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Although I personally think matching the OpenBSD libressl license would have been better, I still have to regard the move towards using one of the mainstream, modern standard open source licenses for such a widely used and critical software component a Good Thing. I do, however, also agree with those voicing skepticism about the "silence gives consent" bit - this is important enough to be worth doing without adding a (very) questionable practice like that to the mix. I'd suggest instead setting up some sort of "relicensing coverage" report, and use the yay/nay/no-answer status of various diffs to figure out a price tag for re-writing the bits that can't be relicensed.

I don't suppose the libressl folks could end up creating a 2-clause BSD implementation of the SSL/TLS stack that could divorce itself completely from its openssl origins? (Yes I know that's almost certainly impractical for such a large, complex and thorny code base and problem set, but it's a nice dream... maybe some cryptography researchers/companies/etc. looking to make a name the the industry could target and re-implement specific pieces/algorithms/etc...)


When I was in a hardware store last year, I had a chance to compare a 4k and 5k iMac side by side. IIRC, the size was the same and it came down to PPI.

For casual use 4k was plenty, but where 5k really proved itself for me was small terminal text. I was able to take the font size in terminals down noticeably smaller on the 5k while still having readable text.

That's why the 8k interests me - when doing programming, my particular work-flow usually ends up with lots of open terminals, documents, and web pages as information and source code are woven together into a program. The smaller the readable text, the more I can fit on the screen at once and see at the same time. With 275 PPI and large screen size all in one, this sounds like it might be the dream coding monitor...


It always baffles me when people say "There doesn't need to be any higher PPI! We've already maxed out on the human eye perceiving pixels!"

Sure that's lovely, but that doesn't mean graphics and text won't gain more fidelity/ use cases from higher PPI. Just because you can't focus on individual pixels and pick them out doesn't mean your brain caps out at percieving more than 225 PPI..


The current copyright system is probably inevitable if you view monetization as the sole valid means of creation incentivization. There are also those who want to preserve the "integrity" of their work indefinitely and avoid any risk of what they would consider degrading or inappropriate reuse. If you come at this from either the monetization or the indefinite integrity camps, the public domain is entirely a negative proposition. This is unfortunate, since from a socitial standpoint there are many overall benefits to the public domain (renewal of interest in what would otherwise be lost works and lost effort, lowered barriers to entry for those needing older work on which to base new efforts, etc.) Unfortunately, most of those gains are also net negatives to those working within (and benefiting from) the current system, and consequently the public domain is unlikely to have advocates with the resources to sway the powers that be in its favor. I suppose a sufficiently broad and strong wave of public opinion might do the trick, but I don't know what the prospects of that are (I suspect dim in the short term, more difficult to calculate in the long term if copyright terms keep getting extended indefinitely.)


The "integrity of the work" argument has always been an oddity to me. As a Brit who grew up with ska (the original and the revival) I have been aware for a long time that the island music, rocksteady, ska, reggae etc, flourished due to weak and often ignored copyright law in Jamaica.

There is a whole genre of music there, with a very strong cultural background that is historically important in Jamaica and further afield, the UK being just one of those places. Some of the best music, imo, from the 60s and 70s came from Jamaican artists "ripping off" western music to create something unique. I don't want to live in a world in which Marcia Griffiths' voice went unheard. I also want people like Marcia to get paid and live a good life. The current copyright system is not working for anyone, not for artists either I believe.

The "degrading" of work seems like an arrogant argument, as if nobody in the word could do better than the original (or even different if not better). Books require editing before publication, songs require mastering and mixing by professionals. It is reasonable to assume that any work could be reworked as something improved, as long as that reworking does not try to pass itself off as the original there ought not to be a problem. Some system of profit share where profit exists could exist.

Here's a humorous article from techdirt highlighting the absurdities of the current situation https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150503/17153830875/get-u... My own take on one detail discussed on the comments there is that the Marley estate probably are trying to regain the copyright because the family are mostly working musicians (at least 3 sons and one daughter of Bob Marley that I know of) and would like to perform their father's songs.


Wonder if there have been any updates since this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1a4wvf/kalman_...


I'm quite intrigued by the libfossil project (http://fossil.wanderinghorse.net/repos/libfossil) which attempts to make the core fossil VCS abilities available as a library. To the best of my understanding this is and will remain a "spin-off" project of the main fossil project, but it looks like as of August 2016 there is still active work on it.

The combination of the BSD license and a self-contained C library in the style of sqlite that offers VCS capabilities app developers could build into their applications is extremely enticing. libgit2 (https://libgit2.github.com/) may have matured enough to be viable for that use case if one is comfortable with GPLv2 plus linking exception, but the sqlite-style include one header, build one C file and you're done integration is really really nice.


This is cool, but (as usual with the Smithsonian) they claim copyright and/or commercial usage restrictions on the downloadable data. I wish they wouldn't do that...


Shouldn't the copyright be owned by NASA though, which is required to release everything freely.


Nevermind. This was created entirely by the Smithsonian.


Why would anyone want commercial usage of their work without payment?


Isn't the Simthsonian a government entity?


It's a trust administered by the federal government but 1/3 of their funding is not by the government and not all their employees are federal workers.

The ORNL is funded by taxpayer money (80%) but they license technology they develop to companies even exclusively so it's seems the Smithsonian should be able to copyright their work.


I agree on the facts, but disagree on what they imply.


Google turns up these:

https://www.google.com/patents/US5628016

https://www.google.com/patents/US6247169

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070016894A1

I'm not sure about the last one since it's an apparently abandoned application rather than a granted patent...

Interestingly, US6247169 reports "lapsed" on the google page due to non-payment of fees...

I'm really not sure what to make of US5628016 - it's filing date is in 1994, but there's a report of a 2015 "Assignment" legal event.

(edit - fixed links)


From what I can see, if Apache OpenOffice wants to be a viable project with Libreoffice already out there and well ahead from a user perspective, it needs to focus on things that are attractive about it that differentiate it from Libreoffice. Right now, to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, that's primarily their license. My thought on this is that they need to pick some (fairly radical) directions to take the project in that will provide clear alternatives to LibreOffice. Maybe they could review the ideas here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Crazy_Ideas and pick some of the more ambitious ones that Libreoffice is unlikely to attempt.


The best thing that could happen to the community at this point is to hand over the Openoffice trademarks to The Document Foundation and for them to retire the Libreoffice branding, shift everything over to the more recognizable Openoffice branding.

That way, it would actually bring people on board who are not technical, since pretty much no one who isn't into Linux knows what Libreoffice is.


This! Some people can even save face by calling it a merger, much like when io.js "merged with" node.js.


I knew it - our brains are written in Lisp!



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