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The major point this article fails to acknowledge is that "intellectual property", whether or not it was called that, has always existed. Even before patents, copyrights, trademarks -- which are notable only in that they are government-enforced -- individuals devised ways to guard their ideas from being used by others.

Take, for example, the closely guarded secrets of medieval stone masons -- which I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet, since it was the key closed-source metaphor behind Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Or take secret recipies, or any other trade secrets that existed just as well without government.

My point is that intellectual property is not something to be argued for or against -- for better or worse, it just exists. And, as the founders of the United States noted in the Constitution, it takes its most undesirable form when good ideas lay dormant for fear that they might be stolen. IP law is a trade-off: the government will protect your monopoly on your idea, under the condition that you allow the government to publish the idea after a certain period of time.

Why would this be desirable? Say, for example, I come up with Invention X, a remarkable discovery that will benefit countless millions. However, I don't have a factory to produce the product, and I fear that without government protection, Big Company Y would steal my idea and immediately begin producing Invention X in their existing factory more efficiently than I could, thus capturing the market for my invention. Why, then, would I put in all the effort to develop and perfect Invention X, when I would never have the opportunity to recoup my costs (let alone make a profit)? I'd be better off just keeping my ideas to myself.

By "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries," intellectual property laws prevent against this, the worst-case scenario: that a brilliant idea or invention might die with its creator, never having been passed on to contribute to the public good.

-IT

You must be kidding. Would you have us believe that your garden variety program that computes the value of pi using a mathematical relation, and this program by Wesley that calculates pi by computing its own area, are the same? That neither (especially the latter) are creative, unique, artistic or expressive? Bullshit.

So, mp3 have brought me:
1. wiser choices
2. less deceptions

The plans are here.

-Stephen

The answer is here.
--

• The 3rd state of the Perl Onion
  
• TMTOWTDI
  
• Popular Perl myths
  

clue-4-u, u silly grammar-nazi.

Hey!

While government legislation is a great symbolic step, I'm not sure how much it will actually do to alleviate the 200-300 messages a day that I sometimes get in my mailbox.

I think what we need is a big line of solidarity of users, ISPs and the government. If you get unsolicited e-mail, it has to include contact details because it would be stupid to say 'We here at PornWorld would like you to visit our website at and look at out pictures', and not give out an address and/or telephone number. If people were thouroughly educated to send thier spam to a certain government address with headers, a government department could say 'Ah, telephone 800 1234 5678! That's (Check's database) Bob Bastard!'. They could then have a government fine-collecting department that pays your local brutal repossesion company to enter your house and take $500 worth of goods for every spam recorded, plus an extra $2,500 for repossesion fees. That would sure stop them!

Won't all this simply move the problem offshore?

It might do, but with cooperation from large ISPs and backbone providers, an Internet Death Penalty could be enforced on the senders. There could be an e-mail address at each major domain, dedicated to collecting spam, that is different at every different domain, i.e. Colex@slashdot.org. These could be posted by users at will on any site where they expected spam, with a warning and a real but spamprofed address nearby. Admins could choose to forward all this to the government automaticlly, or could review it and impose blocks on router traffic before sending to the government.

Obviously, the system wouldn't be entirely automated - Heaven forbid the government of any country should have the ability to destroy the internet.

Or maybe I'm talking out of my ass. All I know is I can expect several spam messages every daym from companies like StyleShop and they need to be discouraged. My current system of putting offendor's e-mail addresses in my /. reply-to box isn't as satisfying as $500 could be.

Michael Tandy


...another insightless comment from Michael Tandy.

I would point you to the appendix to The Magic Cauldron , where Eric Raymond does quite a good job of explaining why vendors with propriatary technology are *still* better off with fully open-source drivers.

The basic argument is that the market cycle of a computer product is so short that any vendor that chooses to spend time reverse engineering or blatently copying the work of another is simply giving away market share because they will always be 6-12 months behind the competition. While the copycat is trying to rush a clone into production the innovators are already raking in the bulk of the potential lifetime income from that product. By the time the Johnny-come-lately reaches the shelves the product is obsolete and the innovator is ready to do it again.

