Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Is Bad [updated]
pjones writes: "This just in! Open Source is bad for companies and countries too. In a New York Times article (registration required), John Markoff reports that: "In a speech defending Microsoft's business model, to be given on Thursday at the Stern School of Business at New York University, Craig Mundie, a senior vice president at Microsoft and one of its software strategists, will argue that the company already follows the best attributes of the open-source model by sharing the original programmer's instructions, or source code, more widely than is generally realized." Singled out for particular rebuke and scorn are IBM and the famous GPL and its author Richard Stallman.
Who will be there to cheer Craig on?" See also ESR's dispatch on same. (Read below for update with time and place.)
Update: 05/03 01:55 PM by T : cananian points to this announcement on time and place. The upshot: from noon to 1:30 p.m, in room 1-70 of NYU's Kaufman Management Center (KMEC), 44 West 4th Street.
Excellent way to get Linux mentioned in the news. It's better than advertising. After all, in the big time, there is very little bad publicity. As long as they spell our name right ...
The parent of this post is a *troll*.
The response to it is *NOT A TROLL*.
You can tell the difference because the troll post bashes Microsoft for no reason, while the response asks for proof.
You obviously have no clue whatsoever.
But hey this is Slashdot -- where anything that questions the dogma that Microsoft:
(1) is so preternaturally evil and Machivellian that they can destroy anything
(2) is completely and totally incompetent to the point of not being able to come up with software that doesn't crash in less time than it takes for the machine to boot
... is punished. Pity no-one seems to realize that they can't be both.
Simon (yes, posting anonymously, because it's obvious that the moderators don't have a fucking clue between them)
I think one characteristic of microsoft's success is it's willingness to jump straight to step three (fighting) very early.
Thus changing step 4.
Aha, if there are so little people who actually read the source code, then how come you say that hackers will read them?
Oh sure, good people don't read the source code, only bad people.
Yeah right.
As a Microsoft Team Manager (The Fictional Deparment), perhaps I should explain what we mean.
Firstly, since we are talking about Global Issues, lets define generic Good and Bad in those terms... (these are not definite by any means but I think our point is clear)
Good - That which allows mankind to advance, while retaining a high level of individual control and providing a more colourful and cultural lifestyle.
Bad - That which suppresses mankind into levels of control and seperates them from their own chosen unities and 'encourages' them into larger, controlled ones.
All the problems we have now are caused by the constraints of the legal systems we operate under, that's why we're lobbying, on your behalf, to have them changed. Just think, in a few years we may even be able to control who runs countries if our plans to introduce our voting systems into widespread use is successful. Imagine that! You're goverments will be chosen by the Clevel People here at Microsoft and you won't have to worry about voting. Imagine the time and money savings - money which after our cut, we can use to buy anyone who threatens your stability.
In the New World where Technology Is God, we must keep control or someone Bad will do so and then we'll be powerless to help! And we know that we may mutate into that Evil but we're Clever People and have worked out that if we take small steps to actually do so (to a limited degree of course. For the Greater Good, naturally), we can quash the Truely Evil threats around us and protect you, our people, from them.
Nigel F. Hummingbird
Manager of Fictional Output
Microsoft Corp.
According to http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/defa ult.asp ``President Clinton named Mundie to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee'', whatever that means.
The newspapers have long learned that forming public opinion is best done by publishing in bold, on the front page, their own opinions. Later perhaps to be forced to publish a retraction (in small writing on page 8)
We have simply beat Microsoft to this and theirs will now be the retraction. It is the best way round (let the people publish their opionions in bold, and then let those who stand to gain live on page 8)
The other way round is far far worse.
And do you seriously believe that they'd have anything useful to say rather than nonsense fueled by the panic they feel as we overthrow their empire and with it their share options and comforts.
If you wan't to know Open Source/Free Software may make lots of money, ask IBM.
If you want to hear that it's bad, ask Microsoft.
But if you want to know for yourself, install it and think with your own brain.
However, are we approaching the end times? Does the fact that the Number of the Beast is equal to the sum of the ASCII codes for "William Gates" plus 3 for the numerial III?
Does .NET mean MS will be "owning" you, consolidating your information? Will they now
have the ultimate power over you? Will your number be your SSN (or similar if not in US)?
Will you be a slave to MS (without knowing it)?
The closer we get to .NET and MS total dominance
(yes, that is what .NET will do), the closer we get to complete corporate control.
Is Mr. Gates evil? Do we REALLY know? Is MS evil? No one really knows, but their corporate culture has little morals. He is the richest man in the world (today), and holds more power than MANY countries. Think about and read up on the end times (for example, do a paper contrasting the depiction in the Bible versus today and Microsoft, which would be a GREAT read).
Where will we be tomorrow?
Seems to be more FUD here. The GPL does not infect your software simply by using GPL'd code. It is possible to write proprietary code that interacts with GPL'd code without having to GPL the proprietary stuff. Also I think there is a point missing here, most companies are software users - should they care how it is licenced? As long as the licence allows them to use the software where's the problem? Even those companies that develop their own software do so for the most part to address particular problems that only occur within their business process - write software to fix problem, get on with selling widgets - the software is probably not usable outside of that particular company, and they probably shouldn't care less if it was. GPL therefore only seems to affect companies who depend on closed source for their income, step forward Micro$oft!, for example. If anything it shows how good GPL software is becoming that M$ is getting shit scared of it.
"But he added that the company's proprietary business model was a more effective way to support industry standards..." Such as kerberos?
" It looks like the room will be tiny, so show up outside the building with signs in plenty of time to be seen! " Horseshit. The best thing you can do if you are at all interested in supporting open source is stay away from that meeting. Unless you are willing to RSVP, wear a suit and look and act like a business person. Then you MIGHT get into the room and you MIGHT get a chance to ask intelligent questions, or steer the audience to the real issues. Open source does not need demonstrators. Does not need crowd scenes and street actions. Does not need to look like a disruption of the good life as so many non-technical people think they know it. just my opinion...
Ok, I'll throw you a link:http://www.eskimo.com/~matth/hobby.html
A google search will pull up all kinds of analysis and commentary and historical perspective.
"Open Source Is Bad", huh? Well, reading that I would guess that the author is implying that Microsoft doesn't like open source. No, that's not true. Microsoft likes open source, very very much - after all, huge portions of their networking system come from open source. Microsoft does not like the GPL. Please take note:
open source != GPL
Much the same that rectangle != square -- a square is indeed a type of rectangle, but by no means is it the only type.
How many shares do you have of MSFT? 100? 1000? Hah! I wipe my ass with that many shares every morning. Let's face it, your total holdings in MSFT amount to basically dick. But I'm going to answer you anyway, just because I'm in that kind of mood.
Don't worry about that little adverse court ruling. We own the appeals court. And the Supreme Court. And fucking George W. Bush, for that matter. Judge Jackson's next judicial assignment will be in the Extreme Northern District of Alaska, rest assured.
And I wouldn't worry about Java either. By the time we get done with Sun, Scott McNealy will be lucky to get a job selling used cars...
Windows XP will succeed...thanks to our new program of "Mandatory Direct Marketing." Every computer user in the country will receive a copy of Windows XP, whether they ask for it or not. If they fail to pay for it, Guido, from our Collections Division, will be coming around to "persuade" them...
And once public opinion turns against those Linux and Open Source hackers (and it will turn against them, no matter how many legislators we have to buy), we can start shipping them all off to our new network of death camps. Did I say "death camps"? I meant "happy camps," where they can be properly reeducated and turn into nice little Windows users who will buy their upgrades when we tell them to.
In conclusion: We don't care. We don't have to. We're Microsoft. Give us your credit card numbers and shut the fuck up.
Sincerely yours,
William H. Gates III
Chairman, Chief Software Architect, and Prince of Darkness
Someone did that to a buddy of mine here at work a while back, and we had a few ideas on how to "deal" with it:
"Microsoft good, open source bad! Microsoft good, open source bad! Microsoft good, open source bad!"
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Sure. See Portable.NET
A commercial company with that many incompabilities between language versions would soon the out of business.
I presume you're discussing Perl, not Python -- Python is quite compatible between versions; the only major incompatibility-inducing changes in the last three revisions have been the removal of a feature which was both undocumented and deprecated. The improved scoping in 2.1 (despite the unlikelyhood of it breaking preexisting code) is toggleable at runtime... in short, the development team is being pretty damn cautious.
Now, Perl... well, perl just sucks. :)
Looks like RMS isn't too far away from this! :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Which they didn't. Everyone knows it's "GNU/Linux" hehehe
/. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.
(Moderators: I have a +1 and didn't use it. Consider this post already modded down.)
The real Threed's
--Threed
Lyx--though it's quasi-GPL, not GPL. (Even though it calls itself GPL).
Then again, if it could verify consent of every coder past and present, it *would* change licenses. The problem is figuring out patches more than a couple of years back . .
hawk
>because in some industries it would make the prices go up and down
>like a yo-yo,
whereas the price of gasoline doen'st do that . . .
>making it harder for the local population to sell their
>wares. Let's take fish for example. I don't think very many fishermen
>would like the idea of countries like Norway selling them surplus fish
>for almost nothing.
Neither would the Norwegian fisherman. This would drive down
the price on the rest of their fish, too . . . The U.S. has
government programs for the destruction of small fruit, and
industry requested regulations for size minimums for sale to
keep supply down. Nonconforming fruit is typically plowed under.
If these same actions were taken without the governmental order,
they'd go to jail . . .
>Just too sad the fish is merely discarded instead
>of being fed to those who are dying of hunger in the world.
If you can figure out a way to get it to them, go collect your
Nobel Prizes for Peace and Economics (and possibly chemistry and
physics). The countries currently suffering from starvation
ar not doing so because there is not enough food, nor even because
they haven't been given enough in relief efforts. The problem is
in distribution. Typically, it is either corruption in government
or rebel forces/freedom fighters/whatevers either taking it for
themselves (often by force) or obstructing the distribution (not
letting relief workers in). Quite frequently these countries
are exporting food while their citizens starve.
>Some cold
>hearts even make the argument that giving the fish to poor people
>would disrupt the world-market.
world market? It would disrupt the local market, too. But the
distribution problem is still there.
>Aside
Much better to let the world bank keep
>heir stranglehold on the poor countries, and fake useless donations.
Donations? World Bank? It make sloans, not donations.
>(Question: Why are countries poor? Because of imperialism and its
>extension in the 21th century: the world market)
Huh? Countries our poor because of corrupt governments used by
whatever the local elite is (whether landowners or communists) to
transfer the existing wealth to themselves or their benefactors
(army, corporation, relatives, whatever). Imperialism needs
trade, not a poor country around. Trade benefits both parties
(or the transaction wouldn't occur). A good profit-minded imperialist
will cause the creation of wealth in the colonial lands (Although
I'm not sure any place but Britain ever got this straight. I
still haven't figured out what France, Belgium, Portugal, etc.
thought they wer doing.).
hawk
For one side, Mr. Markof lacks credibility (due to the bunch of lies when he wrote about Mitnick/Shimomura), but most of the article is related to M$.
