I think that Eric is 100% correct. I fail to see how any experienced investor could have put so much weight on securities that they knew were based on very volatile, predatory loans. I don't think investors are rational or stupid. The only reason they kept putting weight on an already crumbling shelf is because they knew someone else was going to keep it propped up, or clean up the mess when it crumbled.

Both things happened, the government kept it propped up for years, now the government is cleaning up the mess. Some people might argue that this was a 'cats away mice will play' scenario, in reality, the cat just let the mice do whatever the hell they wanted while being a willing participant.

I think this goes to show, the idea of completely free markets is as flawed as it is needed. Given enough participants, someone is going to spit in the soup, usually the cook.

Links to replies sent via e-mail do not work for me, for instance:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=928#IDComment20261951

Either the entire thread has been nuked, or the plug in is not working correctly.

Dammit, I really wanted to reply to that one :)

Intellectual property is a misnomer. Please show me some living being that is solely responsible for the shaping of their intellect? Such a person would have to be birthed on a deserted island and abandoned immediately, blind and deaf so that even animal influence did not help shape their intellect. To be thorough, such a person should also have no senses, so that smells, sounds, tastes and textures could not contribute to their intellect. If such a person emerged, I would happily pronounce the primitive grunts coming out of such a being as their intellectual property.

What remains is copyright, patents and trademark .. which can not be grouped. Some can be challenged, some can not. Some can be renewed, some can not. Please do not use this misnomer, however convenient it may seem.

And threaded comments aren't vulnerable to threadjacking? I had every intention of threadjacking this comment, but could not bring myself to do so because I'm at a loss for something more interesting to discuss at the moment.

Ah well, I just can't resist, in North Korea, you can be threadjacked at gun point.

Our economic collapse was due to unregulated prospectors on wall street, the world depression has nothing to do with software licenses. When the news says 'recession' it really means depression. When the news says 'no recession', it means recession. The GPL is more of a picturesque 'ideal world' than anything.

In my ideal world, people are just automatically rewarded not just for their talents, but contributions to society. Unfortunately, that is not the case, it won't be the case for some time .. in the mean time, we have to eat :)

So, use my code, make some money .. if you run in to me, buy me a beer. :)

That's all well and good if you make it VERY clear in the code that you are receptive to proprietary forks. Most 'managers' see GPL3 and run like hell, never bothering to ask. If I worked for .... TomTom, I would not even consider GPL3 code. No way in HELL could I afford the litigation and settlement to satisfy reciprocal patent licenses.

We had 3 million USD in funding to set up a shop that did nothing but pay people to work on open source software. GPL3 came out, that money quickly vanished.

The point is, since more than one version of the GPL exists, please specify the version you are describing (or all).