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Salon's Free Software Project (Part 2)
jsa writes "Salon has released Chapter 2, part 2 of the Free Software Project Book"
It's by Andrew Leonard again. He's been busy, it's a long one, but there's lots of cool parts that you probably don't know about (including a gratuitous pinball reference ;)
I disagree with you. Big business *is* inherantly more evil than smaller businesses. A large business can not have any degree of social consciousness under American-style capitalism because it is only held accountable to making profits. Even if a CEO did feel obliged to sacrifice some profits in the interests of sustainability it would actually be a violation of his "fiduciary responsibilities". A small company is not necessarily accountable to the corporate system, and can choose to act for other motivations than maximizing profits if it wishes to.
The second problem is that large organizations, especially hierarchical ones create ever larger and larger communications overhead with size. In a 20 person company everyone in the company can have a clear idea of what is going on and attempt to influence what is happening effectively. In a 10,000 person company with six layers of management, information gets distorted at each pass up the chain (as subordinates alter their opinions consciously or not to agree with the reality of their managers). by the time this gets up to the CEO it is so distorted that he often has no clue what is really going on below.
Large corporations also decouple decision making from the people who do the work. Developers generally know the most about development, Sales people know the most about sales etc. These are the people who should choose how to do these things. In a large organization they often can and in a small organization they often cannot.
I totlly disagree.... The distinction does not lie in buisness vs. hackers. Its a question of availability and interface.
The use of computers skyrocketed in the 80's not because of the BASIC language as the first root of the thread sugests but because computer were financially feasable to John Q Public. With the advent of cheaper hardware, any individual with the PC spec could write their own operating system and drivers. But Nancy, a school teacher in Madison, Wisconsin is not about to buy a machine and learn how to write an OS for it, however if someone would do it for her, she would find a computer useful.
The internet is a good exmple as well. The internet, as stated OVER AND OVER, began as a military program ARPANET. This was handed over to universities later and beagn using open systems and protocols. (not entirely acurate but an adequate summary) Out of this camne the birth of gopher, ftp, www, irc, etc. Once again the use of email, web, news, IRC, goper, ftp would be great things for Nancy to use, but do you expect her to setup her own modem configuration, connect to an ISP (which were not heard of in most circles) and configure every little program need to do this (mail client, mosaic, etc.)
Here we get into one of the prevalent flaws in hacker style development, hackers code for hackers, a.k.a they code what they want. This means that tools for the average user are not usually develloped initially. I would cringe giving my dad a Linux ditro disk of two years ago for him to install on a computer. It was not designed for use by an average user. Now is a different situation because hackers (and companies) have started to realize the importance of the average user.
Big buisness on the other hand relies on the average user to be willing to pay for making something easy to use. Microsoft became who they are based on this principle, they made things so users didn't have to. When my dad was installing Windows 98, my cringing had nothing to do with his ability to install the OS (it had more to do with him installing THAT OS) The Internet was usable by the average user, but it wasn't until the prodigy/AOL/Compuserve all-in-one-Internet applications made basic Internet access easy to install/use that the average user got online.
--- Linux... a college project gone horribly right
Damn, bitch, ease off! You be href-in' like you on bathtub crank! You can't be hikin' up yo skirt like dat an' expect t'be gettin' da johns. Dey likes a little bit o' dat mysterious shit, like maybe you ain't a ho, you dig?
You wanna be a karma whore?
Fine, but don't forget...
But admit it -- computers didn't become big business until Bill Gates got copyright protection on BASIC back in the early 80's. Then computers took off. I know, you think this is flame-bait, but I'm serious. Free software is good to get things going, but copyright makes it big business and if you look at companies like IBM or Sony, big business can innovate and often does a damn better job than what comes out of somebody's garage.
I think the problem is that everybody thinks MS when they think computers, and yes, MS is evil (except for their successful lobbying to get copyright on software), but big business is not. Who can honestly call Borland a bunch of money-grubbing bastards? I didn't think so.
Nothing wrong with free software, but don't knock the commercial stuff. It has it's place.
Free software is good to get things going, but copyright makes it big business and if you look at companies like IBM or Sony, big business can innovate and often does a damn better job than what comes out of somebody's garage.
As others have pointed out, correlation != causation. In the case of the computer boom, one can argue much more plausibly that the commoditization of cheap PC hardware was the primary cause of the boom of computers, and the software which runs on them, than Bill Gates' petty greed or precident setting copyright were. Even before the emergence of Windows as the One and Only Platform sales of PCs were booming, some running DOS, some running MacOS, some running windows, some running Geoworks, etc. etc.
Another counter example is the internet, which was developed with open and free protocols and software implimentations, some in the public domain, some under FreeBSD style licenses, and some under the GLP (all three can reasonably be considered counterpoints to traditional copyright -- they make use of a system they are philisophically opposed to but have no choice in being subject to). None of the software responsible for the infrastructure of the internet, be it USENET news, FTP, IRC, the World Wide Web, or email (SENDMAIL) was commercial. Oh, Sun and others offered commercial clones of some of the products (where the license permitted), but the reference implimentations, and the most widely used versions, were Free. For that matter, they still are, despite overwhelming efforts by various large entities (MS, AOL) to co-opt the net into a distribution channel for their own proprietary products.