Why should MS act in a different way? It's impossible for a company like it. Its business model relies precisely on keeping proprietary as much code as it can.
So the GPL in particular and Open Source in general endangers that business model. That's no news.
What is really dangerous is to simply say that "potentially undermines the intellectual property of countries and companies". Thats simply BS (begining with a simple question: Since when MS cares about companies or countries? They care for themselves): I'm sure that soon you'll see a lot of ads comparing Open Source to the worst communism you can think of. And, of course Open Source is not.
Open Source enriches the common intellectual property for every company and country that uses it: as more source is available, the knowledge increases -and then intellectual property does too. The same way William Shakespeare or Beethoven were paid for their works and now they are part of the world's intellectual wealth. I'm sure we'll se some Open Source 'classics'.
When you move, as MS is doing, towards renting software, the chance of owning it (and from the very source!) endangers MS, but becomes more attractive to consumers. OS is then a threat for MS future business. And ownership (altough limited by GPL) is the very base of capitalism. What really endangers countries and companies is to depend on a single black box (just think what could happen if Redmond were wiped by a volcano).
What Open Source does is to create different business models, based more in services than in ownership of something as intangible as software,
Sheep? Between foot-and-mouth and slashdot, there are none left for Microsoft.
By that argument, you're paying $40k to learn how to push the button on a disposable Kodak.
Grow up. Just because you don't understand something, that doesn't it isn't worthwhile.
Yeah, tell me about it. All hail the slashbots!
Dear Mr. Gates.
Please place my address on your "do not send junk mail to:" list. I run Linux on the computer I built myself, and I do not own any MSFT stock. Your constant letters are a waste of time and paper.
I am also certain that Judge Jackson will not be sent to Extreme Northern District of Alaska, as that would likely interfere in George W.'s plan to hand off that district to the oil companies for exploitation. He needs a judge in his pocket up there.
Sincerely *not* yours,
a free thinker.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Correction:
Strictly speaking, it is not what the oil *companies* are doing, it is what the Organisation of Oil Producing and Exporting *COUNTRIES* are doing (aka OPEC).
And if you want to hear MY opinion, it is the #1 reason for the current economic slowdown. It started with OPEC agreeing to constrain supply, with comments from members like Venezuela saying things like "America's economy is booming, and ours is sagging, it's time for us to get a piece of the pie."
And nobody in America, the World Bank, Federal Reserve, or Newsmedia, said or did one fucking thing about it.
The internet "economy" and ecommerce rely on one crucial non-computer factor: transportation and shipping. Raise the costs of oil, and the costs of shipping go up, and profit margins slump.
The California Energy Crisis (TM) (coming to a town near you) is largely due to OPEC's cutbacks as well. This also will have an impact on the success or failure of the "new economy".
I've said this since Reagan was in office presiding over "the longest economic expansion in history" (TM), it had NOTHING to do with tax cuts, liberalization of trade laws, the environment, God, or anything else, other than CHEAP OIL. George Bush (#41) understood it, and beat Iraq over it. It's all about CHEAP OIL. Nothing else.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"Open source, as advocated by Sun, IBM, etc., says that you bought the hardware... here's the software that comes with it."
I don't know about Sun, but that's not the way I see IBM's attitude to Open Source. IBM's attitude varies from product to product, but let's take three examples:
1. Apache -- IBM noticed that their proprietary web server had a tiny market share, while Apache was wildly successful. Someone thought "hey, this is silly, if we become Apache developers, we can help mould it into something that we want, and we can sell it by adding proprietary sugar-coating and selling support" -- and that's what you get with the WebSphere range of products. IBM contribute greatly to the core, free, Apache -- but they also sell proprietary systems which hook into Apache to provide more functionality (e.g. their servlet engine, Commerce Suite etc).
2. Linux -- Someone at IBM noticed "Hey, this thing is *portable*. If we port this to all our server platforms, then we can develop server software once, and be able to run it on anything from a NetFinity PC, to an X-Series mainframe. We can offer our customers a true, smooth, growth path". We have yet to see what this means for AIX...
3. Jikes -- simple one this, a researcher develops something cool. It's not marketable as-is (although later it could become part of a "prettier" product) so it becomes great "Geek PR" to give it away.
--
This sort of technique works swimmingly against Microsoft's other commercial software competitors, but it isn't nearly as effective against Linux because Linux can be used without asking for permission from the accountants.
In every business where I have seen Linux used it started off as the basis of a skunkworks project. Linux was chosen because the project had little or no funding. That's the beautty of Linux really, all you need is an idea, and a little bit of time, Linux supplies the rest. It comes complete with an amazing set of tools, and there are plenty of folks out on the Internet that are more than happy to point you in the right direction. The documentation might be spotty at times, but there is plenty of example code to use, and chances are good that someone else has already written the difficult bits for you.
On several occassions I have seen Linux implementations finished before the "official" proprietary software based project that it was competing with was able to even get the necessary software licenses. And once Linux gains a foothold in the company it spreads like the plague. Accountants are not stupid. Part of the reason that Linux is doing so well in the server arena is that accountants know that you don't always get what you pay for. Microsoft's latest tactics will backfire fantastically. In fact, this particular speech will probably be ridiculed almost as much as Alchin's "Un-American" crack.
I hate to break up your utopian anti-capitalist dream, but the GPL fits into a captitalist society much better than you think. For example, Cygnus was profitable (and growing) for years before anyone had ever heard of RedHat. They used gcc as a battering ram to open the compiler market for them. Had they just been another compiler company they would have disappeared into the annals of time without a trace. Instead they gave away the compiler, and (in many areas) became the de-facto standard. This not only undermined the value of their competitors closed source compilers, but it gave them control (although very benevolent control) over a fairly large portion of the overall compiler support business.
If you think about it, GPL programmers are very much like lawyers. Lawyers aren't paid for creating new laws (well most aren't), but instead they are paid for their knowledge in applying the law. With Free Software the value isn't in the 1's and 0's themselves, but instead it is in the talents of those folks who know how to create solutions with the software. This is bad news for Microsoft (because they sell software), but it is good news for nearly everyone else (especially the freelance hacker and the software consumer).
All of a sudden I can offer my clients robust solutions without having to pay any Microsoft tax. I can even create custom proprietary solutions on top of already existing code (and charge money for this solution). However, if I am not careful one of my competitors will create a similar solution and release it under a Free License. His solution will then almost certainly become the de-facto standard, and his intimate knowledge of the new standard will become more valuable than my knowledge of a proprietary non-standard solution. In other words, at some point it becomes in my best interest to share.
The days when standards could be forced from pure market pressure alone are coming to an end. Even Microsoft with 90% of the desktop market is finding that they have to give software away to have any chance of affecting de-facto standards. The only reason that .Net even has a chance is because they based it on a whole raft of open protocols (complete with open source implementations). The only reason that we aren't all still using Netscape is that Microsoft gave away IE. And now with Microsoft's draconian new licensing scheme for Office XP don't be surprised if small businesses and home users start using StarOffice.
There are valid reasons to use either licenses.
The GPL FORCES external contribution. This IMHO is awesome for projects that want to progress ahead VERY quickly. With the GPL you release your code for FREE as in SPEECH, but not as in BEER. Because you ARE requesting a payment, anyone that modifies your code is required to give the modificatons back to you. There fore you "profit" from the GPL. ( I use the term "profit" lightly here )
If you really want to release your source for "free" as in BEER and SPEECH you should use the BSD License. With this license the user of your source can do anything they want with it. Including making money of YOUR work, and not giving you anything back. That's the FREE BEER part.
IMHO, if you are developing a product to compete with someone like MS your best bet is to use the GPL because it prevents MS from subverting your code. If they want to use YOUR code, they HAVE to give something back to you. The GPL FORCES cooperation. However it is not co-orced, MS can ALWAYS choose to write their own code.
On the other hand if you are trying to establish an industry standard, your best bet is the BSD License.. because other companies use closed source projects, and they will not be willing to "infest" their closed source projects with GPL source.
Wow have you got it backwards...
.Net framework also benefit from C#'s design.
.Net you will have choices and won't have to program with a hand tied behind your back.
Java was a direct business response to Microsoft. Sun was losing ground as more and more companies were moving to develop software for Windows NT.
Java was created in a effort to sell the idea of cross-platformism, despite the fact that Java is simply a platform in itself and not much different than say using Uniface, etc. But if software could be written to run on NT, and it just happened to also run on Sun... Sun could sell more boxes.
Java had a rough start, however. It failed at just about every task it was sold as being the perfect solution for. Corel initially announced a Java version of WordPerfect, then canned the project. Sun told us we wouldn't need to buy new computers, a 486dx2/66 would run Java just fine especially with a Java accelerator board in it. Java would be the language of the web, embedded programs into your web browser. But none of these ideas panned out, performance issues, compatibility issues(Java does not run anywhere), etc. all made it completely unsuitable for these tasks.
However after years of trying to find a place for Java, it eventually became a pretty decent langauge for writing business/web middle-tier components sort of by default. It does have a nice language grammar, and is relatively easy to use and understand unlike C++.
C# on the other hand was a natural language evolution. Microsoft saw that there were some great advantages of Java because of the syntax being easier to grok than C++ and wanted to provide that same level of goodness to their customers. Customers who were tired of the limitation of languages like VB, but not wanting to mangle their brains with C++.
Unfortunately with Java being a proprietary standard of Sun, Microsoft wasn't able to bring it to the Windows platform. So they rolled their own solution and gave it away as an Open Standard.
A side benefit of the C# project is the development of the Common Language Runtime. This means that other languages under the
This results in Visual BASIC now having to conform to intelligent language design rules. Orthogonality, symmetry, etc. No more of this weird crap code syntax. This also means that VB programmers will no longer be quite as limited in what they are able to do.
Still if you want to write device drivers, C++ is the best bet. But for applications programming under
Well I would label your post as FUD.
What is it that the business flunkies don't see?
What is it that the engineers know better?
Have you stopped to consider that they have different perspectives?
There are a lot of highly skilled, technical people, like myself that see great advantages in what Microsoft has created and proposes to create. We're certainly not alone, in fact we outnumber the Open Source world at least 10 to 1.
However we aren't as vocal, either. There's no point. Our world is on top, we are having a lot of fun doing what we enjoy doing.
The Open Source world on the other hand is a lot like the Christian Right, losing the battle and shouting at the rain.
Out of curiousity, can you provide any examples of this "best software"?
I can't for the life of me think of any software licensed under the GPL which is anything more than adequate.
I know of a number of open source projects which are pretty good, but the really popular good ones like Apache aren't licensed under the GPL.
I keep asking this question, and nobody can provide a clear answer.
I actually did see a panel discussion two years ago which included Bob Young from RedHat and I think it was Ed Muth from Microsoft, and one other person I don't recall.
