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Coincidentally, this is also Stallman's official stance on copyright - he would agree to ditch copyright altogether, but only if the law would enforce copyleft (i.e. source availability) universally instead.

I knew there was a better link regarding copyright and RMS than the one I was posting, thanks for reminding me of it

You've inappropriately mixed contexts here, though... Without copyright, we have no need for someone to contribute back to the community, because the community doesn't need "permission" to take what they have and run with it.

Let's assume we have that hypothetical no-copyright world.

Suppose I take some GPL'd library, build a product around it, and sell it as binaries only, no source code. Now, the community doesn't need permission to take what they have, yes. But all they have is a huge binary, which is pretty much useless for them. The effective contribution is thus zero.

Whereas, in a world with GPL+copyright, the community gets back the code which is then reused by members of that community...

Coincidentally, this is also Stallman's official stance on copyright - he would agree to ditch copyright altogether, but only if the law would enforce copyleft (i.e. source availability) universally instead.

`Linus Torvalds has done well with Linux and now Git, but I don't really seeing him deserving the title of pioneer of "open innovation". At least not in the way the author is using the word "pioneer"'

That might be true but first one would have to redefine the meaning of 'pioneer', 'creating', 'taking advantage of', "open innovation" and "open source methodologies"

"I'm doing a (free) operating system .. and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-) link

If your bosses know the right people you don't need testing.

They just cancel the transactions if you screw up:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/07/markets/explaining_wall_street_turmoil/

Or prosecute the humans who beat your algo:
http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3244186/norwegian-traders-convicted-for-outsmarting-us-stock-broker-algorithm/

Technical know-who trumps technical know-how.

"Just two short weeks after assuring us Skype was safe in their hands, Microsoft seems intent on cutting its link with Linux .. Digium .. can no longer sell their Asterisk-Skype interaction module after July 26. That means it will become impossible for this VoIP PBX to connect to Skype". link

Android's rich variety of open source software assets are grouped into external and internal categories. Two major external components the Linux kernel and WebKit - are governed by reciprocal licenses (GPLv2, LGPL.) In addition to the two major external components an additional 30+ internal components (dbus, grub, emma, e2fsprogs, bluez, Bison, etc.) also use reciprocal licenses (GPL, LGPL, CPL, etc.) Twenty-eight components use the GPL and five use the LGPL while others use non-OSI licenses such as the OpenSSL combined license and the Bzip2 license.

From http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2010/09/android-opening-a-digital-pandoras-box/index.htm

The bits of Android that Google created or could change the license on are APL. But there's still a lot that's not.

So are they going to get rid of "com.sun.java"?

I remember not long ago Oracle changed certain things from Sun to Oracle and broke stuff: http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/07/28/2121259/slashdot.sourceforge.net
http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3258504/oracle-breaks-sun-support-document-links/

Seems Oracle thinks changing names is more important than getting technical stuff working right.

FWIW I recently had problems after updating "Oracle Virtualbox" so much so I had to go back to an older version (a VM was crashing, and with the newer version I had to somehow install some stupid plugin from Oracle to support some feature that the old version supported without any stupid add ons).

I might actually switch to vmware server (since I don't really need the desktop features that much).

From this article a couple of days earlier http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261625/frustrations-mount-over-london-stock-exchange-data-interface-problems/ :

Publicly, the LSE and the data vendors say they are working together as engineers scramble to fix the price data problems, even though some statements to clients suggest elements of blame.

But behind the scenes, sources close to the several of the parties, including the exchange, told Computerworld UK they were immensely frustrated at the reputational impact of the problems.

The LSE is taking the position that its data feeds are working correctly. Industry sources said the exchange had placed a great deal of emphasis on the launch, which was largely providing successful high-speed trading, and that it had allocated sufficient time - 15 months - for the vendors to be fully prepared for the new system.

The LSE statement appeared to place some blame with the vendors. "Unfortunately a couple of market data vendors have experienced some specific issues aligning to the new Millennium Exchange platform and we are actively working with them to help resolve their issues," it said.

"All other trading customers and vendors are successfully trading on the new platform, benefiting from Millennium Exchange's superior functionality and speed."

Emphasize mine. Looks to me like the exchange is getting the flack for a couple of amateurish (or saboteurish?) vendors.

