Dude001,

Thanks for the comments! That is exciting news, I appreciate you bringing it up!

File transfer is probably the one feature I'm really missing out on right now in the FreeNX / NoMachineNX situation.

swifttech,

$30/month and a non-cross platform solution that requires ActiveX? Not exactly in the same game space.

Beuser,

Thank you for the comments!

This is the exact sort of thing I was hoping to see - but was simply unaware of!

Lex,

I tried Arch back in Dec. of 2008 and liked what I saw then. I will keep it in mind!

saul,

An excellent point, one studiously ignored by Team Apologista as they choose instead to ride the coattails of popular distros, often conflating distro success with Mono success!

Jose_X,

I have about the same level of understand that you do .. I think the concept is to tag, cross-reference, and otherwise organize and present metadata, but I have no concrete picture of how it works.

saul,

Thank you for the comments!

This is an area of the GPL that I wish I had a more complete understanding of - complicated by the fact that the legal interpretation may differ from the developer's intention.

Part of the problem here is (I think) copyright isn't such a great match for software.

Also, I am troubled when two honest parties are unable to agree on the meaning and scope of the license. That is, I fully expect corporations to play legal trickeries and look for loopholes (a la Novell), but I don't expect two developers to have to worry if they are in compliance or not.

That's not to say that I expect all developers to agree on the merits of a license, but I would like everyone to be able to agree on what it means and how to comply with it.

I wonder what the ratio of confusion over the GPL is when broken down something like:
"legal gobbledygook" : "loophole hunting" : "complex concept"

Greg,

Thank you for the comments!

On point 2: See saulgoode's comment here, but this the crux of (one of) the legal argument for derived works.

My counter-point (with no legal cite) is the example of an GPL-licensed OS. It provides a "clean" API for applications to run on. Yet no one (that I am aware of) has made the argument that all programs running on Linux must in turn be GPL.

That is why I am currently of the opinion that the "clean-ness" of the interface is what matters. If the original work provides a "clean" API / interface then the work is less likely to be considered derivative in my mind.

This also helps explain why answers differ and is in line (I think) with Mr. Van Lindberg's analysis. (Assuming I understand his analysis, I tend to agree with his argument).

On point 3: The funny point to me is that people want to benefit from the mores that created the code without following them in turn. It's understandable, just amusing.

Brandon,

Thanks for the comments!

I think Apple would have little problem arguing they are not a monopoly or even close to one in the mobile smartphone market.

In fact, as near as I can tell - Apple has never aimed to be the mass-market choice (like Microsoft). I'm pretty sure Jobs prefers 90% control over 20% of the market than the other way around.

(There's an interesting tanget here on the old point that just because something is the most popular doesn't mean it's the best.)

Saul,

Thank you for the comments!

Another angle of interest might be to compare Apple's restrictions to those of consoles like the Playstation, Wii, and so forth.

Haven't those platforms always been severly restricted and controlled by the manufacturer?

And even then, is Apple obligated to carry applications in its own App Store?