Companies do not gain a significant advantage by locking up their technical specs. If they keep expanding their technology then the clones will never catch up. If they don't expand their technology then someone else will build a better mousetrap. Either way, the old tech is worthless.

... Their software got ported to Linux a couple of years ago, but the Linux drivers for the boards (open source) don't have most of the capabilities found in their windows (closed source) counterparts because the company fears releasing a piece of technology in the chips that they've developed. ...

With open source, you have more developers porting the drivers to more platforms used by more customers. (And you don't even have to pay the developers!) PHBs still do not get it? Good luck...

Even with closed source, your competition will still find out everything they want to know about your hardware. (See "How to have fun with disassemblers, logic analyzers, microscopes, and other nifty tools".) PHBs don't understand this either? Good luck...

(Also: still guarding technology which was developed a couple of years ago? These days, that is a long time.)

P.S.: Eric S. Raymond addresses the driver question in Why Closing Drivers Loses A Vendor Money, part of The Magic Cauldron. Good stuff.

... Their software got ported to Linux a couple of years ago, but the Linux drivers for the boards (open source) don't have most of the capabilities found in their windows (closed source) counterparts because the company fears releasing a piece of technology in the chips that they've developed. ...

With open source, you have more developers porting the drivers to more platforms used by more customers. (And you don't even have to pay the developers!) PHBs still do not get it? Good luck...

Even with closed source, your competition will still find out everything they want to know about your hardware. (See "How to have fun with disassemblers, logic analyzers, microscopes, and other nifty tools".) PHBs don't understand this either? Good luck...

(Also: still guarding technology which was developed a couple of years ago? These days, that is a long time.)

P.S.: Eric S. Raymond addresses the driver question in Why Closing Drivers Loses A Vendor Money, part of The Magic Cauldron. Good stuff.

Eric Raymond's paper The Magic Cauldron talks about reasons for being open for stuff like this.

Hey, that reminds me of something I read in the Jargon File: namely ICBM addresses!. ;^) Feels dangerous...

Hey, that reminds me of something I read in the Jargon File: namely ICBM addresses!. ;^) Feels dangerous...

I agree, currently the Linux kernel isn't very "easy" for people who love the DirectX install routine for being so quick and painless (too bad there's no uninstall routine[!]).

ESR is working on making the Linux Kernel config scripts smarter with his CML2.

I'd personally love to have the equivalent of apsfilter for video and sound cards -- just run SETUP, answer some questions, and all is done for you.

But everything takes time. Linux has had to get to the point where people asked, "hey, can I just slap my new soundcard drivers on this thing?" before the quesition could be answered.
---

I agree, currently the Linux kernel isn't very "easy" for people who love the DirectX install routine for being so quick and painless (too bad there's no uninstall routine[!]).

ESR is working on making the Linux Kernel config scripts smarter with his CML2.

I'd personally love to have the equivalent of apsfilter for video and sound cards -- just run SETUP, answer some questions, and all is done for you.

But everything takes time. Linux has had to get to the point where people asked, "hey, can I just slap my new soundcard drivers on this thing?" before the quesition could be answered.
---

Wisdom:

Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!

Commentary:

Some would emphasize privacy -- who is reading what. This is not the true way.

Emphasize content -- what is being read. This is the true way.

Would Mr. Cringely's articles attract commercial advertising if they were not inflamatory?

çéLxÕÑætPÑä-£í8JöJ)Ê$ikÙb*SQË ©J2ÆZôñ)ä®×ýÜÀéqÚ:å}DecTÊ@ryptKèÑ6M~f£ÿ ékmeOjDöif*Û0youÄÀúÛcan£ÿ7çd õÊÓÅ3¼Üóßê£>rè15ìðgVÂÌÕòÝÇF|ä¾õÖN_ë=õó|)kæøiY5ôãv) hÄ øÊ*e+Úõî

Crack that.