Frustrations mount over London Stock Exchange price data problems http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261625/frustrations-mount-over-london-stock-exchange-data-interface-problems/

Frustrations mount over London Stock Exchange price data problems http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261625/frustrations-mount-over-london-stock-exchange-data-interface-problems/

Frustrations mount over London Stock Exchange price data problems http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261625/frustrations-mount-over-london-stock-exchange-data-interface-problems/

Previously there was a lot of chatter about the platforms (.NET, MSSQL 2003, etc...)

It's one thing to have a 42 seconds glitch in the first day a totally new system is powered up. That's perfectly normal, and had been predicted:

"Observers watching today's Linux-based launch will likely note that such a large change could bring about some teething problems, as with any technology overhaul."

It's a totally different thing to have it stop for a whole day after having been in operation for three months.

So, in conclusion, yes, it's about the platform. .NET, MSSQL 2003, etc aren't robust enough for this kind of job.

London Stock Exchange investigating potential system problem on closing auction http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261177/london-stock-exchange-investigating-potential-system-problem-on-closing-auction/ The London Stock Exchange has said it is investigating an issue on its main cash market, which yesterday implemented a new matching engine based on Linux technology. The LSE declined to give details on what had happened until the investigation was complete, and it is not known whether the new system was responsible. The system, written in C++ language on Novell SUSE Linux-based datacentres, replaced a Microsoft .Net-based system that ran on Windows Server and SQL Server.... http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261177/london-stock-exchange-investigating-potential-system-problem-on-closing-auction/

London Stock Exchange investigating potential system problem on closing auction http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261177/london-stock-exchange-investigating-potential-system-problem-on-closing-auction/ The London Stock Exchange has said it is investigating an issue on its main cash market, which yesterday implemented a new matching engine based on Linux technology. The LSE declined to give details on what had happened until the investigation was complete, and it is not known whether the new system was responsible. The system, written in C++ language on Novell SUSE Linux-based datacentres, replaced a Microsoft .Net-based system that ran on Windows Server and SQL Server.... http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3261177/london-stock-exchange-investigating-potential-system-problem-on-closing-auction/

"The London Stock Exchange's new open source trading system may have been hacked last year"

And where's the evidence, the article is technically erroneous and totally short on any verifiable facts.

"Unlike US exchanges, the LSE platform is not based on the internet ..

"The new Linux system, based in a C++ environment"

Please define a 'C++ environment', and provide examples?

  link

the LSE put the highly-publicised December outage of the system - which already runs on its Turquoise anonymous trading venue - down to “human error”. It declined to give more details.

They started off with the "suspicious circumstances" line but police glanced at it, smirked and said "You guys screwed up."

Why TFA even talks about Linux is, as most posters have pointed out, a mystery. In Leo King's bio (the author of TFA) it says he studied Spanish and French in college. I'm gonna go with the "don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity" approach and just assume that this Spanish/French speaking "journalist" has no idea what he's talking about and just threw as many tech words into his article as possible (especially the headline) to troll people into reading. Heck, he got his article on /. so it looks like it worked.

Yeah the cloud is all well and good, untill the US government decides that it doesn't like what you are posting and shuts you down. The whole wikileaks crackdown should make any serious organization think twice about reliance on the cloud. What did it take, a few phone calls, and an entire non profit as well as anyone remotely associated with them was taken offline. Their payment processor, a non profit, was banned from taking payment, not just for wikileaks, but for every site they processed payment for!

... it's worth noting that PayPal didn't take action against Wikileaks; they took it against the Wau Holland Foundation, a charitable foundation who had been supporting Wikileaks as one of several activities driven by their charter. They are now unable to use PayPal to collect donations for anything.

article link

Heh, I think Stallman would be happy in a world where no licence, proprietary or free, would be enforceable.

No, not really. He says that he's okay with copyright thrown out only if the law would otherwise enable copyleft - essentially, by writing GPL into law. Specifically:

It would be necessary to eliminate copyright on software, declare EULAs legally void, and adopt consumer protection measures that require distribution of source code to the user and forbid tivoization.

More realistically, he's okay with 10 year copyright terms.

Exactly, I see this same question asked every time there's a debate about copyright or GPL. To me, it's obvious that, in a world without copyright (or at least with sensible copyright) we wouldn't need GPL, it was a response to a broken system, not a bunch of FOSS developers trying to get in on the action.