Mr. Young certainly tried to dominate the discussion at the beginning, but by the end Mr. Muth had made several extremely good points and really had a lot of people going "Oh, yeah, I guess I hadn't thought of that."
It was interesting.
Wow, you are really out of touch.
Like I said... out of touch.
-
Claiming Open Source is a threat to intellectual property. This manages to insult open source people, suggesting they're to stupid to understand the implications of open source.
- Claiming Open Source is a threat to intellectual property also assumes that people in our industry are hot for intellectual property laws - when many of us are seriously rethinking them. Mr. Mundie somehow assumes we're all stupid sheep who love the current intellectual property system.
And some of us are not rethinking them, and realize that the GPL is a threat to intellectual property. In point of fact, most of what he said/wrote is true. Just because you don't agree with him doesn't make him a liar, it just makes him disagree with you. Believe it or not, your opinion is not fact.- The swipe at IBM merely insults one of their competitors' intelligence - a competitor that already is likely to not feel particuarly merciful.
So? Standard marketing tactic for every company, including IBM. The implication of every marketing campaign is ``our stuff is so much better (cheaper, faster) than our competitors they're stupid for making it and you're stupid for using it.'' This pretty much includes the marketing for the GPL and for Linux. Again, disagreeing with you doesn't make him a liar.- Open source has a forking-software problem. Try the joy of dealing with several different versions of Windows in the same office, hardware and driver issues, ad nauseum. He assumes we forget some of the weird stuff Microsoft has pulled.
Now this was funny. After the Kerberos fiasco, it took giant brass balls to say this.- The GPL is not understood by many sophisticated people. Yeah, like it represents all of Open Source -- and exactly how is he so sure those of us who use the GPL don't understand it? Again, he literally tells us we're idiots.
The GPL is not understood by people, sophisticated or otherwise. The GPL doesn't really mean anything until it has been interpreted in court, which hasn't happened -- yet. When it does, I'm pretty much betting everyone is going to be surprised. It is impossible to predict what interpretation might happen, due to the imprecise language of the GPL. In particular, the phrase ``when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License'' is going to give anyone putting GPL code into an embedded product a real nightmare in court. (GPL v2, Section 2, paragraph after item c).You very deeply do not understand the Apple vs. Microsoft lawsuit. That lawsuit had nothing to do with broad technologies, as you seem to fear, but rather with very specific behaviors of a few icons and the actions they performed. I guess it's too much to expect an anonymous coward to actually learn about something before spouting off about it though.
but, as was also pointed out, ftp is not a tcp/ip stack.
- ...some people assume that if you say something bad about Java, that it means you must be cheering on Microsoft.
I'm not one of those people, but the topic of this thread is Microsoft.- The fact that there are Java work-alikes just highlights the fact that Sun refuses to release the Java source code for free(dom) use.
No, it highlights the fact that some people don't like the rules they have to follow to get Sun's source code. That's fine; some people don't like the rules imposed by the GPL, either (particularly Microsoft). That's why there are other licenses and duplicate efforts. WebMacro and Velocity are both free software, and they do exactly the same thing, but Velocity was created because (at one point) WebMacro's license conflicted with the APL.Sun's Java license has never stopped me from doing what I need to do, so I don't mind it. It did bother some other people I know, so you know what they did? They wrote their own damn Java implementation. I suppose they should have just wasted their time whining about Sun on Slashdot, instead.
- Why else would people have to produce re-implementations that end up forking the language in subtle ways?
Who did that? Oh yeah, Microsoft. No one else, though. Japhar and Kaffe have struggled to keep full compliance with Sun's published specification. In other words: You don't know what you're talking about.Like I said,"Thinly-veiled Java bashing."
Meanwhile, what standards body control the Linux Kernal? Perl? PHP? Is mod_perl part of any W3C standard? Sun's strict control of Java's definition is a feature not a hinderance. Sure Java has plenty of weak spots, but there are numerous of options for fixing them, none of which rely on a standards body deliberating.
Microsoft submits their crap to standards bodies to distract feeble-minded tehcnopundits like yourself. The fact is, their stuff is more proprietary than anyone else's and they'll do what they want with it regardless of any standards.
If Java is so "proprietary" how is it that there are several open-source implementations of it? Can you name one open source implementation of C#?
He was talking from the POV of a Microsoftie Monopolist. For everyone else, competition is good.
Sound familiar? It's the LGPL. And, unless somebody can turn me on to something better, it's the best compromise I've found between Stallman's holy grail of "pure" Free software and the realities of business computing today.
Maybe we can't share our finished products. But at least let us share the building blocks we use to build.
Well said. I always felt that BSDL was a black hole, from which no code ever returns.
We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
This sig intentionally left blank.
What was your point, anyway?
--
"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
It's bad??? Really???
You mean I've been decieved by those nasty GNU hippies all this time?
Oh I'm so sorry! I've been such a fool for so long. I'll go nuke my linux partition right now. I don't want to be running a nasty business-harming OS.
Microsoft, I know I've been bad, but if you give me one more chance...
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I just don't get the BSD license. I have written both closed and GPL code, the former because I was paid, the latter because I could benefit from others improving my code. Writing code under the BSD license seems to be the worst of both worlds, as I would gain neither of the two benefits. When the BSD license works (and it does, in a number of cases), it is because the community is treating it like the GPL license and submitting changes to the source. So why not choose the license that makes that behaviour mandatory?
The executive, Irving Wladawsky- Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said, "If we thought this *Open Source* was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you know, we have a lot of lawyers."
It took me a couple minutes to stop laughing at that one.
Then I started thinking about the overt threat involved in that statement.
Even still, it's somewhat humorous to have a company flash their "Rabid Attack Lawyers" warnings in response to an MS attack on OSS.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
No -- its buy the first one for $10,000 ONCE, sell it to 12 people for $1,000, and boom : $2000 profit...but eventually the price will finally (and in good health) drop to 0...in any case, this is unlikely for any GPL software to have happen to it.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
As for RedHat being the only Linux brand (at least in the public's eye)? Well, others have written that the chance for that has come and gone and it isn't going to happen.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Its not "money making" directly -- its what you DO with OpenSource software that can be money making. M$ doesn't fear that somebody else is really going to make money by making OSS...what they feare is the other factors you mention -- long term and market gaining -- things tht won't make money for others, but WILL take money away from M$.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
But that isn't something that can be re-sold...
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
The GPL was designed to keep free software free. Basically it gives you all the freedom in the world, except for taking away that freedom from others. Okay, I think we all know that.
Now apply the same logic to the intellectual property within the software. Just because everyone can benefit from it doesn't destroy the intellectual property, it is just being shared.
The GPL protects intellectual property from being absorbed by one particular entity, whether it be a person or company or organisation. The GPL was designed to do this.
Proprietary software protects the IP of the individual writing it. GPL is less egoistic. But of course, it's almost a crime anno 2001 not to be egoistic.
Ahh yes, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser... I must reread that series someday soon.
The real threat to future innovation and development does not come from Free code.
No, the real problem is when someone has come up with a brilliant idea, spent weeks/months writing it up in an application only to find out that he has "infringed" upon dozens of software patents in the process.
Now that is something that threatens future innovation.
--
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D727
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Man, last time I post a straight faced joke on Slashdot. It is apparently taken seriously, marked "Insightful" and "Interesting". I respond to my own post, clarifying it as a joke. My clarifying post is marked down for being off topic!
There are many cool people at Stern and I apologise if i offended any of them.
Oh the other hand, I feel justified in taking pot shots at Microsoft and NYU. : )
...moderators, would you mind marking my post, the post i'm refering to, DOWN?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
As an NYU student studying to get my BFA in Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, I can verify nearly all people associated with that school down the block (Stern School of Business) are, in fact, bloodsucking money grubbers. Of course they are teaming up with The Borg. NYU is taking over Manhattan (specifically, the village and union square), Microsoft is taking over your desktop.
Or maybe i'm just jealous that I won't be making six figures after I graduate and paying back $40k in student loans. I'm an artist, I can starve.
Do you expect a university to have Linus Torvalds give a speech on economics to students who are paying nearly $35,000 to learn how to shake hands? No, these are students that attach WORD documents to emails, because "Microsoft is the standard." As far as they are concerned, the exchange of money is what makes the world go 'round. Every machine running linux is another Microsoft employee out of work.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I am very happy with KDE's stability and usability. Konqueror is my primary browser, works like a wonder, or much like IE, and has the best cookie handling I've ever seen.
It's also easy for Windows users to learn, except for the panel. What do dummies need a panel for anyway? Desktop icons and windows should suffice. There're too many options in the K menu for easy use - both in RedHat and Debian, at least.
There seemed to be something weird with font settings (choices in applications seem to affect the global settings), but that's minor.
If only aterm worked as well as Eterm, I'd be all happy with Linux on the desktop.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
if I were you, I'd sell *before* his speech. You might not make as much as some enterprising student that shows up to sell rotten tomatos at the door, but at least you won't loose as much as Bill will before they come to their senses.
It's been good using Linux and other REALLY INCREDIBLE software for free, for me and most of you. From this point of view, been able to use good quality stuff seems better then anything. I really see a lot of good things happening in the software industry, thanks to OSS.
But what about many other things, like medical assistence, medicine, lawyers, food, hardware and etc - Do you thing that any other industry will, someday, give things for you? For free?
The benefits of digital media are immeasurable. But what about intellectual rights? I've seen people stop buying CDs with this Napster stuff.
Where do you think musicians will take their money?
And what about people who work and study hard for creating good and intelligent software? How they'll be able to pay for those itens that are not free? It's hard to imagine...
Look - accelerating the world has advantages, but soon You'll see the counterparts. Have you seen those labor cuts in many companies. Maybe your job is the next...
Don't be such a stone-blind. If some company (like MS) is not been fair, do you think that many others in the OSS market are playing fair?
There are people benefiting more than you think on OSS, and they're not Linux or Cox.
Sorry, it's not well written - the important is the point.
Good luck for all,
RM
To Bill Gates and Steve Balmer.
Stop this bullshit.
Now.
You've just managed to get the stock price back over $70 a share for the first time since Jackson nailed your corporate balls to the wall. You just managed to put out a pretty damn good operating system in the form of Windows 2000. And you're just getting started with .NET, which, yeah, is a Java ripoff, but it's at least a fairly solid idea.
And now, from all appearances, you're ready to shoot yourselves in the foot.
Windows XP? The operating system that'll break every time you install a bit of hardware? This is reminiscent of Commodore when they cut out a piece of their motherboard rather than let users install a part themselves.
FUD campaign against Linux and Open Source? Who are you kidding? Nobody's paying attention to your opinions on the matter anymore, and for good reason. Everyone knows you have a bias; everyone who's paying attention has seen the Halloween Documents; and too many big names (like IBM and Oracle) have embraced Linux, which is pretty much the OSS standard bearer.
This is going to smell like desperation on your parts, and this is going to drive your share price down.
Don't cost me money. Come to your senses. Soon.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
Not bad, coming from a former(?) Microsoft coder. Greetings from AM-Info.
