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Comment: Re:GPL not appropriate for taxpayer funded project (Score 1) 116

by Digana (#38707876) Attached to: NASA Open Sources Aircraft Design Software

The issue is that a license like the GPL is discriminatory to certain business models, namely those that keep source code changes private.

Huh, the GPL doesn't forbid you from keeping changes private. It forbids you from distributing changes without source. If you don't distribute, there is no problem.

And there is no business model so your point is not on topic. ;-)

Sure there is. It's part of many organisations' business models. To take one heavy-handed example, Google. They grab Linux-based source code, create their own internal distribution, and use it to power internal development and massive servers that are turning in a pretty penny.

Comment: Re:GPL not appropriate for taxpayer funded project (Score 1) 116

by Digana (#38707758) Attached to: NASA Open Sources Aircraft Design Software

Huh, the GPL doesn't forbid you from keeping changes private. It forbids you from distributing changes without source. If you don't distribute, there is no problem.

Furtheremore, Whatever, GPL isn't the only free license. Use a BSD-style license or any other license without copyleft.

I still don't understand how an agency of the US government can claim copyright, though. Usually what happens is that the government subcontracts to individuals and are then bound by the copyright claims of those individuals. How is NASA getting away with this?

Comment: Wesnoth (Score 1) 329

by Digana (#37340962) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Programs To Learn From?
Wesnoth has some of the most beauutiful C++ out there (yes, there is such a thing as beautiful C++). If C++ is what you want to work with, I recommend you start looking at their stuff. Play the game first, of course, so you can start to get a feel for what sorts of things it does. Then you should be able to start guessing where things in the code may be. Step through the code with a debugger too, of course. I find that "ok, I'm gonna try to make the code do this", i.e. starting with a specific goal, setting breakpoints, and stepping through the code is the best way to get comfortable with an unfamiliar codebase, no matter its size.
GNU is Not Unix

Emacs violates GPL since 2009->

Submitted by Digana
Digana writes "Emacs, one of GNU's flagship products and most famous software creation of Richard Stallman, has been discovered to be violating the GPL since 2009-09-28 by distributing binaries that were missing source. The CEDET package, a set of contributed files for giving certain IDE functionality related to static code analysis, has distributed files generated from bison grammars without distributing the grammar itself. This happened for Emacs versiones 23.2 and 23.3, released during late 2009, and has just been discovered."
Link to Original Source
The Internet

The Internet's Age of Rage 315

Posted by Soulskill
from the none-of-us-are-as-obnoxious-as-all-of-us dept.
RackNine sends this excerpt from an editorial at the Guardian: "The worldwide web has made critics of us all. But with commenters able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, the blog and chatroom have become forums for hatred and bile. ... The psychologists call it 'deindividuation.' It's what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed. The classic deindividuation experiment concerned American children at Halloween. Trick-or-treaters were invited to take sweets left in the hall of a house on a table on which there was also a sum of money. When children arrived singly, and not wearing masks, only 8% of them stole any of the money. When they were in larger groups, with their identities concealed by fancy dress, that number rose to 80%. The combination of a faceless crowd and personal anonymity provoked individuals into breaking rules that under 'normal' circumstances they would not have considered. ... One simple antidote to this seems to rest in the very old-fashioned idea of standing by your good name. Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line. Put your name to something and your words are freighted with responsibility."
Biotech

Hybrid Human-Animal DNA Experiments Raise Concerns 311

Posted by Soulskill
from the wonder-what-al-gore-thinks-about-this dept.
Kevin Fishburne writes "British scientists are calling for a new agency to oversee the mixing of human and animal DNA, which is progressing at a rate most may not be aware of: 'Among experimentation that might spark concern are those where human brain cells might change animal brains, those that could lead to the fertilization of human eggs in animals and any modifications of animals that might create attributes considered uniquely human, like facial features, skin or speech. ... Some disagree. "We think some of these should be done, but they should be done in an open way to maintain public confidence," said Robin Lovell-Badge, head of stem cell biology and developmental genetics at Britain's Medical Research Council, one of the expert group members. He said experiments injecting human brain cells into the brains of rats might help develop new stroke treatments or that growing human skin on mice could further understanding of skin cancer.'"

[Washington, D.C.] is the home of... taste for the people -- the big, the bland and the banal. -- Ada Louise Huxtable