GNU Taler 0.0.0 released • Hacker News Board

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#141

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:07 PM UTC

miles wrote: post #113

sbierwagen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vast majority? Military spending is only 15.75% of the US federal budget. And that's just federal spending, citizens also pay taxes to states and municipalities, which rarely field combat aircraft.

While military spending (not counting veterans' benefits) in 2015 was around 16% of the total US federal budget[1,2], it made up 53.71% of the discretionary spending budget, dwarfing the next closest category, "government", at 6.54%. From the BusinessInsider link below: " The military budget is by far the largest single cost displayed. It is almost six times larger than the 2015 education budget and it is more than 3…

[deleted]

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#142

Post by sidhu1f » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:11 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #128

cyphar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNU was created on the basis of the GPL. It's not an accident that the "GNU stack had the GPL", it was a plan from the beginning to create a system which people could use in freedom. The toolchain would not exist if Stallman hadn't made the decision that user freedom was something he should work towards. And we wouldn't have any free software without GNU, because that's what the world was heading towards in the 70s a…

> GNU was created on the basis of the GPL. It's not an accident that the "GNU stack had the GPL", it was a plan from the beginning to create a system which people could use in freedom. The accident was that the plan was conceived by Stallman and involved GNU/GPL. What I'm saying is a similar plan with BSD/MIT licenses, if it was initiated by another guy first, would be just as good. In other words that the reason GNU…

What makes you so sure that, had the GNU stack been BSD/MIT licensed and as popular, that Microsoft etc. would not have come out with products featuring the same software but with proprietary extensions and closed licenses?

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#143

Post by alkonaut » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:15 PM UTC

exstudent2 wrote: post #92

X86BSD wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better argument is that it's simply not a voluntary contract between two parties. It's theft by one party that has a monopoly on violence to enforce the theft on the other party. Until one day when the other party stops playing by those rules and shoots back. "But you can vote to change it." If voting changed anything it would be illegal. Only an idiot believes "voting" means anything in a two party system…

Really sad to see all the libertarian viewpoints blanket down voted, mostly without any replies. It really seems like tech has been hit with a wave of pro-big government thinking. My personal theory is that it's younger people who didn't have to deal with the threat of a draft and the baby boomers heavy handed social meddling. The threat of being forced into a war you don't agree with will make you think twice about…

There are plenty of interesting ideas in the libertarian school of thought - but all I have seen here is the repeated statement that taxation is theft, an idea that would be laughed at at the libertarian party convention. There simply isn't any good response to that viewpoint that hasn't already been posted in comments in this thread and many before it. Repeating the claim doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

Being forced to fight a war etc is something else entirely, and I doubt a comment focused on that would be blanket down voted.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#144

Post by icebraining » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:16 PM UTC

X86BSD wrote: post #66

icebraining wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how other open source projects had no problem adopting ZFS or it's license. Not true; here's OpenBSD/OpenSSH developer Damien Miller on the CDDL: The CDDL is even more restrictive than the GPL and is far more legally pernicious. In particular: Clause 3.5 is a GPL-like "must distribute source" requirement. Worse, clauses 3.3 and 9 have no place in a free software license. I don't understand how anyone who h…

Yeah so I'm not sure first of all quoting theo or openbsd folks is adding value to your argument. They are known to be quite, how should I say this, on the extreme side of things. And just because obsd holds this view that doesn't refute my statement. Illumos and FreeBSD are both OS and both are using it. So it is what it is.

Illumos didn't exactly "adopt" ZFS; it's a clone of Solaris created by core Solaris engineers, which just happened to live on beyond its original project. So essentially there's one project. Meanwhile, the GPL is used in FreeBSD, OpenBSD, MacOSX, Windows - and even SmartOS, an Illumos distribution.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#145

Post by ultramancool » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:23 PM UTC

ybx wrote: post #133

abritinthebay wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument would hold water if that money was earned with no help from federal or state at all. So no use of public utilities, roads, etc, oh and your company can't employ people who have benefited from them either - like going to a public or state school. Good luck with that.

While I don't consider myself a libertarian by any stretch, typically roads and utilities are two of the things that have pretty easy counter-arguments - make utilities free market (or something of the sort) and roads can be paid via tolls. If you want something that doesn't have a good counter-argument, look at policing and contract enforcement (basically, a public legal system). That's something that can't be done…

> Well, unless you don't want the utility at all, you have no choice but to either pay whatever fee they want you to, or move. When you move, it's possible an exclusivity agreement exists there too. One could argue that it's not any better the way it currently is (Comcast, etc.) however you couldn't make it better by making everything privately-owned without regulation, and you could make it better by going further towards the public side.

Smart, minimal regulation is often a better alternative to no regulation or to government ownership.

I think there's a simpler combination approach here which works out better in most if not all cases. Rather than having a central government to provide the utility themselves (ie: government gives you internet instead of comcast), instead use the government enforce competition, sharing of delivery lines, etc. This is the system that's been adopted in Canada and the UK and has generally solved the issue a lot better than the net neutrality rules and such which have been put in place in the US have.

It's cheaper on tax payers and still allows the market to ultimately provide many options and technological advances to consumers more rapidly. It's better for a government to make a market than to kill a market.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#146

Post by maratd » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:25 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #139

maratd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they usually pay royalties on said resources? Pay for rights to said resources? Trust me, we learned a long time ago how to extract $$$ for said resources.

By resources you mean financial systems, roads and other infrastructure, legal systems, access to educated workers, being defended by an army...? I could accept a company making profit and paying no taxes if they didn't have offices, staff, use roads or electricity etc. It would be pretty hard to do anything as a company "outside" the framework of a society.

I was responding directly to the comment about natural resources. Your comment is entirely unrelated to what I said.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#147

Post by alkonaut » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:32 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #146

alkonaut wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By resources you mean financial systems, roads and other infrastructure, legal systems, access to educated workers, being defended by an army...? I could accept a company making profit and paying no taxes if they didn't have offices, staff, use roads or electricity etc. It would be pretty hard to do anything as a company "outside" the framework of a society.

I was responding directly to the comment about natural resources. Your comment is entirely unrelated to what I said.

I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious - that corporations exist within a society and use a multitude of important "resources" to function at all. That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#148

Post by unfunco » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:39 PM UTC

MatthewWilkes wrote: post #7

So, semver is great and all, but 0.0.x releases just look silly, in my opinion. I've never seen someone zero index the least significant column before though, which makes it look even worse. Would people actually expect w piece of software marked as version 0.0.0 to be anything more than a placeholder?

Server recommends starting at 0.1.0 – starting at 0.0.0 essentially means (to me at least) that nothing has been written and nothing has been released. Initial versions (IMO) should begin with 0.1.0.

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#149

Post by bpicolo » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

maratd wrote: post #146

alkonaut wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By resources you mean financial systems, roads and other infrastructure, legal systems, access to educated workers, being defended by an army...? I could accept a company making profit and paying no taxes if they didn't have offices, staff, use roads or electricity etc. It would be pretty hard to do anything as a company "outside" the framework of a society.

I was responding directly to the comment about natural resources. Your comment is entirely unrelated to what I said.

How do you think we make roads, energy?

Re: GNU Taler 0.0.0 released

#150

Post by shrugger » Sun, Jun 05, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

kybernetyk wrote: post #13

>Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can learn their citizen's total income and thus collect sales, value-added or income taxes Wow, what a feature ...

GNU projects are really awesome until people start implementing them.