Well, Stallman himself believes that it's not quite that simple:

I would be glad to see the abolition of copyright on software if it were done in such a way as to ensure that software is free. ... However, abolishing copyright could also be done in a misguided way that would have no effect on typical proprietary software (which is restricted by EULAs and source code secrecy rather than copyright), and only undermines the practice of copyleft. Naturally I would be against that. ... It would be necessary to eliminate copyright on software, declare EULAs legally void, and adopt consumer protection measures that require distribution of source code to the user and forbid tivoization.

So, as far as FSF is concerned, they're only okay with no copyright if copyleft is written into law instead.

It might even be possible to game the algorithm and cost the firm big money.

They can and they have, but it was deemed illegal: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3244186/norwegian-traders-convicted-for-outsmarting-us-stock-broker-algorithm/

B.

But if the wrong person provides that "liquidity", they get sued.

Its a sham plain and simple. So BS about liquidity would mean the rules would the same for everyone. But the rules clearly are not, as this post also points out.

Actually what is most disgusting is:

When those algo/HFT systems have bugs or lose big
a) the stock market rolls back the trades[1]
b) the small timers beating those algorithms get sued.[2]

But they don't do that when the small timers make mistakes or the algo/HFT systems beat the small timers.

Even though many of the HFT bunch are doing dubious stuff:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/07/24/business/0724-webBIZ-trading.ready.html

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6456QB20100507
[2] http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3244186/norwegian-traders-convicted-for-outsmarting-us-stock-broker-algorithm/

It simply isn't true that “Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms”. IBM supplies Java for IBM's platforms, HP for HP's, even Azul systems does the JVM for their systems (admittedly, these all start with code from Snorcle - but then, so does Apple). In the beginning, Microsoft provided Java for Windows ... Apple was the same ...

and I explain:

Having Oracle take over the development would be hard for several reasons:

• First, the Java port in use includes a lot of Apple know-how that is not generally available (such as private interfaces) to make Java integrate well rather than using just X11.
• Second, it belongs to Apple, so Oracle would either have to receive a copy of Apple's implementation or start again with all the UI and platform native code.
• Third, distribution would move outside Apple's update mechanism so keeping it patched and secure would be difficult - a new installer and update mechanism will be needed.
• Fourth, the new AppStore rules will make sure there's negligible demand for consumer Java on the Mac.

Your view would make a good Apple PR position but doesn't address the actual complexities of the situation.

There are perfectly fine versions of both LibreOffice and indeed OpenOffice.org for the Mac, and many people haven't used NeoOffice in an age (and I don't think it depends on Java anymore anyway). Whatever the consequences of Jobs ditching Java might be (and I assert they are significant) they don't include a threat to open source office productivity apps.

Go ahead and mod me down, but it's only a matter of time before this happens again. You either accept the liability and put your trust in microsoft for patches, or do something else. It's not a stretch to expect more of the same.

"At the same time, the company said it would not patch Windows because doing so would cripple existing applications."
http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3236953/microsoft-confirms-unpatched-vulnerabilities-in-key-enterprise-programs/

"The security firms also notified Microsoft of two other unpatched bugs that the Stuxnet worm exploited"..."Microsoft said last week. It has not set a timetable for the fixes, however."
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/361843/microsoft_confirms_it_missed_stuxnet_print_spooler_zero-day

"was first identified by information security researchers in June"
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=207166&ref=g_homelink

I think this is the first time I've heard someone as senior as [Redhat CEO] Whitehurst admit something rather profound: that open source solutions save money for customers by doing away with the fat margins for existing computer companies – and thus shrink the overall market.

Giving your work product away and hoping that someone will pay you for it ensures that you will make less money than people who demand fair pay for their work.

This is not just a couple of nerds throwing a fit. It is an important professional organization and whose interest it should server. More information: here. The question is whether or not the organization should represent practicing IT professionals or management.

This isn't the first time the German government shows respect to F/OSS:
Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE was knighted late 2009.

Some German cities announced in 2003 that they'd be moving away from Microsoft, towards Linux. (source)
Munich is one city that I know of that has actively been moving their infrastructure towards F/OSS. (source)

(Disclaimer: I'm not German, I'm just going by what I read on the internet.)

