The difference is very relevant here. Stallman believes that developing closed source software is morally wrong, much the same way that some folks believe abortion is morally wrong. The Open Source "movement" believes that opening the source leads to technically superior software. Linus open-sourced Linux because he thought it would be more useful that way, not because he thought that he was doing something morally right.

The OP here apparently came to an agreement with his partner that they not open source the good parts of the code. His question about it being "wrong" to open source the "good stuff" seems to come from a moral perspective. From a moral perspective, I think he's on fine ground. If he's worrying about making the most money, it depends on what he considers his company to be. Are they are hardware shop first and a software shop second or is it the other way around? If it's the former, open source it all. If it's the latter, he should close everything up if money is the only issue at hand.

You must not know the joke.

A Libertarian is a Republican with a conviction for possession of weed.

In many cases some free software licenses conflict with the terms of app stores. For instance, Pidgin can't be ported to the iPhone for this (and other) reasons.

I don't know of any authors who refused to publish their apps to an app store because of issues not related to licensing. Do you know of any?

If I go on vacation to Ohio, my home state wouldn't be able to collect tax on it.

Correct. That's why I said that they can't.

However if I buy something online from home and the retailer is in Ohio then there would be an argument as to where exactly the sale took place. I suspect that would be at my home as that's ultimately where I take possession of the goods.

That isn't the issue at hand. It's an interstate transaction, and your home state is not allowed to tax that transaction. They can (and often do) tax your use of the item.

As has been said here before, if I, an Ohioan, buy something from Newegg.com in CA, my state of residence has no idea about it. They can't compel Newegg to collect tax on my behalf like they can Best Buy.

Ohio is not allowed to tax purchases I make across state lines per Article I, Section 10. They get around that by taxing the use of the item rather than the sale. So on my Ohio taxes, there's a line where I declare any purchases I made that were not subject to sales tax. They then tax me on the use of the item at the same tax rate as if I'd have bought it locally. It's all entirely voluntary. I can put down $0 and they'd never know the difference. It's tax evasion, but it's really hard for them to prove.

This bill "would allow states to collect sales taxes from remote sellers if they sign on to the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA), a 12-year-old effort to meet the Supreme Court's requirements to simplify sales tax collection, or if they adopt a so-called alternative tax simplification plan." [quoted from the article]

So that's why we have the bill.

He pulled them out of his rear.

Deflation is bad because it makes cash an investment unto itself rather than a medium of exchange. Pulling your money out of a bank and keeping it under your mattress becomes a sound investment strategy.

If cash becomes more valuable, people hold onto it because it's appreciating. They don't spend it, meaning less people buy things, meaning prices go down, meaning your cash becomes more valuable, etc., etc. Meanwhile debts are still valued in dollars, so when your wages get cut (because of the deflation, you're making more in real dollars), it becomes harder to pay off those debts.

Oh, chill, dude. Someone who saw the sarcasm tags rated it a +1, Funny.

Best of luck to you on your presentation.

He's jumping to the datastore because he can't cunningly fit in a link to his presentation about NoSQL database software if he doesn't.

That's actually not too far from the truth. Copyright infringement is a strict liability crime. That means even if you didn't realize you were infringing and/or took reasonable steps to ensure you weren't infringing, you are still on the hook if you end up doing it anyway. In that case, the minimum penalties are lowered to $200 per work infringed.

There's an idea, send someone a trojan that shares their music folder. I've got about 5,000 songs, give or take. That'd be about $1,000,000 -- minimum. There is nothing in the law that says you have to get the minimum...the jury can still find me liable for the full $150,000, making the damages $750,000,000.

It makes my back feel a little better. It doesn't do much more than that, and my Chiropractor doesn't claim that it does. It doesn't cure cancer or anything.

Oddly enough, those of us who have HSAs/FSAs get a tax break to pay for homeopathy, acupuncture, and yes, faith-healing. You can use tax-exempt money to pay for someone to pray away your ailment so long as they are a licensed Christian Science Practitioner.

As others have said on the subject, if you think that little green pieces of paper are worth less than gold, you are more than welcome to trade the little green pieces of paper for gold to someone who wants the paper more than they want the gold. No one is stopping you.

I trust the paper because there isn't a single entity that I've done business with that hasn't accepted them in exchange for goods and services.

If you're making an oblique reference to a gold standard, I respectfully submit that the Federal Reserve having control of the inflation rate is better than no one having control of it (or rather companies that mine gold having control of it). The fiat money system does have it's failings, but it's better than a federally-fixed price for gold.

Call me when it happens. We've got a moderate President and the 111th Congress was center-left at best.

If you really want a *liberal* supermajority (friendly reminder that Democrat != liberal), we'd need a lot more folks like Dennis Kucinich and Bernie Sanders replacing the Heath Shulers and Mark Pryors of the Congress.

And then of course, you'd need this liberal supermajority to actually *do something* instead of sitting around being scared of their own shadows.

It also is common if your codebase is so old and full of spaghetti that you're afraid to refactor anything.

You're forgetting folks who log in to a particular program to get paid. We've got a custom CRM program that tracks clock-in and clock-out times. If I shut down my PC every evening, I'd be sitting there for 3 minutes every morning waiting for my computer to boot before I'm officially on the clock. 3 minutes x 5 days x 52 weeks x my wage in minutes is a few hundred dollars a year.

I'll keep the PC on, TYVM.

And as always happens in this case, someone has to bring up the 14th Amendment:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States