The Big Boom in Internet Business appears to be dwarfing the PC boom, stock market fluctuations notwhithstanding. Draconian copyright isn't helping make this happen, it (and other forms of intellectual property such as patents) are actually hampering it and even beginning to threaten it entirely. Examples include Amazon's one click patent vs. Barns and Noble, patents on the RSA algorithm which have seriously hampered the adoption of widespread public key crypto (a prerequisite to online business transactions and contracts), the DMCA and copyright law being used to fragment open standards such as Kerberos, etc.
There is a place for commercial software. I run applix myself, and have used AcceleratedX in the past. I have numerous commercial games, all of which I've paid for. However, that does not mean that IP laws are enhancing progress; indeed to all appearances they seem to be doing the opposite.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
>talk troll
What do you want to say to troll?
>ask troll about "Signal 11"
Which Signal 11 do you mean, SIGSEGV or (Slashdot User #203709)?
>oops #203709
TRoLLaXoR stares at you and says "New around here, eh, Karma Whore? Signal 11 is much older than that, but we Trolls have destroyed his account and burned his webpages! The Great Karma Whore is no more!"
>ask troll about "Great Karma Whore"
TRoLLaXoR chuckles in delight. "The form errors were only the first step in our plan to overthrow the evil moderators. Now he has been reduced to his mortal form as the lowly 'Bojay Baggins'."
>bojay
The vaporous shapes envelop you; you are teleported through a rabit hole.
>look
You are in a rabbit hole. All the posts have expired. There is a dead link to the east. There is a dangling HREF here.
>look HREF
The link text says "The Search for Signal 11 begins here". The anchor is unreadable.
>i
You have a cookie, and 5 Karma.
>xyzzy
What do you think this is, boy? Adventure?
>
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The internet was founded under public contract, designed for the defense department.
Even then, the Department of Defense required that it be open, with source code available, and threatened to pull defense contracts if the contractors did not comply.
This set the foundation for the modern internet, which was created using open protocols, an open standards process (IETF), and open software.
The internet may have been jump started by an expensive government contract for which a monopolist company happened to win the bid, but it was built collaboratively by developers from numerous universities in a manner which is almost precisely what the open source/free software folks employ today.
Brush up on your history before claiming that the internet was your creation or even created using your methods.
Boy, you must be bitter. What's the matter, MSFT stock options not what you would have liked? Nowhere did I claim to have created the internet, I leave such claims to Al Gore and Bill Gates.[1]
It was not. The internet was created by Big Busines
No. The internet was founded by Big Government spending taxpayer dollars, then built in its modern form by universities collaborating in an open manner using what today is referred to as the "free software" or "open source" paradigm.
Brush up on your history. I've been using the net for 13 years and have had the privelege of watching much of this happen, and your characterization is completely inaccurate and misleading.
[1]Bill Gates actually claimed to have invented the PC during an inverview. He often makes claims to have invented internet services that have been present as free software in one form or another for over a decade.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
--
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
And the Sherman Antitrust Act isn't really about big business. It's about monopolies. There's a difference. A monopoly is a problem because it harms innovation and favors the status quo in its field. Furthermore, it limits the choices of consumers to one.
Big businesses may not be necessary in developing software. Although I'm not convinced on that. But regardless, the open source model demonstrates that it's at least POSSIBLE for quality software to be developed by a group of people outside of a business.
However, there are advantages to big business. You or I could not build a jet. We could not develop the next wonder drug. We could not construct a skyscraper. You know why? Because we don't have that kind of money, and we can't pool that kind of manpower. It takes a business or a government to pool the resources to accomplish things like this -- and in nine out of ten cases, I'd rather have the businesses doing it.
Take a long, hard look, and maybe you'll change your mind about big business.
For the home computer market to expand, it needed a lot of customers. Not just hobbiests. Buisnesses, followed by people buying computers for home due to exposure to them at work. But why would business be interested in a microcomputer? You needed a killer app.
That killer app was VisiCalc. If you look a bit in to its histor y, you'll find that VisiCalc was that killer app. It quickly paid for itself by reducing errors and reducing hours spent crunching numbers. VisiCalc was THE reason for a business to buy a microcomputer. What was once scoffed at as a non-serious hobbiest toy suddenly became a valuable tool and spawned a whole new industry. BASIC didn't do that, much less copyright law.
Take a look at the IT industry. Look at big names such as Apple, Cisco, Sun. Where did these massive corporations spawn? From very humble "garage" beginnings. Even VisiCalc was developed in an attic of a rented apartment.Sure... things have changed since then for all those companies. And Corporations are able to do things on an amazing scale - something required to make some innovations and manufacture products. But so much of what we enjoy today does not exist because of corporate innovation - it exists because a corporation has expanded on the innovative work done in somebody's garage. Without that work, there would be little for corporations to offer.