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Citation Needed.

I am sure that many people here would like to know how you equate Ad-blocking with supporting SOPA?

Come on please tell us.

Perhaps he's Jamie Kellner, in which case the only reason I wouldn't tell him, and everybody who defends him, to go fuck themselves is that they might manage to have an orgasm in the process, and they don't deserve to enjoy themselves.

someone patenting a simple equation is indeed a bad idea, and should not be allowed. Same with genes etc etc. But expanding this definition to somehow find a justification for downloading the latest harry potter movie without paying for it, despite the fact that everyone involved is relying on income from that movie to pay their rent and food bills, seems a bit of a desperate stretch to me.

You're right. The arguments have nothing to do with each other.

There is an excellent argument for not having patent protection for software, as RMS covers here. This is a very important issue, because software patents make software engineering a legal nightmare.

The unrelated argument against the general concept of copyright is somewhat less clear. To begin with, we're talking about a much more abstract area - art and culture - rather than something easily quantifiable like software engineering. You can look at software over the last 20 years and see clearly the damage the RSA patent did in terms of incompatibilities and efficiency losses because programmers couldn't use the best known algorithm for what they needed to do. In contrast, it's hard to quantify the social and economic damage caused because some remixer couldn't sample Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back".

That doesn't mean that there aren't excellent arguments for limiting or even abolishing copyright. It was originally part of a censorship agreement. It causes massive economic damage to society. But you're right... the argument against copyright is not an extension of the argument against software patents. They're mostly unrelated.

If you want to find enlightenment on the subject of copyright, there are a few neat things you can read, like this wiki page or maybe this little blurb... You could always read the original statute of anne upon which US [and most all modern] copyright law is based, or maybe even glance over this. Copyright is bad for society, at least in its current form. Remember that it is essentially a right provided by the people, and the people have the power and the right to take it back.

To summarize, when Olson talks about money, it's in the context of Sleepycat selling "versions" of Berkeley DB that aren't covered by the GPL. There's nothing to indicate that GPL 3 will require anyone to transfer money to anyone.

The Good, Easy system worked for me back when I used it. The premise is to get everything into plain text, and use simple tools to manage it. There's a Wired article on it, and the source documents to the Good, Easy Desktop and Good, Easy email are at Winterspeak.

The Good, Easy system worked for me back when I used it. The premise is to get everything into plain text, and use simple tools to manage it. There's a Wired article on it, and the source documents to the Good, Easy Desktop and Good, Easy email are at Winterspeak.

You're wrong... except that you're not making a point I can discern. Read this interview with Sleepycat software about how they make money with a GPL license.

There are different kinds of software businesses. Slashdot once posted this interview with Sleepycat Software. They seem to do just fine with a dual copyleft/proprietary license. Note that they do not produce end-user software however.

The Wine project might be well served by imitating Sleepycat and their dual-licensing model for Berkeley DB.

Berkeley DB started as a small embedded database library which only supported hash tables and btrees. Since it was written for BSD Unix as a replacement, it was released under the BSD license. After a few years, it was widely used, but it still only offered access methods. When Netscape wanted more features, such as transactions, disaster recovery and multiple-user support, Sleepycat Software was founded to further develop Berkeley DB (on the strength of a licensing deal with Netscape).

The new version of the software was released under the Sleepycat license, an OSI-approved license which allows Open Source applications to use Berkeley DB, but (unlike the GPL) appears to be compatible with any Open Source license. For proprietary applications, Sleepycat offers a more traditional licensing option to companies who don't wish to distribute their source code. Revenue from such licensing funds additional development of Berkeley DB, to the benefit of all. (For example, Berkeley DB 4.x adds replication and high-availability functionality that surely would not exist without the funding received through this dual licensing.)

Perhaps the Wine project should follow this example? Wine could be placed under a license like Sleepycat's, which would allow Wine to be freely used by Open Source projects (whether GPL or not), and proprietary companies could pay for a license which allows proprietary use. Funding from such licensing could be used to further develop Wine, to the benefit of proprietary and Open Source users alike.

BSD or LGPL licensing allows proprietary companies to profit from the hard work of the Open Source developers without giving anything back. Sleepycat's licensing model forces them to give something back, either by contributing more Open Source code back to the community, or by paying cash for the privilege of avoiding that -- which could then be used to fund development that would benefit the Open Source community.

It's a win-win situation, and it would ensure that contributors don't get exploited. It could also lead to funding that might greatly accelerate the development of Wine, even more than relying on companies like Corel to contribute back changes they've made to the codebase.

