GPL Upheld in Germany Against D-Link
Once again, we have Harald Welte, and his lawyer, Till Jaeger, a co-founder of the Institute for Legal Issues of Free and Open Source Software (ifrOSS), to thank for insisting on folks living up to their GPL obligations. D-Link Germany GmbH on the losing side tried to allege that the GPL wasn't binding because it violated Germany's antitrust law and interfered with its contracts with third parties. A translation [of the ruling]:
Because the defendent has violated the designated obligations of number 2 GPL, the cancelling condition is met with the consequence, that the defendant lost his right of use. [...] It is not decided, whether, how the defendant claims, the rulings in the GPL are invalid because of violation against Art. 81 EGV and §1 GWB - in particular the prohibition of price bindings and the prohibition of constituting conditions for a follow up agreement in a first agreement. Because this would lead, according to §139 BGB, to the nullity of the whole license agreement with the consequence, that the defendant had no right of use at all, so that the plaintiff could claim against the defendant out of violation of copyrights.
And that's exactly what Eben Moglen has been telling you for years, isn't it? Moglen has explained for many years that the way the GPL works is this: if you don't accept it or violate its terms, you have no right to distribute at all, and if you do distribute anyway, it's a copyright violation, because only the license gives you any distribution rights.
From: Groklaw.
Microsoft Media Player 11 shreds your rights
Think DRM was bad already? Welcome to Windows Media Player 11, and the rights get chipped away a lot more.
WMP 11 will no longer allow you the privilege of backing up your licenses, they are tied to a single device, and if you lose it, you are really SOL. [...] This is nothing less than a civil rights coup, and most people are dumb enough to let it happen.
But it gets worse. If you rip your own CDs, WMP 11 will take your rights away too.
If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on [...] You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times.
This says to me it will keep track of your ripping externally, and remove your rights whether or not you ask it to.
Then when you go down on the page a bit, it goes on to show that it guts Tivo capabilities. After three days, it kills your recordings for you, how thoughtful of them. Going away for a week? Tough, your rights are inconvenient to their profits, so they have to go.
What WMP 11 represents is one of the biggest thefts of your rights that I can think of. MS planned this, pushed the various pieces slowly, and this is the first big hammer to drop.
From: The Inquirer
FOSS Community, Microsoft And Reconciliation
Neil McAllister calls on the FOSS community to drop the fortress mentality and work to build bridges with Microsoft. That's kind of like saying an abused wife should hug her husband just because he brings her flowers. Maybe Microsoft really is changing, but LXer's Don Parris suggests watching to see what they are holding in the other hand.
From: LXer
Tags: microsoft
Setting up and managing an APT repository with reprepro
by Sander MarechalIf you are writing software for Debian GNU/Linux or deratives like Ubuntu then setting up an APT repository is a very useful thing to do. Setting up an APT repository for your users makes it very easy for them to keep up-to-date with the latest version of your software, far easier than providing .deb's as downloads on your website.
This tutorial will show you how to do just that with reprepro. Reprepro makes it very easy to set up APT repositories that use a common /pool directory to store all the package files. In this regard, reprepro is superior to APT tools such as apt-ftparchive. I am going to assume that you are already familliar with the basic workings of an APT repository.
