (and I'm not that old) we would call that a bug.

Interesting, considering that copyright explicitly permits making copies of software as part of the installation/execution process. See USC chapter 1, section 117:

Why would you be liable for copyright infringement on their software? You're not redistributing it or anything else prohibited by copyright law. At the most you'd be liable for breaking a contract (the EULA), but in the absence of the contract you have full rights, as far as copyright law is concerned, to use the software (copyright law doesn't cover the use of software, hence the name copyright).

I think you recall incorrectly. MySQL is licensed under the GNU GPL, which means it can be used for any purpose (the GPL covers only the redistribution, not the use, of software). Since the OP intends to use MySQL in-house, its license is irrelevant.

That's a good, concise distinction between the two.

For a while now I've maintained that EULA's (but not free software licenses because, as you pointed out, are different from EULA's) are bunk anyway, in the vast majority of cases. Copyright law explicitly grants to end users the right to make copies of software as necessary to use the software, so what other rights or permissions does an EULA grant to the end user? If you (as an end user) don't agree to the EULA, then you can still legally use the software and are not bound by any of its terms and conditions*. Requiring the user to accept the terms before installing the software is merely a technical hurdle, not a legal one.

* Copying and distributing software is covered by copyright, so an EULA doesn't add any protection in that area that isn't already in law.

You're stating the exact same thing as the parent you replied to. What are you doing when you "make copies of my Linux install CDs and give them to friends"? You're DISTRIBUTING it. The GPL (which is not a EULA because it doesn't apply to the end-user but to anyone distributing it) gives permission to distribute the software with a few conditions on such distribution.

Even in the absence of an EULA, it's still illegal. (Of course, an EULA almost invariably does not grant the user any additional rights (eg, to use the software) beyond what they already had in the absence of the EULA. But I'll save that discussion for another time.)

Even RMS is not opposed to people being paid for writing software. Employees at Redhat, Google, and many other companies are paid to write free software, and neither RMS nor the GNU GPL are opposed to that. Don't you think that the GPL would restrict selling software or being paid for writing software if RMS were opposed to it? It doesn't, and he is not.

Last time I checked, most of my shortcuts that are "launched by click" don't specify the full path to the executable. Take a shortcut to Firefox as an example. The command is just "firefox" (plus possibly some switches and options). When I click on the shortcut, the underlying system (Gnome or whatever) searches the PATH environment variable for that executable and runs the first instance that it finds, in the same way a shell would do (of course, Gnome technically is a shell too). This means if I install a different version of Firefox under /usr/local/bin, the system then runs that version instead, just as it should (because /usr/local/bin comes before /usr/bin in PATH).

How would a change in the libc affect whether users can write to directories? The C library doesn't determine file/directory access; if it did, it would be extremely easy for a program to get around file permissions by using a different C library, or by not using a C library at all. It sounds like either the permissions or groups changed (see /etc/groups), or SE Linux stuff (which I don't believe is necessary for most users) is getting in the way.

It's more like comparing a family sedan to a Ferrari (which relatively few people can afford). They're reasonably priced (free!) and have all the basic features needed for PERSONAL photo management. Besides, what CRITICAL features are these photo managers, combined with other software like Rawstudio, missing that Lightroom has (for personal use, mind you)? It can't be noise reduction; Rawstudio has decent noise reduction. Lens correction? Rawstudio has that too. It can't be ease of use either; Rawstudio Shotwell, and F-Spot are all pretty easy to use.

There's no personal photo management and editing software for Linux? I guess I better tell the developers of F-Spot, Shotwell, and Darktable (and perhaps a few other projects too) that they don't exist. I personally use Shotwell; I used F-Spot for awhile, but older versions of F-Spot had show-stopping bugs for me. Shotwell has transparent RAW conversion and a few basic editing options. It's easy to open photos in a "real" editor (eg, Raw Studio or GIMP) for more extensive work, but for many photos it's sufficient.

Likewise with video editing software. Lately I haven't had much need to edit videos (other than transcoding or basic effects, which is easily done with ffmpeg or mencoder), but I know that video editing software does exist for Linux. Kdenlive is one that I've used most recently. It's not bad. Then there's Cinelerra, which is supposed to be the most advanced NL video editor available for Linux. I used it once in the past, but it was sluggish on my antiquated hardware at the time. I know there's a few other NL video editors out there for Linux, but I can't recall their names at the moment.

For vector graphics, there's Inkscape.

For that legacy in-house Windows-only software for which you lost the source (shame on you for losing it in the first place!), there's Wine. But frankly, if you lose internal source code that easily, good luck keeping track of all those software licenses!

At work, I use VS2010 Express for one of my projects, and if the full version is anything like it, I say "no thanks". It's buggy (especially the Intellisense, which is more like Nonsense sometimes), and the editor itself is nothing to write home about. I also use Netbeans for both Java (a fairly large Java project at that) and C++, and it's a far better IDE. But for this one project I have to use some Microsoft header files which don't work with GCC (some of their headers have syntax errors!), which is why I use VS2010 Express. Of course, I could probably use the VC dev tools in Netbeans, but that just seems wrong for some reason.

So really, it seems like you've been living under a rock (or under Microsoft's shadow, which is roughly equivalent) for several years when it comes to Linux. Either that, or you're a troll. Take your pick.

Yes, clearly everyone here is an idiot (except you, of course). Did you sign up on /. just to point out all the idiots?

You still missed the point of the analogy, by the way.

I think you missed the point of the analogy. The statement can be reworded as:

Calculator is to No RPN as Computer is to Only Runs Windows

In other words, No RPN (that is, only infix or algebraic notation) is like Windows, both of which can be seen as limitations of their respective devices.

tl;dr version: Whooooosh!