Political problems have political solutions.

Yes, and they also have technical problems. Problem: intellectual property rights are overtaking personal rights. Solution: distributed filesharing system, aka Napster/GNUella.

Nobody cares about what you say or do, because people have more important things to think about than whether you can download MP3s for free or not.

The fact that online websites like slashdot continue to grow in popularity would seem to dispute that claim.

It's because of the vast damage that hackers can do with their illegal backdoor penetrations of other people's sites.

I don't see any world markets collapsing, companies going out of business, or people dying as a result of hacker activity. Sure, they boast that they could do that, but if you believe everything you read you get what you deserve. In truth, hackers cause headaches for business and government. Nothing more. Y2K nuts predicted hackers would go and destroy the world. Hrrmm.. I'm still here. Then they predicted they would go breaking into the 911 and emergency system and shut it down. Gee, why would they do that? Unsuprisingly, they didn't.

In supporting evidence of hackers (not crackers) spirit of exploration instead of damage, you'll note most breakins occur to educational instutitions, not commercial. This may be because they are curious about the system(s) they use every day. Go read "Hackers, heroes of the computer revolution" by Steven Levy. Another resource is to consult Appendix B of the Hacker Dictionary - here

No, hackers aren't dangerous because of what they do, they are dangerous because of what they know. THIS is why these laws are being passed. Thus far, the only big numbers damages from "hackers" have been over-inflated prices of "stolen proprietary information" and macro viruses which, quite frankly, is not hacker activity.

For all of six weeks until the FBI cracks it.

What confidence you have in the FBI! They must be able to do what thousands of academic professors dedicated to cracking these codes could not!

The FSF need merely convince RedHat, SuSE, Debian &al to ship Linux, ahem, GNU/Linux distributions with named (BIND) enabled by default and the appropriate delegation entry in the /etc/named.conf file. After all, all the computers I administrate have the pointers to the AlterNIC's root servers for the domains they serve (such as .PORN).

Remember: the power lies not with they who operate the root servers but with they who call them root servers.

Ha, ha, only serious.

Linus Torvalds --> Married, two daughters (see here)
Alan Cox --> Married, no kids (see here)

hmmm, I guess I save the insightful and interesting posts for my straight acount...

I think you need some schooling on just what makes a troll a successful troll.

Glad I could help.

It is interesting that I keep bumping into people who feel that simply because they learned how to program (which anyone can learn on their own) outside of school, then school is somehow useless.

Computer science programs vary widely across the board. At my girlfriend's college half of the junior and senior curriculum is stuff like Intro to C++ and Creating Applications in Visual Basic. While at my school the sophomore classes are Compilers & Translators (last semester we implemented the Unix utility "make" and wrote a Lisp to C translator and they were both due the same week) and Systems & Networks (create your own RPC program and protocol). Also before graduation each student has to work on a senior project which involves shipping a live product to a company. Now with this education I am currently pulling down a decent amount while interning which by current reckoning is as much as most people in industry are making now after a few years of real world experience.

Most of the actual programming syntax I have learned has been on my own time (I know C, C++, Java, Perl, Javascript, VBScript, SmallTalk and VisualBasic). There are various aspects of software engineering and database design I would not have learned without school, either because I would never have come across them while simply hacking or because they would have been too much work and not enough fun to learn on my own. Things like how and why a database should be normalized, how to design and implement grammars, using lex and yacc, how to create a requirements document from informal specifications and then converting the requirements document to a design document with data models and UML diagrams, compiler design and implementation details, various methods of dynamic memory allocation, proper object oriented design and implementation of neural networks. All these things I have learned in school and I still have over a year to go. Before I graduate I plan to take classes in AI (I'm interested in creating Internet Agents), advanced software engineering and next generation database technology (such as OO databases). The things I will learn in these classes are things that I would probably never have come across if I was simply hacking at code and buying O'reilly books to learn what I needed about CS.