I'm not a contributor to Wine, but I'd suggest they consider following Sleepycat's example -- it appears to work well for them, why not for Wine?

A couple of weeks ago, here in /., there was a thread about making money in open source... In the interview, Michael Olson mentioned something about the business model they adopted and its adoption in other library-related projects... I think it could be an interesting way to have commercial AND Free adoption... :-)

This approach has a better chance of working for universities than it does for ordinary commercial enterprises, for at least two reasons:

1. The sort of software universities produce is more likely to be the kind of code that will be integrated into other systems, which lends itself to a dual licensing approach. Universities aren't selling shrinkwrapped software to consumers: they're selling more basic technology to companies that want to exploit it commercially. This could be perfectly suited to a dual licensing approach. Legitimate businesses, for the most part, are unlikely to try to base products on software that they don't have rights to.
2. Universities don't rely on software licensing for their entire livelihood, so if an open source strategy happens to result in somewhat lower revenues, they can handle it. However, open source may be one of the best and cheapest ways of "advertising" a university's software products, so these factors could balance out.

Besides, this is exactly the sort of issue on which we should look to universities to lead the way. Open source is an important form of cooperation, and its heritage is the very academic freedom and open sharing of information pioneered by universities. There are benefits to this cooperation that may not be completely in conflict with the profit motive; however, the truth of that claim can only be verified by those with sufficient vision to look beyond the next quarter's results. Universities are one of the few organizations which have both the vision and financial ability to do that. MIT's recent decision to make its course material freely available over the web is an example of this.

Has any open source company ever turned an actuall profit?

Sleepycat Software (makes of Berkeley DB) has maintained a profitable business based on open source since 1996. Cygnus Support (gcc, gdb) was profitable from its founding in 1989 through being purchased by Red Hat. Aladdin Systems (Ghostscript) made enough money for the author to retire.

Sleepcat Software's open source Berkeley DB has "been profitable since inception" in 1996

Using multiple licensing models L. Peter Deutsch is able to provide Ghostscript under the GPL and make enough money to retire.

Cygnus Support (now part of Red Hat), was founded in 1989 and was "profitable, increasingly profitable, every single year" before the Red Hat buyout.

It's very unconvential, O'Reilly must be happy enough with sales of books to pay Larry Wall to keep developing Perl.

Open Source works. Maybe not as well as VA Linu... erm... Systems wants it to, but it does.

Okay, so the author missed a little bit. But he's opened a clear dialogue and that can't hurt.

I just read Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters (buy it or read it online at http://books.iuniverse.com/viewbooks.asp?isbn=0595 161286&page=fm1) and Breaking Windows (http://breakingwindows.net) and I think a key lesson from both is the importance of evangelism. Win the developers and you win the battle. Network effect/tipping point is key here and with time and continued effort (and probably a little good luck) Linux will reach the necessary level to be at leas a co-equal desktop platform.

Other posters have questioned if Linux should be (at least in part, or have the capability of being) a Windows clone. I agree with those who say it shouldn't but then again that's the beauty of this open source world cuz those who think otherwise are welcome to go for it.

My thought is that the Office paradigm is 10 years old as a GUI and 20 years old (+-) in the sense of L1-2-3/WordPerfect apps. Haven't we learned enough over these years to devise a better way of helping people get ordinary business tasks done? Should the community invent an improved combustion engine or a practical fuel cell?

Soegaard does point out, more or less, that Office forces users to adapt their work processes to its features/capabilities. Better software would, at a minimum, be adaptable to those processes instead. Mark Hurst's GoodEasy system for the Mac (http://www.winterspeak.com/columns/goodeasy.txt) points to one small step in this direction but I don't feel it goes near far enough.

Brainstorm, people!

As anyone read the actual guide? goodeasy. From the the wired article and these post this sounds like this was done on some sort of Unix. Wrong this was done on a Macintosh.

These things have always been part of the Mac philosophy. Apps do one thing and do it well, use keybinds for everything. This is why IE defeated Netscape on the Mac side even with Mac Users often fanactical hatred of Microsoft. IE just a web browser and supported Inter Config. In Inter Config you can say what apps you whant to handle http,ftp, news etc. Of course Netscape would not allow you to use other apps for email, or news. It had all that built-in.

Of course Linux GUIs and other web browsers are over-bloated "suites" or "platforms". Mozilla a "platform" for developing appications. Konqueror is a file manager was a built-in web browser. Nautilus is a file manager, web browser, note taker and help browser. Are lynx and IE for Mac the only web browsers that exist? I know IE for windows is os is supposed to be a file manager/web browser. But they don't do that on the Mac, knowing Mac users will have little tolerance for that.