"Zathras -tell- Zathras, but Zathras never listen to Zathras." - Zathras
There is a difference beteween the "personal computer market" and the "corporate software market".
The internet services that OSS does so well cuts into MSs coportate sector because the industry in general is moving to internet delevery of data. The new release of Samba will definitly have an effect on NT/2000 sales, especialy in the smaller office.
But, on the other hand, 'normal' consumers still all in all are using MS stuff at home.
Microsoft it making this argument from the perspective of (duh) a software company. And yes, OSS, and GPL software does very much undermine some practical aspects of IP.
But, the world is bigger then just software companies. Software is infastructure, and infastructure design must be open so that it can be inspected and independently verified. Putting 'freedom' and politics asside, software needs to be independently verified and approved for safety and reliability reasons.
This independent review could be done by something like a government agency, UL/CSA/ASA etc with a pool of 'anti-virgins' (in the reverse engineering sense), but moving to OSS satisifies this, and is the logical extreem.
Personaly, I realy dont care about having the source code, but knowing that my apps (well, the big, important ones) have had good independent peer review lets me sleep at nights. (well usualy, insomnia tonight...)
They released the source code to Notepad. I mean, if that isn't commitment to open source(tm) what is?!
Not necessarily. What aspect of the GPL do you feel prevents someone from selling GPL'ed software for, say, $10,000?
...while the traditional economy is based on the principle of selling for more than you bought for.
I suddenly realized the reason for dot-com death!:-P
Anyway: The original seller still got their $10,000, so I guess it's irrelevant what the next chain does. And they can still sell the documentation (which the GPL for some reason neglects) for a further $10,000 - after all, having source doesn't mean you can understand it.
From the link in the parent, emphasis mine.
Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.
You mean after 25 years Gates still hasn't found 10 programmers?
hee heeTrolling is a art,
In the days of fear that cryptography could be a potential shield for child pornographers, there was a quote going around: "Child abuse" is the root password to the Constitution. The same idea can be applied to "public safety", "national security", or whatever cherished value moves people in any given time.
Mount a good enough PR campaign, and civil liberties demonstrate an astonishing degree of elasticity. M$ has the motive, means, and opportunity to initiate such a campaign.
Stallman has written on essentially this topic. Spooky, interesting stuff.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
This strategy occurred to me as a potential M$ move about a year ago. Nightmare scenarios came to mind of legal prohibition of free software development. M$ can certainly buy plenty of judges and lawyers; this may yet not be an impossibility.
Free software should remain legitimate (not just legal, but a public good) in the public perception. ESR's article is a good start, but appearing as it does in Linux Today, he's preaching to the choir. The involvement of IBM and other big companies with free software lends legitimacy, but is probably too far below the public radar to be perceived as a compelling free-speech issue.
It would be good if somebody with the connections to do so could get these distinctions clarified in more mainstream media, before M$ has a chance to codify "free software == piracy" as U.S. law.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
I know why MS has brought out the big puppets for this kill linux/bsd/GNU show lately. They are scared. Linux and BSD is kicking their butts now. Linux is embedded far more than any microsoft embedded product (embedded NT is just plain funny!! How can you have an embedded OS that huge?? Windows CE is not realtime, cannot be realtime and is known to all in the embedded world that it is worthless, hell MS even abandoned it) Linux is winning the embedded front easily, there is no real competition there from MS.
Servers, Big companies are now starting to impliment Linux and BSD servers instead of MS. My company has issued a statment that we will NOT migrate to windows 2000, and running 2000 is not allowed. (reasons? it offers the company nothing but an expense) But this same company is popping up more linux servers every week (three in my office alone!)
Ms is losing, they can see it, and they really want to either slow down the steamroller or try and dynamite it. when a company with 20 employees can save thousands each year by not using microsoft and still get the work done, the dollars will start talking louder than the drones.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's ludicrous of you to state there is a "hidden" agenda in the GPL. Have you ever read it? It clearly spells out its aim and goals in no uncertain terms before you even get to the legalese. I use the GPL because I strongly agree with its openly stated philosophy.
Stop with the fear-mongering.
It won't happen in my lifetime, or our grandchildren's lifetime. We've been promised true AI "real soon now" for decades, with very little progress. Even menial jobs require a degree of intelligence that computers do not have and will not for the forseeable future.
That may be true, but the "forseeable future" is getting shorter all the time. Right now, I would be suprised if anyone can predict what will happen with AI 1 year in the future, much less the ~20 years or so most people assume when they say the "forseeable future".
I cannot imagine Open Source to be bad for customers - be it end users, corporations, etc. It could be bad to Microsoft. So what? Don't whine about it, deal with it, Microsoft!
We, the end users, just want our software. We want quality. And we want the possibility to hack into the source of our software, to get even more quality.
We don't care about who makes our software. We want to be independent from suppliers as possible, so when a supplier gets down, we don't get down with them. Now that's a sound business model!
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Those open-source freaks aren't the only one -- there are also people like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that just gives away computers and software and money, like socialists or communists! Just encouraging people to beg for things instead of earning it! If they're not good enough to pay for things, they should just crawl into the sewer and die, and get out of the way of the capitalists who keep our country strong!
He cited the history of Unix, which has been replete with incompatible versions.
Of course the forking was caused by vendors trying to differentiate their closed, proprietary versions. One of the great advantages of free software is that forking will not occur unless there is a good technical reason (i.e. different versions for embedded devices and big iron). Any enhancements made in a forked version of free software can always be folded back into other versions.
The first web browser, written by Tim Berners-Lee was also graphical.
bnf
this space intentionally left blank (oops)
You have to translate "more widely than is generally realized"
to
"we'll give it to the Fortune 50 companies who happen to be on our Premier Support Service and who will shell out a chunk of change on top of that, not just to our inner sanctum of developers and partners and anyone else who can steal it from us."
If you ever experience any part of their Consulting services or their high-end support services, you'll "generally realize" how much of a load of crap Microsoft's stance is on sharing source code, and innovation in general.
~dlb
"if Microsoft code was published it would be found to contain stuff they have neither created or licensed."
Like maybe, most of it?
Well, the fact that IBM doesn't do anything unless their army of lawyers gives the thumbs-up is sort of a given.
I'm rather eager to see the first(?) legitimate case where some legal action is taken by a Big Money company against a GPL violator. That really would be the true test of the GPL.
I mean, what good is a "license" if there are no means for recourse? If there's avenue for legal action, how can you call it a license?
~dlb
err... "no avenue for legal action"...
doh.
Damn - I always forget that one minor detail...
"The executive, Irving Wladawsky- Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said, "If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you know, we have a lot of lawyers."
Are "a lot of lawyers" really going to get you anywhere when it comes to the GPL?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the GPL doesn't seem to allow for any legal recourse -- I'm surprised that IBM would make a statement like that.
~dlb
Let's dissect the article:
In short, another MS foot-in-mouth artist who only serves to drive people away.
At this rate I think MS's best marketing tactics would be to shut up for awhile and work on their software and products - software and products that I (be shocked) do not always think are that bad.
But I guess it's easier to insult people and play marketing games then write good code.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
> Sword Against Death by Fritz Leiber. Nice. Thanks for the excerpt. I think I'll get the book.
It's actually part of a seven volume series about a pair of heroes, usually with several stories per volume. The first one starts off a bit slow for my tastes, but it gets better as you go. (You may enjoy it best if you're just a wee bit warped.)
Also, let it be clear that the excerpt is just the ground for one story among many; the Devourers do not occur elsewhere in the series.
Still, if you like the Swords & Sorcery genre, I highly recommend the series.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
John 17:20
> Which gives everyone more freedom?
Pretty evidently the GPL. In an ideal world, either would work but in this one where people are inherently greedy and self seeking, the GPL ensures that the point in improving the Free Code Base is maintained, and thus it is maintained.
The BSD code base could easily be taken and hoarded, rapidly improved and restricted from public use.
While much BSD codebase is improved to match its hoarded counterparts, this can happen and probably would have happened more had the BSD license been the only one around.
Ironically having the GPL around has given the BSD folks more of a reason to keep up and also has provided another competing system (with more developers).
Both are good for 'us' but only one is 'bad' for those who'd fsck us over.
The good thing about the GPL is that independant discovery is completely acceptable. The GPL is a copyright device, not a patent device.
You'll always be able to write non-GPLed software. Even better, you'll be able to use GPLed software as a learning tool to do so. In fact, as long as you paraphrase, you can pretty well use code snippets as well.
Contrast this to most companies attempts to patent obvious things, keeping anyone else from implementing that thing, independently or not.
These are two seperate things...
Price fixing is when two (or more) companies agree to set certain prices for their products instead of letting market forces decide them.
This is what the oil companies are doing. They know customers have to buy, so they agree to limit production enough to drive prices to their ideal spot of the price-elasticity curve, rather than having open production and open consumption set a price.
'Dumping' refers to selling something below cost. Some of this is allowed - loss leaders at the supermarket for example, but other things are not. The law is designed to prevent companies from doing a MS, giving away one product (supported by the income from other products) just to force competitors out of the market.
Based on suggests, to me, code that is reliant on GPLed code. It doesn't suggest that the code is derived from, that's different.
:= x + 1;", etc.
As for the 'translation'... To me, that says that mere translation doesn't create a new work. This fits with general copyright law.
I can't take Star Trek and simply translate it into German and sell it as my own. But I could take the idea of a spaceship of people from a similar society exploring the galaxy, etc, and write a story about them as long as it wasn't identical with the names files off.
I think RMS's comments of code being speech back this up... Translation is (mostly) a mechanical thing, "Oui" is "Yes", "ferme" is "close", etc. Much the same as "x++;" is "x
Direct translation doesn't involve any creative work, thus it's the same work (from a creation POV) as the original.
But, if you took the code and liked what it did, and came up with a new way to do it... that'd be like deciding you liked science-fiction stories with spaceships after watching Star Trek, then writing your own.
If Microsoft really questioned the Open Source business model they'd just sit back and watch competitors die. The only reason they're spreading all the FUD is that they know Open Source will kill them.
Look at what companies say about issues they don't care about, or wish to remain silent on... nothing. They certainly don't sacrifice the credability of their PR guys over unimportant issues.
Had MS quietly continued their business, I wouldn't think they cared. As is, it's pretty well a sign that they know they're tanking and they can't stop it.
Of course, it might take a while, and a Microsoft that tanked might still be more powerful than many other companies, but it'd be essentially dead, no matter what they call it.
Methink thou doth protest too much.
If MS was concerned Open Source wouldn't work, they'd shut up about it and watch Corel, IBM, Redhat, and all the other companies, big and small, take a huge hit. Then they'd rake in more money.
The reason do they have for their throwing away PR guys (what value do they have left after the lose all credability?)
They're afraid Open Source will work, for everyone else, and they're desperately telling people that the emperor looks simply divine in his clothes. To look just like the emperor (simply divine, I remind you) you should rush out and buy MS Clothes 2.0, and not take those free clothes everyone is willing to give you...