Some kids at my school like reminding the freshman students who make comments like yours that our graduates don't use tools but instead make the tools that others use. The language designers, compiler writers and internet architects of this world are college educated. If all you want to do is go out and hack code a college degree is perhaps overkill (then again it widens your marketability - I have been offered positions working on compilers for strongARM chips using C/assembly as well as doing server side integration using Java, XML, Perl, & SQL) but realize this, what seperates usually seperates a Computer Scientist from Code Monkey is usually a college degree.

From the Jargon File
troll v.,n.

1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT. 2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." 3. [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for CS students. Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed. Probably so-called because it involves lurking in dark cavelike corners.

Some people claim that the troll (sense 1) is properly a narrower category than flame bait, that a troll is categorized by containing some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial. See also Troll-O-Meter.

Wait, doesn't this definition make you a Troll?
Let's see here...
You just posted a specious arguement, a flame and a personal attack on a message board for no reason but to annoy...
Well Mr. AC, it looks like you're a troll too, but you're not one of the cool trolls (575, osm, Meept!!) and not even one of the average trolls like me.
As you so eloquently put it, DIE TROLL DIE!!
Oh, and one more thing - I did your mom last night.
--Shoeboy

Well, I don't know that they made enough of a distinction between the users and end users. There are kids who use the computer and attempt to figure out what makes it tick, and the kids who use a computer so they are still part of the clique at school. In general, the kids who learn how to make the computers do what they want, are the kids who are going to be founding companies, the kids who only use computers so they have access to AIM and ICQ, won't be.

To me what seems to be the centerpoint of this article is how Open Source doesn't work for the end user. Macs are touted as being 'designed for' the end user who has no interest in coding/debugging etc. but simply want good software that's easy to use. Thus the commercial, closed source, model needs to be used to develop this kind of software.

Sounds to me to be very circular logic. Mac is not Open Sourced because Mac users are closed source. Mac users are closed source, because Mac is not Open Sourced.

I think both sides may be missing the real point. As ESR said in The Magic Cauldron Open Source business practices need to be service oriented. Mr Lewis is of the opinion that this will breed even less friendly software. Why? Because programmers are lazy? Because they're greedy?

Mr. Lewis is correct though--the future of software design is ease of use; something Mac has in spades. It is also service oriented, which is what Linux has in spades. Maybe OS-X will actually combine these into what I think might be the holy grail of operating systems, but I doubt it.

The Open Source movement has visionaries--Eric s. Raymond, Linus Torvalds, RMS. Now what the movement needs are some visionaries who can implement the paradigm shift in the IT industry itself, on a business level. It's coming, but if you don't 'get it' from the user's angle, you may be left behind.

Just my thoughts.

ICBM address n.

(Also `missile address') The form used to register a site with the Usenet mapping project, back before the day of pervasive Internet, included a blank for longitude and latitude, preferably to seconds-of-arc accuracy. This was actually used for generating geographically-correct maps of Usenet links on a plotter; however, it became traditional to refer to this as one's `ICBM address' or `missile address', and some people include it in their sig block with that name. (A real missile address would include target elevation.)

Borrowed from the Jargon File: hopefully attributing it will stop ESR shooting me...
--
Cheers

"The Cathedral in the Bazaar" about the values of open source vs. closed source. An interesting read, if a bit naive, but it misses out one important point - people need money to live, and if their job is programming, they need to make money from doing that.
Nope, he covers that as well in one of the later papers - see Th e Magic Cauldron for an example of when NOT to open source something.
--

1. Built the Internet
2. Developed BSD, GNU/Linux, XFree86, KDE, GNOME, gcc, bash, etc. etc. etc.
3. Have never cared for breaking into other's systems and/or comprimising security
4. Are deeply involved in OSS, and sharing work, programming great software that solves problems needing to be solved