You really think that this device is subsidized? I can't imagine where you think it should cost more then $499 for the base unit to be manufactured, and the base software written. This is more expensive then I can buy a fully functional laptop for, are you saying a laptop is subsidized?

I'm assuming a 100% markup beyond component costs, which isn't unreasonable for electronics, afaik. Component cost is estimated at $260. After other costs like warranty and manufacturing, it's guessed Apple ends up with a 50% markup. That said, is it immoral to charge too much for an unnecessary luxury item?

Your comparison of the iPad to a laptop is insufficient, since the most costly components of a tablet are the touch-screen. That $500 is roughly equal to (or cheaper than) comparable windows-based tablets. Again, I guarantee if Apple didn't make a percentage of all App Store sales, and the App Store wasn't the only way to get applications, the iPad and iPhone hardware would be more costly in order to maintain the same lifetime device profit margin.

"this collection of exhibits consists of emails from EU's Philip Lowe, who is Director General, Competition, Commission of the European Communities, in Belgium, to MS' Brad Smith, and back, such as this snip from October 1, 2005 email from Lowe to Smith (there are also also emails back and forth between Smith and Commissioner Neelie Kroes and a letter from Steve Ballmer to Lowe offering free technical support to licensees blah blah in the collection):"

" Microsoft is lobbying hard to ensure that open standards and open source are excluded from that policy - and is on the brink of succeeding in that aim"

I'm Aussie, and I oppose the filter, but I don't think this protest is going to help. Despite being a westernised democracy, the direction the government has taken over Internet censorship has not shocked me. We may become the laughing stock of the Western world with this stance. But we are not alone in looking at censorship - Wikipedia has an interesting map of Internet Censorship around the world - and I think it's only going to get tougher in other countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship We are also famous for appointing Richard Alston, who the Register dubbed 'the world's biggest Luddite', as Minister of the Digital Economy. While in office, Alston famously tried to outlaw any online gambling whatsoever for Australian citizens, opposed the rollout of broadband, and wanted to make people legally responsible for anything they put on the net that was deemed not suitable for children (as decided by the police). Anyway, I wrote about this last week - but it didn't make it past firehose. For those that are interested: http://slashdot.org/submission/1169966/Australias-net-censorship-and-Operation-Titstorm?art_pos=7 or direct to the blog: http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2784&blogid=10

"We are not the streamlined, small, hyper-efficient kernel I envisioned 15 years ago. Our kernel is huge and bloated. Whenever we add a new feature, it only gets worse." -- Linus Torvalds, September 2009.

At least one federal judge disagrees with you.

Falcon

They sold you a licence to use it.

If Apple relied on that, selling a license to OS X and not OS X itself, Apple would be in trouble. At least one federal judge has ruled that when a person buys software they are not buying a license. A federal judge has already ruled against Autodesk when Autodesk tried to stop resellers from selling Autodesk software such as AutoCAD on eBay. Autodesk claimed they sold a license not the software but the judge said otherwise.

However Apple does not rely on that. Apple relies in part on copyright law. Pystar makes at least two unauthorized copies of OS X. It also modifies OS X. Both break copyright laws.

Falcon

I find it humorous how quickly so many want to bask in the glow of this, using it as proof of something, when I'm fairly certain that it was discarded as proof of nothing when the LSE first went the .NET route.

Well, someone certainly thought LSE was proof of something, why otherwise would they have bragged about it? Now that that bragging has been shown to be moot surely you can understand this modest amount of schadenfreude?

What is needed is a form of ID that [is] not replicable

Heheheh, most amusing.

I know, I know - a US ID card would be SUPAR-SEKURE(tm).

Also don't trust MS reports on their own security. They deliberately fudge numbers to make their OS look good by redefining metrics. For example, MS says that they actually patch faster than RedHat, Apple, or SuSE. Of course what MS doesn't tell you is that they define "time to patch" as the time between when they publicly disclose a bug and when they patch it. Linux and some parts of Apple systems (the parts based on open source) define "time to patch" as the time between when a bug is verified and when it is patched. Recently MS patched a bug that has been lingering for 7 years. The "time to patch" for this bug was one month according to MS since it was released in Nov. 2008 and fixed in Dec. 2008.