Simply put, quality sells itself. If they had anything that would sell itself, they'd let it.
They'd stay friendly with IT types who went to other alternatives, knowing they'd be back. Instead of how it is now, knowing that anyone who investigates a unix-based alternative for a server is never going back to NT...
(The only reason to stay with an NT server is to support clients who demand Outlook/Exchange/Active Directory. I'm not into the MS stuff, so I don't know how much of that can be done ala Samba...)
It's not news that MS doesn't like Open Source/Linux/etc. What is news is that MS is lying, yet again, to a bunch of execs.
That means that IT types need to know what they say so that we can refute it when our bosses panic about us running Apache instead of IIS.
It's "Know your enemy", they're my enemy because they're trying to convince my employers to use less workable "solutions" (if they can be called that) to already solved problems.
This is not the case - from a commercial perspective it is far better
a za ar/
to use a Duel company licence and licence-GPL/LGPL scheme.
I think it's time for everyone to read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" again
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-b
"The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is not just about releasing source code
to the public for inspection. Mostly the article covers the advantages
in using a more open *development* model.
Quoteing the introduction
"""Linus Torvalds's style of development - release early and often, delegate
everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity - came as a
surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here -- rather, the Linux
community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing
agendas and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who'd
take submissions from anyone) out of which a coherent and
stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles"""
Instead of *developing* in a closed loop environment ( limited to the number
of programmers you hire, subcontract and constrain under NDA agreements )
you throw the development open to everybody and their dog.
( The rest is history - http://www.opensource.org/docs/history.html )
If a business is going to *develop* a project in an open Bazaar like way,
Then it is more important to develop under a open source licence that
includes an Anti-"Whats yours is mine and whats mine is mine" clause.
This prevents the competition taking existing source code and adapting
it ( to the point of producing an incompatable proprietary version )
without providing a reusable copy of the modified source code to
the original project.
Only GPL/LGPL viral type licences provide this class of protection
( even if is is currently untested in any jurisdiction ).
The GPL/LGPL licenses are clearly understood by a large population of
programmers, adopting it encorages participation in the project.
This is the reason why Mozilla, Sun Openoffice and a LOT of other
projects are *developing* their code under LGPL/GPL or Duel
licence GPL.
See http://www.openoffice.org/license.html for
an example
Price fixing? Collusion? I don't understand what you mean. Price fixing doesn't really apply to this analogy... I mean, the fictitious company simply gives away its software. There's no reason a real corporation couldn't do that; it just wouldn't be very cost effective. And collusion doesn't even come into it. You paint the imagined GPL corporation as illegal, but it's more a bad business than anything. That is, it isn't a very good way to make money.
See you, space cowboy...
Well, look at it from the other side, how would you feel if next time there is an Apache conference, or a Kernel developers conference, or a perl conference or whatever, people from MS showed up waving banners outside, harassing you by asking the speaker endless questions about open source ethics while, say, Linus is talking?
I'm sure you'd be very pissed, *really* pissed, and I don't even want to imagine the flames here on slashdot if that happened.
We live in a society where free speech is a guaranteed liberty, all this implied talk of 'MS is going to spew FUD at this convention, let's go and show them who's right' leads down a slippery slope to civil unrest.
If you honestly want to go to this talk to listen, to ask meaningful questions, to be civil, then so be it, if this is a public event (which I'm not sure), if you plan to go there to just be a nuisance, think how you would react if the same was done at a Free software conference where you were attending.
Just because you don't agree with MS's ethics, or with their position is no excuse to resort to intimidatory tactics. If you want respect, please be prepared to give some.
-- the cake is a lie
Microsoft cannot afford for their customers to figure out it is all a big joke. It's Microsoft. Laugh. Why? Just watch, you'll find out soon enough.
Neither. Chickenshit. It usually falls down toward the ground rather than up to where the chickens are roosting.
Apologies for that one - in retrospect, it came out a little harsher than I intended (although it did scan really well :-).
My intent was to point out that, to my mind, BSDLing code is akin to placing no value on your code - you don't care what anyone else does with your code, because it doesn't impact upon your financial position. The GPL places a (nonmonetary) value on code, which people must pay before using the code.
Sure, but do you get a discount because you helped to write it? If not, then by my math, you are paying for the right to use code that you wrote.
At the end of the day, this is really the nub of the argument. I don't think you're an idiot who places no value on his code; I hope you don't think the same (or worse) about me. The only difference between our positions is that I want to ensure that noone is able to profit (financially or otherwise) from my altruism without being altruistic in return, whereas you don't mind what anyone else does, as long as they use your code, and credit you in the source code.
This is a fundamental difference of opinion, and I doubt that any amount of yelling, arguing, cajoling, or otherwise will convince either one of us that the other is right.
Russ %-)
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Thats one way of looking at it. Here's another:
"I'm giving my code to the world, at no monetary cost. If you want to use my code for your project, then I ask that you play by the same rules. I'm not going to let you exploit my effort for your personal and exclusive gain."
versus:
"I'm giving my code to the world, at no monetary cost. Do whatever you want with it. If you want to take it, modify it in a way that is incompatible with my version, and then charge me (or others) for the priviledge, go right ahead - fine by me."
Personally, I find the second much more offensive.
Don't think it would happen that way? I give you the MS TCP/IP stack, and the Darwin layer of OSX. Apple and Microsoft are making buckets of money out of someone elses work. This isn't to degrade the effort made by Apple and Microsoft on code that they did engineer; however, the fact remains that they didn't engineer the BSDL'd code they use, they didn't have to pay for it, and they are not required to give anything back to the community in return. Admittedly, Apple does, but this is just PR - not a legal requirement. MS certainly doesn't.
If this code had been GPL'd, Apple and MS would have been forced to either contribute back to the community, or develop their own code, from scratch, on their own dime.
The reason I use the GPL has nothing to do with some inherent desire to conquer the rest of the code writing community. It is simply a way of ensuring that you don't profit from my altruism in a manner that I cannot or will not exploit.
If your code is BSDL'd, it may as well be in the public domain. The only advantage that the BSDL gives you is that whoever swipes your code has to credit you, in the source file: something that 99.999% of proprietary software users will never see. If this doesn't bother you, then fine. It's your choice. However, don't preach on how much more free you are. I, however, will continue to interpret your choice to use the BSDL as a sign that either:
Russ %-)
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
You read it here first.
--
+&x
So herein lies the problem: GPL Inc. is a massive international corporation. They just might write more software and have more programmers than even MS does. They write some of the best software in the world and people are starting to realize it. They have partnerships with all the big players in the industry, with the obvious exception.
And that is called competition, which is a very very bad thing.
Or price-fixing and collusion.
I thought everyone jumps up and down because Microsoft released IE for free, and 'killed Netscape' in the process?
But it's OK for GPL Inc. to do it? Hmm... don't go too far with that logic chain. Eventually you reach Monopoly Power arguments (no-one can write software without it being released under GPL), and GPL Inc. ends up going to court for Antitrust hearings.
So, don't refer to the GPL as a corporation. Because if it was one, eventually it'd be screwed.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
GPL is proprietory, in a sense; it preserves the intention of the original programmer, and allows a large group of people with better than average morals , breeding and manners to fight off the parasites of the world.
So it's not about freedom at all then.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Probably not -- read this:
"Either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language" is the kicker -- it's very loose phrasing. And it could indeed be taken that modifications and translation are the same as reading, digesting, and writing your own based on it.
The GPL also repeatedly uses the term 'based on' later in the license. So it's probably not legal to do so.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Well, duh! The GPL license is the only one which forces people who use the software to release their software under the GPL license as well. Why don't Microsoft have anything against the BSD license? The same reason I don't -- because the BSD license doesn't have a hidden agenda. The BSD license is a way of releasing source in a manner that is free for anyone to use -- and then the people who use that software then have the choice of whether they release their software under that license or not.
GPL isn't altruistic at all. The way I feel about it is like this:
"I'm releasing my software for free! But if you want to use my source, I'm going to make you release your software for free too, so that I can use your modifications."
Versus:
"I'm releasing my software for free. I don't mind what you do with it -- it's free, it's out there, and what you do with it is your choice. Just give me a credit, and everything's kosher"
Which is more altrustic to you? Which gives everyone more freedom?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
This has already been mentioned in this context, but I haven't seen it yet in this discussion. Gandhi's four steps to victory are as follows:
1. They ignore you.
2. They laugh at you.
3. They fight you.
4. You win.
Doesn't this also apply to Microsoft?
MS has spent some time at step 1 (OSS community ignoring them).
Then, the OSS community has spent a lot of time laughing at Microsoft for it not being 'stable'.
Now, the OSS community is fighting Microsoft, trying to ensure it has replacements for EVERYTHING Microsoft does (GUI - KDE/Gnome, Office Suite - KOffice/Star Office... MS Money - Gnucash etc etc etc).
When does step 4 happen again?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Ah, you should qualify that even further really.
"Open Source isnt a good thing in general if you want to make a profit from selling proprietary consumer productivity software."
However, Open Source is a great thing if you want to make a higher profit in any other buisness segment. And considering that the Microsoft is one of very very few companies making money in from that segment, that would mean that for 99.5% of worldwide industry, ranging from car manufacturers to corner grocers, Open Source (including Free, GPL software) is a very good proposition.
I read this article in 1998, and it pissed me off then. It pissed me off this morning too!
Some of us code because it's *fun*. I resent the author saying I'm an incompetent coder because I haven't made a dime off of the free software I've released.
Some of us are employed as software engineers because we write software to provide a specific service. I don't see this ever going away.
What really struck a nerve with me is how this guy equates $$$ with competence and turning this into a moral argument; that if someone writes software as a hobby, he's a bad (or at least socially irresponsible) person.
Jim Allchin, a software designer at Microsoft
ok
Ignore for a momement the free software world, and look at building software for money. You want to put together a product and what to do it as fast as possible without reinventing the wheel. So you pay for tools and components to simplify your code and work. When you buy your tools and components, there are a large number of possible licences that you could choose from. Typically they would have something like a fixed initial price and potentially a kick back on each sale. This model works because the people who own the code get to decide it's fate and make money for thier efforts
Now bring in the world of GPL software. If you want to do traditional software development on free software, the GPL becomes your worst enemy. Say an employee read some GPL'd source at some point (mabye to fix a bug or something at home), and then worked on a product later in thier job. Someone says, "Hey this person did something with GPL'd software, this for-sale product proabably has GPL code in it." Now a court will decide if that code (that was worked on for profit with paid employees) should be thrown into GPL (making the software itself almost impossible to sell). Since most employers wouldn't want to have this risk, they tell thier employees who work on products that they can't even look at gpl source code let alone participate in a gpl project. Alot of employeers don't think about this risk and hence don't place the restriction, yet. Even worse then the source code release, is the release of the intellectual property tied up in the product into the GPL world. Suddenly the stuff that made product cool and competetive in the market place (able to make money) is gone as well, even if you had a patent (for the better or the worse) on it.