1. Contributed in a mass effort to BREAK the Internet
2. Revolve around exploiting everything and breaking security, causing problems from mild nuisances to outright disasters
3. Are deeply involved in ActiveX trojans, Java exploits, BO2K, Netbus, and SubSeven, write software that not solves problems, but CREATES problems
4. Are deeply involved in 0wn1ng p30pl3, ha><0ring non-31337, and other cracking rituals

There is another group of people who loadly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people "crackers" and want to have nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word "hackers" to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers to no end. --Eric S. Raymond, in the How To Become a Hacker HOWTO, distributed at his site, at tuxedo.org/~esr.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them. --Eric S. Raymond.

He's got a very good point. If people want commercial software on linux, they're going to have to pay for it. If we want great free software, we're going to have to write it ourselves.

The strength of linux is that open source projects have no development or marketing costs. This is not the case for closed source software shops. This fantasy about big software companies releasing free closed source versions of their software can't last for long. They're only doing this now because the linux market is still growing, so offering free stuff gives them an opportunity to gain market share and recoup the costs later. This is exactly what Corel is doing by giving some products away for free while charging for their other products. They're trying to establish a brand.

Until these companies start adopting open source development methods, they will fail. It just doesn't make sense to spend tons of r&d money on an app to give it away.

ESR makes this very clear here. "When I speak at technical conferences, I usually begin my talk by asking two questions: how many in the audience are paid to write software, and for how many do their salaries depend on the sale value of software. I generally get a forest of hands for the first question, few or none for the second, and considerable audience surprise at the proportion." Corel is filled with people whose income depends on the sale of their software. And so is Deneba...

___________________________
Michael Cardenas
http://www.fiu.edu/~mcarde02
http://www.deneba.com/linux

He's got a very good point. If people want commercial software on linux, they're going to have to pay for it. If we want great free software, we're going to have to write it ourselves.

The strength of linux is that open source projects have no development or marketing costs. This is not the case for closed source software shops. This fantasy about big software companies releasing free closed source versions of their software can't last for long. They're only doing this now because the linux market is still growing, so offering free stuff gives them an opportunity to gain market share and recoup the costs later. This is exactly what Corel is doing by giving some products away for free while charging for their other products. They're trying to establish a brand.

Until these companies start adopting open source development methods, they will fail. It just doesn't make sense to spend tons of r&d money on an app to give it away.

ESR makes this very clear here. "When I speak at technical conferences, I usually begin my talk by asking two questions: how many in the audience are paid to write software, and for how many do their salaries depend on the sale value of software. I generally get a forest of hands for the first question, few or none for the second, and considerable audience surprise at the proportion." Corel is filled with people whose income depends on the sale of their software. And so is Deneba...

___________________________
Michael Cardenas
http://www.fiu.edu/~mcarde02
http://www.deneba.com/linux

--

As a security system architect, allow me to point out that you are dead wrong. The security a game gets from not releasing source code is an illusion. There used to be an army of people with mediocre debugging skills who made a sport of shredding copy protection for closed source programs -- until game companies got tired of running in circles and stopped trying. For multiplayer games, the problem is even worse because all one needs to do is examine the network traffic and create a filter (to improve aim, reveal hidden enemies, and so on). If you understand graphics and can program in C (and you would need to in order to cheat using GPL'd code) then you shouldn't have a hard time using these techniques.

Encryption would help, but the reason servers trust clients is to improve performance and cryptographic operations are expensive. The difficulty here comes not from open or closed source, but from the hoards of skillful people with too much time on their hands beating on a fragile system. Consider this Eric Raymond essay, which discusses this issue in more depth and points out that cheat programs have been developed for Quake without using the source code.

This is a clarification that stems from the fact that the english word 'free' has two meanings, so that when you say 'free software' you clarify which meaning you are promoting.

The first meaning is "free as in 'free beer'", refers to getting an item for no monetary cost.

The second meaning "free as in 'free speech'" refers to freedoms and liberties granted by custom or law.