Now before anyone starts linking the 25 year old bug in BSD realize that the situations were different. That bug required conditions that didn't exist until present day conditions: Namely if you are using Samba on BSD and your directory has more than up to 250,000 items. As such the BSD bug has been present for 25 years, but could be not triggered much less verified until recent years. The 7 year old MS bug was verified and has been present on all Windows versions since that time.

Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."

Yeah right...

And a year ago, it had no less than seven machines in the top 500: in other words the situation has worsened recently. For comparison, in the last five months GNU/Linux managed an increase of 2.4% in absolute terms. Now, what was that about it not scaling...?

[1]

It is the "Extend" part that we need to be worried about because it is the gateway to making propitiatory additions to standards. There is a useful blog entry by Glyn Moody on Microsoft's tactics over Apache, where they have been 'cleared' to contribute patches. This will effectively fork the code, according to Glyn. Will the same happen here? http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1407

There is a very good take on the issue by Glyn Moody, a really thoughtful UK blogger, who says that the ruling will be disastrous for developers. He also highlights the absurdity of an government organisation effectively appealing against itself... Well worth a read. http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1395

The question is why are Mono and Samba patently different? The answer is, according to Glyn Moody, Samba plays a crucial role in liberating the protocols it uses to ensure that there is no knock-on effect for users in terms of intellectual monopolies, the Mono project propagates Microsoft's software patent claims even wider. http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=1380

Statement on the cause of the crash mentioned "connectivity" which is consistent with the Infolect message passing system. The Infolect system based on MS .Net and SQL server and HP proliant servers. http://whitepapers.silicon.com/0,39024759,60237581p,00.htm Infolect was also blamed for outage in November 2007 http://www.computerworlduk.com/technology/networking/messaging/news/index.cfm?newsid=6089 NYSE recently moved to Red Hat.

Microsoft taketh away.

It's not a theory. It's been understood doctrine for over 15 years.

" but you write as though his is some sick person hell bent on ripping off the poor."

He is. This Microsoft Ties $235m IT Aid To Use of Windows was only 2 days ago.

yesterday

But not just the poor - he's an equal-opportunity exploiter.

They wouldn't? Seems like it isn't without precedent.

Glyn Moody in his Open Enterprise blog says, "By buying MySQL, Sun clearly wants to buy into the LAMP stack and success -- and push out GNU/Linux, either with OpenSolaris for those startups according to Sun's Schwartz or with the full-fig Solaris for the "traditional" (= boring and conservative) enterprises. It's a clever plan that makes sense on paper, but it remains to be seen whether LAMP will get junked in favour of SAMP. I doubt it, personally, because despite all the excellent work Sun has done in the field of open source, there remain lingering suspicions, fuelled by its insistence on retaining significant control over both Java and OpenOffice.org." He is right, but isn't this the problem with all industry giants playing with open source? http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=376"

I just replied to another post of yours. :) As I said above, "Since that the survey was paid for by a Microsoft management competitor which touts its ability to integrate Linux into Windows environments I would guess only that third still are." But you are right, I don't know that. But if you look at the linked article in the survey by the Forrester Research even that mere third of 44% is highly dubious. Forrester, which is (to put it kindly) a more respected company, estimates that in the enterprise space "Linux and Mac have 1 percent or 2 percent, and in some cases, such as Europe and the largest corporations, they don't even register."

To the whiners about the price drop: I see no rational reason for you to be upset. You are early adopters and you evidently decided favorably to the value proposition of the iPhone. People who complain about a price-cut being a bad thing simply amaze me: they are pinning their own impatience, foolishness, or buyers remorse on someone else. If you feel cheated, take some personal responsibility and accept that if you did not like the price, you should not have made the purchase! When prices are lowered, it is almost always a good thing (there are exceptions for undercutting and subsidized goods, but I digress), and in this case, it is likely in response to market forces. That is how capitalism is meant to work. All of that is neglecting the fact that analyses of the manufacturing costs revealed huge margins for Apple almost immediately after the release (and reported on again, and again, and again). To the people who are complaining, you should make sure you understand caveat emptor before you plunk down over half a grand for a cell phone, especially since many—if not most—of you had all the facts available up-front. And in the interest of full disclosure, I do own an iPhone and made my purchase shortly after Apple subsidized my $200 early termination fee to Sprint. In closure, thank you for the price-cut, Steve!

One of several recent hacks at Pfizer

IT departments have learned caution the hard way.