The primary long term effect when the first company loses source and IP this way is that as a programmer you will have to choose on working for a completely gpl world or you work in the rest of the world (that includes pay for software and other forms of open source software).
Having said all that and as a disclaimer, I've written a small amount of code I released under the GPL in college, since I took a header of id3 genre codes from another project rather then rewrite the header myself, but I wouldn't and can't contribute to a GPL project for as long as I get paid to write software in a for-sale product form, and I don't think there is anything wrong with selling software.
In the end what I think microsoft in not convinced of is part 9 of the open source definition, unless you are strictly dealing with binaries (which are not linked to each other) because it's not what happened, but what people and a judge thinks happened.
First of all, Linux is good for Microsoft; they probably enjoy having an easily identifiable enemy to bash, and rally up against, since so few real MS enemies is left.
But it seems that MS have some trouble with crushing and destroying Linux; First, Linux really isn't a single company that can be killed or bought, or intimidated into submission.
At same time, "everyone" agrees, that Open Source has its advantages, and actually makes pretty good software that works.
The advantages with OSS (Open Source Software) seems so compelling, that even MS must stress, in the middlest of a full scale FUD attack against OSS, that MS software is kind of Open Source (see, a few hardware manufactures, and some Uni's are allowed to peek into some parts of our code). Really mixed signals.
OTOH; This FUD speak, targetting especially the GPL license, really underscores one thing;
Open Source, and OSI approved licenses, like GPL, really are a viable, long term, money making, market gaining, idea and force, or else MS would not bother.
Remember, this is not a random MS employee venting his personal opinions, but part of a carefully corporate campaign (see article). MS PHP's must have met to strategy meetings, made plans, exchanged emails, sought approval from Balmer/Gates?, and put lesser minions into action.
I guess it soon will be season for some serious MS "astro turfing".
Fight fuckware (Futile Unnatural Control Keeping Ware, credit to Oskar Sandberg for that).
I can't help but feel that if people use that term and then feel like the need to credit me, they have sort of missed the point...
I'm surprised no one mentioned the comments on OSS in other countries. The quote sounded rather ominous to me:
He said Microsoft was particularly concerned about the inroads that the open-source idea was making in other countries. "It's happening very, very broadly in a way that is troubling to us," he said. "I could highlight a dozen countries around the world who have open-source initiatives."
This makes OSS sound like a health epidemic in a third world country. What does MS mean by they are "concerned" about OSS in other countries? It sounds ominous and egotistical (not a surprise really) It doesn't sound like they're just referring to companies in other countries, but governments. Government software is one area where in my mind there should be a mandate for open source.
What Microsoft's "concerned" with is that they're not getting to rape these countries with outrageous license fees anymore. In some countries, where the average yearly salary is considerably less than a license for Windows 2000 Advanced Server with enough CALs to run a proper network environment, what kind of sense does it make not to use Free Software?
Strangely enough, Microsoft would actually prefer these countries steal Windows, in the hope that someday they'll be able to capitalize on them as customers when they do have enough money. When they're not dependent on Microsoft in any way, that's when Bill loses!
Right...
The mere fact that there is "philosophical debate" about software should be ample reason to consider the system inheriently unjust.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hey man, this is the open source revolution and you cant have a revolution without some bloodshed, or at least taking a few hostages. Proletariatians of the computing world, gather up your arms! The operating system will not be held by the bourgeois at Microsoft, no longer! We demand an operating system of the proletariat, owned only by the community!
How we know is more important than what we know.
You know absolutely nothing about communism. Go here read it and stop foaming at the mouth. BTW - at the last turn of the century it was precisely the communists who believed that "human labor is about to go the way of the dinosaurs".
How we know is more important than what we know.
Bullshit.
Don't get me wrong, I think Java does a good job in certain fields, and a lousy job in others, and I'd say the same thing about every other programming language in existence.
But don't even try and tell me that it wasn't a buisness decision to fight Microsoft. No previous programming language has been marketed to VPs and managers as well as programmers. No previous programming language got prime-time TV advertisements (anybody else remember the "Java has no limits" spot?) and huge billboards next to the downtown highways.
Java has the distinction of being the first programming language with a marketing slogan.
It's a nifty language and I like playing with it. It can do some things that, while certainly not new, are damn useful. But it wasn't a natural language evolution. It was designed to do one thing -- make money for Sun.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Is that all their lawyers poured over the GPL, and determined that it was good for IBM. That is all.
Cheers
This point was clearly made before as referenced by this article.
Police state tactics, such as the suppression of speech in the DeCSS case, are most definitely not features of capitalism. They are bugs in the U.S. implementation of capitalism where corporations buy Congressmen and get them to pass unconstitutional laws, while uninformed voters keep electing them.
And don't think for a minute this won't happen in your lifetime.
It won't happen in my lifetime, or our grandchildren's lifetime. We've been promised true AI "real soon now" for decades, with very little progress. Even menial jobs require a degree of intelligence that computers do not have and will not for the forseeable future.
We all depend on our labor because we are all slaves.
This makes no sense. If you're a slave because you have to provide for yourself, how are you not a slave if you are forcibly compelled to provide for others?
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
On the turn around, I think that Big Business(TM) is bad, so we should discourage that, too.
Oh, you mean PHBs, right?
(that was my original .sig then, now that i changed it the comments seem out of context)
I still can't think of anything wrong with giving credit where credit is due. My intention originated more from good citing technique than from the feeling that you 'owned' above expression.
I mainly posted again to reinstate the context.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
The problem with this is: you can't buy out open source, you can't tie open source up in courts, you can't bully them around with license audits, ... all the nice tricks that worked against other corporations don't work here since it is no corporation. The only thing is throwing FUD around, and even that is apparently not easy. They can't argue away that some good software has come out of open source, and derisive statements about that "Linux game" don't hit home. I don't know how Microsoft could "defeat" open source, but they're sure trying hard. Maybe they try the 'embrace and extend' method as in "hey, our adapted open source license is so much better, why don't you use it".
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Oh be nice....
I want to be alone with the sandwich
Isn't it stran9e how in one complete sentence they can say Open Source has no effect on MS, yet in that same sentence state it has gained ground? If I'm not mistaken MS stands to lose more than any other system since Solaris and SunOS can use open source code.
Again articles like these do nothing more than strengthen open source standing in the market since it gets them exposure without having to spend on marketing, so kudos to MS for continously bashing open source.
Yet at the same time the arguments get pretty boring and redundant at times wouldn't you say
removing the dot in dot comm
Want Root?
I'm trying to remember the letter to the Homebrew club. It's been ages since I read "Hackers". Wasn't it something to the effect of "We stole DOS from you, fuck off. Bill G."?
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I guess MS becomes the dot in G.P.L.
There's no value in free!
This just in. Microsoft doesn't like one if its competitors. It says that all the work they do is a threat to it's ability to innovate. More at 11:00.
> BUT it also leads to exploits,
> stolen ideas/code, etc.
I know that this is flamebait, nut this was too stupid to pass over.
Stolen ideas will always occur. you need to be VERY intelligent to come up with an algorithm that someone else can't decipher. Most people just need to look at the inputs and outputs to figure out what you've done. It's easy to copy and you don't need the source code. Code does, however, give you bug fixes/extra info.
Next thing, WereTiger will be saying that a component software model is the second demon to open source.
Now to the part of the statement regarding exploits. How long will it be before the idea of 'security through obscurity' is dead? Probably never. an article referenced on Slashdot at least once described the exploits executed on 'Age of Empires' (published by Microsoft) which is closed source.
One enterprising person contacted the developers asking for a proprietary image format and was turned down. A few weeks later he sent them the entire correct spec. for the format that he reverse engineered.
To stop this form of exploit, what will be the next controversial law before parliament? One requiring the registration of all debuggers?
"we'll give it to the Fortune 50 companies who happen to be on our Premier Support Service and who will shell out a chunk of change on top of that, not just to our inner sanctum of developers and partners and anyone else who can steal it from us."
You forgot the part that reads "and require the signing of multiple novella-length NDAs to anyone who wants to even so much as peek at the source code, and threaten them with legal action whether or not they actually violate said NDAs."
Hegel said something like: "The most perfect freedom arises from an individual's total subjection to the will of the state."
Simply substitute "Microsoft" for "state" -- and you will have MS's working definition of freedom.
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
Oh, and here's a map.
[
[
this is the same guy who used vigilante justice to track down and arrest kevin mitnick when mitnick never did anything to the guy. jerk.
You see a problem, I see potential. - Vincent 'Vinnie' Antonelli
Thanks to khym (matt{at}nightrealms{dot}com) for the nicely formatted quote. I read this and just about did a spit take with my coffee.
What a company, this Microsoft.... They are so full of themselves that they have either ignored or lied about their own past.
Tell me - Which two companies benefited the MOST from the Open Architecture (the x86 architecture), developed by I.B.M, and released for ALL PC MANUFACTURERS TO USE WITHOUT PAYING ROYALTIES?!?
One of them is Chipzilla; the other is run by a pack of fucking hypocrites.
Now MSFT should understand why I don't use their shit software.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
How many times are we going to be subjected to this stupid assed arguement (and I'm being kind by qualifying it as an arguement).
I couldn't care less if Linux EVER generates a sucessful business. Why is it that every thing that is useful needs to fulfill some Wall Stret definition of success? Is money all that matters to you?
Consider this: Will you ever be free if you have no choices in life? If there were no other alternatives to Microsoft, what would be a 'fair' price for their software and services? Would you pay the price they charged if you thought the value for the price wasn't justifiable? Where would you go if you didn't LIKE the price?
I don't look forward to an answer because every Microserf I've ever posed this question to couldn't get further than "Stallman is a commie".
Consider your view of markets before you start giving me your shit about business models. It is obvious from your comment that you haven't a clue about freedom of choice.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
As for ESR's comments, well, consider who he is dealing with: an organization who falsified a demonstration in a federal court, an organization who produced a document that outlined a campaign to bury Linux in FUD, and an organization who's main Window's coder is an unapologetic Red Baiter.
Given the choice on who to believe here, xp, I'd take ESR and /.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
If the only reason to go to college is to get a high paying job, then why go? Why not create a network of technical schools that boil the curriculum down to just those topic that support the students desire to get trained and get working?
The reason I went to college was to learn how to learn. I went to college to get an EDUCATION, not training for a job. I studied topics that had nothing to do with my profession. These courses expanded my thinking and broadened my expirences. The value I place on these courses cannot be measured in dollars (although I paid dollars to take them); I am a different person for having learned these things.
What open source and free software means to me is that not everything has a monitary value. There is something intrinsically valueable in having an operating system that doesn't belong to one company or person. There is something incredibly valueable to science and free thought in a software system that enables people to communicate these ideals without having to pay royalties to express them.
If you don't understand the point I'm trying to make, you never will.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Private property rights (the heart of any capitalist system) say yes.
You're obviously ignorant about economics and political rights.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I can't for the life of me think of any software licensed under the GPL which is anything more than adequate.