These phrases are usually shortened to 'free-as-in-beer' and 'free-as-in-speech'.

While there is a lot of software that can be had for no cost, Netscape plugins for example, you are usually not free to modify it for your own purposes.

I hope this helps clarify the issue for you.

Further information can be found at The Debian website, The Free Software Foundation, and Eric S. Raymond's site.
--

your point is extremely insightful and eloquently made, but keep in mind there is an important exception to what you say, an exception which can be expressed in three words:

performance... art.. programming.

May not rival the great Shakespear.. but does rival at the least those people who stand in the street with white face paint on, imitating statues..

Well, if it was that simple it would be essentially useless - so why even add the 13 bytes? I'm not saying it's good or bad (who could tell yet?), but it's very likely that BEEP will be substantially heavier than HTTP. After all, it fits all the patterns for Second System Effect.

After 0.10 hours of intense searching, I found this (courtesty of a link under the entry for "Tux" in the jargon file): From: Linus Torvalds Ok, short version: I've always liked penguins, and when I was in Canberra a few years ago we went to the local zoo with Andrew Tridgell (of samba fame). There they had a ferocious penguin that bit me and infected me with a little known disease called penguinitis. Penguinitis makes you stay awake at nights just thinking about penguins and feeling great love towards them. So when Linux needed a mascot, the first thing that came into my mind was this picture of the majestic penguin, and the rest is history. Slightly more accurate version: Yes, I was bitten by a penguin, but it wasn't actually very ferocious. It was really just a pigmy penguin about 6 inches tall or something, and it was more of a timid nibble ("is this finger a see before me a small fish, or what?"). Even so, I like penguins a lot.

Only 1 in 5 posts marked Troll actually deserve the title (see the jargon file entry for troll at www.tuxedo.org for a good definition).

The other 4 posts deserve Redundant, Off-Topic, or Flame-bait instead.

If someone can stop MP3's from moving around the net what stops someone from stopping your electronically filed taxes or the bills you pay online?

You're comparing apples and oranges here. I know; let's play a game. I want you to pick out which one of the following doesn't belong, and explain why not:

• Sending your 1040 to the IRS via email
• Using the gas company and your local bank's websites to pay your heating bill
• Downloading an MP3 of "Song 21" by Alternative Band X from their offical website
• Downloading an MP3 of "Oops.. I Did It Again" by Britney Spears from Napster

The answer is the fourth one, because it's illegal to pirate music. Sending email and conducting ecommerce are perfectly legal (right now), as are downloading MP3s that the artist is specifically giving away.

Hey, I love free music as much as the next guy, but don't kid yourselves. The situation of pirated MP3s is similar to that of child pornography on the Internet; it's just milder and more widely accepted. People have been cracking down on net kiddie porn and has that killed the Internet? Hardly.

So no, this is yet another false prediction of the Imminent Death Of The Net (as another ./er posted).

--

__________________________________________________ ___

Making noise is one of the things that keeps the open source system healthy. I think that in general the Linux kernel has had good stewardship, and though I personally have not had direct interactions with Al Viro, I think that extends to him as well.

I agree with this statement, especially the first part. Anyone not sure that making noise keeps open source healthy, particularly in the bazaar mode of development that is present in Linux, should read the writings of ESR, particularly Homesteading the Noosphere and possibly the Cathedral and The Bazaar. (Not necessarily in that order though :)

I think this should change. I think that the design documentation we need should be readily available - it has to be posted somewhere where everybody can get at it, and contribute to it.

Yeah, current documentation would be great. But I don't think that documentation lends itself well the bazaar mode of development. The "roadmaps" you speak of reek very much of "requirements documents" and I don't think you will find any of those in Linux development.

Making noise is one of the things that keeps the open source system healthy. I think that in general the Linux kernel has had good stewardship, and though I personally have not had direct interactions with Al Viro, I think that extends to him as well.