Er, the Linux Kernel? I would think that it's slightly more than adequate...
If you want an actual application, take a look at either KDE (http://www.kde.org), Typo3 (http://www.typo3.com) or Roxen (http://download.roxen.com).
PHP is also licensed under GPL(http://www.php.net).
The point is, there are a lot of great projects you could point to that are licensed under GPL. Yes, this causes headaches at corporations, they would rather be able to control everything.
Contrary to what many believe, it often comes down to legal liability, not intellectual property. Most companies do not want to be liable for modifications they made to a piece of GPL code. I think that the GPL would benefit from including explicit language that made it really difficult to even begin a lawsuit...
Chris.
-- CKM
internet systems architect - scalability - commerce
-- I don't have a cool sig.
Of course we all know the next step on this path, don't we?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is no link... but it's a quote of the whole article:
S OF T.html
'May 3, 2001
Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, May 2 -- Microsoft is preparing a broad campaign countering the movement to give away and share software code, arguing that it potentially undermines the intellectual property of countries and companies. At the same time, the company is acknowledging that it is feeling pressure from the freely shared alternatives to its commercial software.
In a speech defending Microsoft's business model, to be given on Thursday at the Stern School of Business at New York University, Craig Mundie, a senior vice president at Microsoft and one of its software strategists, will argue that the company already follows the best attributes of the open-source model by sharing the original programmer's instructions, or source code, more widely than is generally realized.
The speech is part of an effort by Microsoft to raise questions about the limits of innovation inherent in the open-source approach and to suggest that companies adopting the approach are putting their intellectual property at risk.
Advocates of the open-source movement say that making the code available permits other developers to tinker with it, find problems and improve the software. Although the movement has not yet had a significant effect on sales of Microsoft's Office and Windows products in the personal computer market, the company wants to enter the corporate software market, where open source has gained ground.
In his speech, Mr. Mundie will argue that one aspect of the open-source model, known as the General Public License, or G.P.L., is a potential trap that undercuts the commercial software business and mirrors some of the worst practices of dot- com businesses, in which goods were given away in an effort to attract visitors to Web sites. G.P.L. requires that any software using source code already covered by the licensing agreement must become available for free distribution.
"This viral aspect of the G.P.L. poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it," Mr. Mundie said in a telephone interview this week.
I.B.M. in particular has been heavily marketing the free Linux operating system.
Mr. Mundie does not identify I.B.M. by name in his speech, which was provided beforehand, but he says that large companies are naïve in adopting the open-source model.
"I would challenge you," he said, "to find a company who is a large established enterprise, who at the end of the day would throw all of its intellectual property into the open- source category."
An I.B.M. executive said that his company had considered the issues surrounding the protection of intellectual property and had decided that it was possible to follow both a proprietary and a shared business model, even one based on the G.P.L.
The executive, Irving Wladawsky- Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said, "If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you know, we have a lot of lawyers."
In February, Jim Allchin, a software designer at Microsoft, became a lightning rod for industry criticism when he said in an interview with Bloomberg News that freely distributed software code could stifle innovation and that legislators should be aware of the threat.
Mr. Mundie said he would elaborate on Mr. Allchin's comments while also trying to demonstrate that Microsoft already practices many of what he called the best aspects of the open-source model.
"We have been going around the industry talking to people," Mr. Mundie said, "and have been startled to find that people aren't very sophisticated about the implications of what open source means." He acknowledged that the open-source movement was making inroads.
"The news here is that Microsoft is engaging in a serious way in this discussion," he said. "The open- source movement has continued to gather momentum in a P.R. sense and a product sense."
He said Microsoft was particularly concerned about the inroads that the open-source idea was making in other countries.
"It's happening very, very broadly in a way that is troubling to us," he said. "I could highlight a dozen countries around the world who have open-source initiatives."
Mr. Mundie said that in his speech, he would break the open-source strategy into five categories: community, standards, business model, investment and licensing model. Microsoft, he said, in support of the community ideal, already has what he called a shared-source philosophy, which makes its source code available to hardware makers, software developers, scientists, researchers and government agencies.
Microsoft would expand its sharing initiatives, he said. But he added that the company's proprietary business model was a more effective way to support industry standards than the open-source approach, which he said could lead to a "forking" of the software base resulting in the development of multiple incompatible versions of standard programs.
He cited the history of Unix, which has been replete with incompatible versions. Although he acknowledged that the open-source approach had created new technologies, he said that business models using the open- source community were suspect.
"It is innovation that really drives growth," Mr. Mundie said, arguing that without the sustained investment made possible by commercial software, real innovation would not be possible.
He reserved his harshest criticism in the text of his speech for the G.P.L., a software licensing model defined by programmer Richard M. Stallman in 1984.
"This is not understood by many sophisticated people," Mr. Mundie said. "The goal of the G.P.L. is sweeping up all of the intellectual property that has been contributed. That creates many problems downstream, many of which haven't come home to roost yet."
Mr. Stallman has made a distinction between the open-source software movement and the G.P.L., which he designed as part of the free software movement that he led.
In a response to Microsoft's Mr. Allchin in February, Mr. Stallman wrote:"The free software movement was founded in 1984, but its inspiration comes from the ideals of 1776: freedom, community and voluntary cooperation. This is what leads to free enterprise, to free speech, and to free software."
Today a proponent of the open- source software movement said he thought that Microsoft was taking a clever approach in its challenge.
"It's very clever of them," said Eric Raymond, president of the Open Source Initiative. "Instead of attacking the entire open-source movement they've singled out the one license that is in a sense politically controversial."'
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/technology/03
--
Ner lbh sebz gur HFN? Gura lbh'ir whfg ivbyngrq gur QZPN!
Next they'll say that its "Illeagle" to use OS/OS's because it robs the companies of making money buy employing people to make them, therefore bringing the country to its knees and forcing M$ to make higher priced software with asphixylating TOS ......
Sometimes I scare myself...
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
They just have to expend the effort to recode it.
Microsoft has been a clever strategist in the past, and there are any number of ways to skin the GPL cat. This isn't one of them. If I were Microsoft, I'd:
"Price fixing occurs when multiple corps collude to not compete and set a price higher than a normal free market would dictate. How would the GPL lead to this? It doesn't make sense."
;-)
It's called price dumping, and it's usually illegal within certain industries but I don't think the software-industry is one of them. Or perhaps it's only illegal when it is used as a weapon against weaker competitors? IANAL and thank god for that!
"This is a standard Monopolizing tactic. Microsoft hopes to make more money in the long run by putting their competition out of business. This way, they can ultimately charge a much greater price, or perhaps more importantly, control what the browser actually does and does not do."
You're spot on there, and their embrace and extend tactics is yet another proprietary lock-in used to keep the monopoly within Redmond. I would be happy if they just reverse-engineered what they needed, but they don't even bother with that. Buying out everyone worthwhile is cheaper and keeps the competition away. (Sort of like "charm" in Everquest, except that it's totally unbalanced
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Yeah, you got it right. Another reason dumping was made illegal is because in some industries it would make the prices go up and down like a yo-yo, making it harder for the local population to sell their wares. Let's take fish for example. I don't think very many fishermen would like the idea of countries like Norway selling them surplus fish for almost nothing. Just too sad the fish is merely discarded instead of being fed to those who are dying of hunger in the world. Some cold hearts even make the argument that giving the fish to poor people would disrupt the world-market. Much better to let the world bank keep their stranglehold on the poor countries, and fake useless donations. (Question: Why are countries poor? Because of imperialism and its extension in the 21th century: the world market)
Anyways, the reason I mentioned dumping is because the parent poster was really meaning that word.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Well, I don't want to be nitpicking, but your GPL Inc. is not compatible with the GPL license itself. If I write GPLed code, the copyright remains with me and not with some GPL entity. The result is that I can dual license the code even in a proprietary way.
Now, before you scream, that dual licensing is a Bad Thing(tm), consider that certain amounts of the Linux kernel sources are dual licensed (under BSD, Artistic, X, ...) and so is, IIRC, MySQL and the QT libraries. If it wasn't for dual licensing, I couldn't be running my favourite database on my favourite desktop powered by my favourite operating system -- all free software.
Your GPL Inc. would be a reality when every open source developer would assign his copyright to the FSF, which, BTW, is not possible in some countries (e.g. Germany).
Free Manning, jail Obama.
You mean, whether Troll Tech could include it with the proprietary license?
Honestly don't know. One could argue, that Troll Tech would need to have the copyright, but, OTOH, one could think that the courts might consider an impliced agreement with the author of the bug fix. IANALBMCS (I am not a lawyer and most certainly stoned.)
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Like Word 2, Word 6, Word 97, and what-not?
(Emphasis mine.)
Free Manning, jail Obama.
He cited the history of Unix, which has been replete with incompatible versions
As opposed to the history of Microsoft Windows, which has been replete with incompatible versionsDon't do it! M'Kay?
:)
here
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Aside from people pushing away because "it's Microsoft" I'm sure some people would work on it.
What got me thinking though, is where would things be in a year? Aside from the obvious fact that there'd be distro's (RedHat Windows? Almost sadistic to think of it) but what would people add that's not already there? And I don't mean fix the BSOD, because I'm sure that'd be the first thing on the list.
But in a year, would it even resemble Windows as we know it? Would people shy away not because it's Microsoft, but because it's a fundamentally different API (To an extent in NT and definately under 9X/ME)? Would we just replace it with X and make it POSIX?
Anyway, a lot of rhetoric there, any thoughts?
Free Online Woodworking Resources Directory
Well, this shows network admins and programmers, but it doesn't show the average user. Anyway, my point wasn't that there aren't plenty of examples to give, but that attacking Microsoft with what can easily be dismissed as FUD makes it easy for the average person to dismiss the entire article, regardless of whether the rest is perfectly valid analysis.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
Still, I have to wonder if ESR is being effective in getting out the message that these things are going to come and that they're so detached from reality, so manipulative in their core, that they should be completely ignored. The problem I see with ESR's write-up is that it's easily construed as an open attack on Microsoft. While he talks about Microsoft's deplorable tactics, it's easy to make a case that he's employing FUD. The image of Microsoft as wanting to steal your data appears at least twice, references to it wanting to keep its greedy hands on its monipoly that is slowly destroying the software industry come about a few times, too. These things all might be true. The fraud accusations may also prove true. Microsoft is a monopoly, and it has been hurting the software industry.
The problem is that most users don't see it that way. Most users don't understand how things were prior to Microsoft's grip and they don't see why Microsoft's hold is such a bad thing (while we're pointing at the lack of good competing products within the commercial space to Microsoft's stuff as demonstrative of how thoroughly Microsoft has damaged the industry, they're pointing at the lack of good alternatives as a good reason for Microsoft to continue). Okay, that's not the problem -- it's more of a cause of the real problem: telling the users how we see it ("how it is") won't change their minds. They will openly and honestly reject your arguments simply because it doesn't mesh with the view from their perspective.