I agree with this statement, especially the first part. Anyone not sure that making noise keeps open source healthy, particularly in the bazaar mode of development that is present in Linux, should read the writings of ESR, particularly Homesteading the Noosphere and possibly the Cathedral and The Bazaar. (Not necessarily in that order though :)

I think this should change. I think that the design documentation we need should be readily available - it has to be posted somewhere where everybody can get at it, and contribute to it.

Yeah, current documentation would be great. But I don't think that documentation lends itself well the bazaar mode of development. The "roadmaps" you speak of reek very much of "requirements documents" and I don't think you will find any of those in Linux development.

The original poster asks: This report in Upside Today suggests that big software companies are attracted by the "gated community" model - unsurprisingly as it seems to be classic "help us debug our software and we'll keep the copyright, thanks". Upside (in my opinion, naively) presumes that because this idea is attractive to software companies, who will invest in it, it's obviously going to take off. But is this likely? Who works for gated community projects, and why?

Right to the top of my head people that work for gated community projects are a.) the Blackdown folk who are porting Java to Linux, b.) the people who contribute to Mozilla which will have proprietary extensions added to it as AOL's default browser and c.) anyone who has ever released code under the BSD license (which can be seen as gated community development since the code can be closed by third parties). Your questions seems to smack of someone who equates open source with the GPL. Remember ESR's Cathedra l and the Bazaar, many developers write open source code to scratch an itch and note necessarily to further the ideal of Free Software. After all this is why the Blackdown developers work on Java, they like the language and want a port for it on Linux, and whoever copyrights the software is not a concern as long as they get a quality port of Java to Linux. Frankly, I would place myself as someone who'd work on a gated community program, simply because I'd contribute patches to proprietary code and not care if the became GPL afterwards or not. E.g. I use Visual Studio (as well as Emacs) to develop code, sometimes Intellisense (the drop down box and tooltips that show function arguments, comments and class members while editing code) sometimes freezes up on me and goes away. If I somehow get at the code and patch this I would, and frankly I wouldn't feel that a requirement for my patch to be accepted be that MSFT GPL a few million lines of code that took them years to develop. Also if I did this my itch would be scratched.

The original poster also asked: If it's just for the "bounty" isn't this just programmers working as contractors? Surely for there to be any special open source goodness, these projects must attract collaboration over and above that which is payed for. But are they? And why should I contribute to a gated community rather than a true open source one?

Hmmmm, exactly what does special Open Source goodness mean? I doubt that everyone who has ever contributed a patch or reported a bug has done this out of an altruistic pursuit of goodness. Frankly, software is simply a tool to get a job done and for most software developers that's as far as it goes. So if one had a choice between improving an established product that one uses so as to make it better and getting paid to do it or creating a competing product in one's free time while working at a reqular job...which would the average software developer choose?

They're right here in the open. Just they've evolved slightly; in their modern form, they look not like a traditional dinosaur but like an IBM mainframe.

And his poetry is shit

And his "Funny Fan Mail" isn't funny.

And his poetry is shit

And his "Funny Fan Mail" isn't funny.

And his poetry is shit

And his "Funny Fan Mail" isn't funny.

And his poetry is shit

And his "Funny Fan Mail" isn't funny.

INTERCAL is the language your mother warned you about. INTERCAL home page. Seriously, I've used both C and C++, and let me tell you, when used properly, you can write and maintain a lot more code if you're using C++ then if you're using C. But you have to use it properly. And I wouldn't recommend anyone to start out with C++, just as I wouldn't recommend anyone to bench 200lbs, if they've never lifted any weights before. You have to work up to it. But once you're up to it, the difference between C++ and C is like shooting a bullet instead of throwing it.

but it's my understanding of English that when a G is followed by an N, the G is silent, as in "gnat," or "gnarled."

In the sane, normal world, you are correct, but check out this entry in the Jargon File.

And while I'm on the subject, even the great Knuth is not immune. TeX == "Tekh". I mean, why be so damn deliberately difficult? Why not "tecks"?

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