The proper way, of course, is to show them what competition gives them. Show, rather than tell. Telling does nothing, even when your article is specifically about the evils of Microsoft. There's simply not a convicing enough case to be made when the users are wrapped in the cloud of FUD and complacency. Not with words, anyway. So if they're going to reject even the best made attack on Microsoft as it stands alone, what happens to this article? The point of the article was to clue people in on what was going to happen, not attack Microsoft. In the eyes of the commoner (journalists included) not open to the evils of Microsoft, this makes it just another baseless attack on MS.
So while ESR does a good job playing prophet and countering the likely topics of tomorrow's speech, he lets so many people off-the-hook: they don't need to acknowledge these things because they have an easy out--he gives them a convenient way to dismiss the article without thinking about it.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
It is similarly priced to a vendor's compiler suite. But there's no license mangler to mess with, I can muck with the source myself for simple problems, I can build on platforms we are prototyping and haven't paid for--the ultimate try-n-buy. And we get a consistent option group and extension syntax across all platforms.
And their defect turnaround is pretty amazing; usually in a few days. "Hard" problems can take longer. I used to work for a compiler vendor, and we'd frequently tell customers that their bugs just wouldn't be fixed, ever--just work around it. (Us techs didn't like having to say that, but management insisted. Must get the new, incompatible version out the door at all costs! Even if we lose all our customers!) When we did fix a bug, it would typically be 3-4 months from the date reported to when the fix was finally available to the paying customer. (And they have to pay for every user, or the compiler won't even run!)
The defense of the MS business model is very simple: We make shitloads of money. Shitloads. Our ROI is one of the best, not just in the industry, but in the whole world.
As has been said several million times, here on /. and elswhere, MS is not in the business of making software, they are in the business of making money. If you want to find someone in the business of making software look for things with a BSD license.
Boy when they attack, they attack. I don't think it's their place to criticize other companies for following an open source model. They should mind their own damn business and worry about their own 'proprietary business model'. How much intellectual property did THEY take from Apple, Xerox, etc etc... It's only because Apple had a stupid lawyer back in the day that Microsoft HAS a GUI. The lawyer basically ended up getting the judge to say that Windows 1.0 could not mimic the GUI of MacOS. Unfortunately Windows 2.0 and beyond were not covered. I can't recall exactly how the story goes, but it's along the lines of the ruling being limited to one version and not future ones. Also, I haven't seen a single damn innovation come out of Microsoft in years. I look at WinME, then back at Win95... They look the same, work the same, and have pretty much the same featureset. And shit, I think ME is way buggier IMHO than previous windows versions. Apple MacOS and IBM's OS/2 Warp have had built in speech recognition and voice synthesis for years now. I can have my Mac authenticate me with my voice instead of user/pass. I can say "open file" and it actually brings up the open file dialog. Oh, and I can leave my mac running for a week and have just as much system resource open as the day I booted it up. And I don't even need to argue that NT is a pile of shit and pretty much worthless as an internet/intranet server. Sure, that little mom and pop store with 4 computers sharing quickbooks files between them is going to have no problems with NT. But the company I worked for previously had like 6 quad processor machines with gigs of ram each serving out their search engine in load balancing, and at any given time at least one or two were out of service, and I was called to reboot them at least once a week. Microsoft can argue about innovation the day they have some innovative product come out of there. Ooh, the X-Box. The "gaming console". What a UNIQUE idea, no one has EVER released the new powerful console system. Wow, Win95 has a RECYCLE BIN. I wonder how long it took them to rename it from "Trash" to something not resembling what Mac has offered since the 80's. Granted they're only attacking GPL products here, not MacOS or game consoles, but they're arguing that the GPL stifles innovation. I haven't seen innovation come out of Microsoft since well before open source alternatives were widely used. Their "proprietary business model" seems to me to be "buy the fuckers". They can't buy Linux, and that's what is pissing them off.
So M$ supports code sharing, just limited. They also support that each person should be able to choose the price point of their software. They Also agree that Person writing the code has the right to put it under any license they want.
So...
I choose to share my code with any being.
I choose to set the price of my code to $0
I choose to Allow any one to copy my code, So as Long as I can copy back any changes they make.
See M$ supports the GPL. They just dont know it.
In the end M$ has to support the GPL, this is just marks on the scale, sure the GPL is an extream, but its definilty on the same scale.
Its a cold hard fact that networks go up and down. If you havnt seen one go down you either have to much money and over built the system Or you are working on such a small system that its never experince any real load. In the Real World, networks go down, while the network is down, I cant get to App Server, well might as well take the rest of the day off. I hope you dont play with the clue stick, you might get one, and then M$ wont be able to roll over you, I figure the more people that buy into the .NET (.HOAX) the louder the crash will be when M$ drops it. This time the
Buzzword2product devision ans M$ has out done them selfs, The more money M$ pour into this crap the better chance it will end up failing
Hmmm... It seems that Craig Mundie's speech has a couple of intents which are logical: justify their closed source model to Wallstreet, and discourage companies from opensourcing existing software products. But I wonder how much that is motivating this speech, as opposed to the hope that people will come to illogical conclusion that they shouldn't use software based on a bad business model...
From the article:
Intellectual property of countries? As far as I'm aware, some public universities hold patents, and that's about as far as any country has intellectual property. And what university has any software patents? Are they trying to imply that, say, by using a GPL'd wordprocessor, any document written with it is "open source"? Yes, many advertising based web sites have bombed (mainly due, as others have pointed out, to the irrational obsession with click-through rates). But giving away software in the hopes of getting support contracts (which many open source companies use) is a different business model than giving away content to gain eyeballs, a model that some companies have managed to make profitable (like Cygnus). Yes, if there's some GPL'd code out there that you'd like to use for a non-GPL'd product, you simply don't use it; seems simple enough to me. And no one is advocating doing anything of the sort as a business model; the only people arguing for whole sale opening of IP are people like RMS, who are morally opposed to IP. All the other opensource gurus point out that you should carefully consider what you should opensource, and how you should do it. Ohhhh boy. He's implying that there's lots of managers/executives who are seriously considering going opensource without knowing anything about the business model repercussions of it, without actually saying so (who did he talk to, about what implications?). Well done, Mr. Mundie, well done! And how many times has this actually happened? Especially with GPL'd software? If so, then Microsoft doesn't really have anything to worry about, do they? Eh? How could this happen? I guess that, say, branch A of a company could GPL it's software, which virally affects the base libraries the entire company uses, so software from branches B to Z of the company get virally affected. But this would assume that: 1) the company is using GPL without being aware of it's viral properties (unlikely), and 2) they can't release their base libraries under LGPL (which would contain the contagion).Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
And every last one of those groups (with the exemption of us non-windows programmers) are soulless miserable chaps. I wonder why that is?
Shared-source philosophy = we get your soul for a chance to gaze at the Ultimate Chaos.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
4. First we Won (the right to be microsoft free)
3. Then we fought (the hardware manufactures to release specs so that we could support more hardware)
2. Now we are laughing at microsoft for running around waiving their hands and pissing their pants scared.
1. Next we'll ignore them :-)
There is no need for Open Source software to achieve this goal. I think the interface specifications should be open for hardware for sure. If the creators of the hardware decide to write software to go with the hardware and share the source thats all cool and they are all cool and whatever, but if the company decides not to share the source then thats cool too. The only time its not is when they don't at least share the specification of the interface.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Beer Good. Open Source Bad.
Stramge. My family used to be good friends with the Mundies a few years ago, especially back when he was the CEO of Alliant. He seemed to be full of praise for X and UNIX then...
>Ghandi was the master of non-violent protest
Ok, but lets not forget that we was a friend of Mandela, and they both defended the use of violence. (I`m not saying this is a bad thing).
This should be borne in mind before people agree to, for example, UK proposals to make illegal the support for foreign `terror groups`. There`s a chance that it would have made protesting and showing support for the ANC illegal.
Not necessarily for people, but read the freakin article. Corporations that are writing closed applications could theoretically have to open it up if a developer included a few lines of GPL.
This is not considered good for the company!
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
The GPL is more like a public trust than a corporation. Code licensed under the GPL is held in perpetuity for the good of the computing community; the terms of the GPL prohibit (and hopefully prevent) misuse of the code after the original developer(s) move on. So just as you can buy land to conserve it for wildlife by placing restrictions on its use (I can't remember the correct legal term) to prevent developers moving in with the bulldozers, you can do the same for code with the GPL.
(OT: For examples of the good groups of citizens can do for conservation, see the Birds Australia Gluepot and Newhaven reserves.)
Good point, this is a simple divide and conquer technique. All I can say is solidarity is going to be important in the open-source/free software community in the coming years as MS will try to drive a wedge between the two.
Wouldn't it be more correct to call the GPL an inductive license or a recursive license, as opposed to a viral license? Viral sounds bad and isn't very descriptive of how the license actually works.
And that is called competition, which is a very very bad thing.
Well, if you want to extend the analogy, it's also called a violation of the minimum wage laws. Where is the Department of Labor when we really need them?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I've seen a lot of cut and paste code with no credit given to the original author, but it is always glaringly obvious what happened.
Proprietary implementation details and IP do not belong in most forms of Open Source - I can agree with that.
OTOH, your statement:
However, in any software development I'm involved in, I wouldn't let anyone know how I do what I do.
makes it sound as if you jealously guard all your code, refuse code walkthroughs and peer reviews, don't comment, etc. in order to prevent others from knowing what you know. If that is the case I'm not sure what to say, you are a lost soul.
--
--
You nah, me nah. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
This makes me sound like an asshole - but I would hate to work on a project with you. I've worked with people with this attitude to a much lesser extent, and it makes things very difficult.
--
--
You nah, me nah. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
As Sun Tzu writes in _The Art of War_, "The victorious army first wins, then seeks battle."
Hope you're right...
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
I think MS has ever right to question to business model on which open source software is based. As the dot-com fallout out has shown, ideas that look great on paper don't always work so well in the real world. That's not to say that OSS won't be useful or successful, but I think the market will determine that. Apache being a grweat example for OSS.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the comments on OSS in other countries. The quote sounded rather ominous to me:
He said Microsoft was particularly concerned about the inroads that the open-source idea was making in other countries.
"It's happening very, very broadly in a way that is troubling to us," he said. "I could highlight a dozen countries around the world who have open-source initiatives."
This makes OSS sound like a health epidemic in a third world country. What does MS mean by they are "concerned" about OSS in other countries? It sounds ominous and egotistical (not a surprise really) It doesn't sound like they're just referring to companies in other countries, but governments. Government software is one area where in my mind there should be a mandate for open source.
Opinions, and ideologies, are based upon more-or-less accurate observations of reality. We all percieve reality somewhat differently, depending upon upbringing, personal choice, etc., so our opinions tend do differ somewhat as well. I think, that if you say that it's "just your opinion" and that it therefore doesn't matter, you say that observations of reality doesn't matter, and, ultimately, that reality doesn't matter. You must live in a very chaotic world.
And poke her, with the soft cushions!!!
I question his reporting abilities, ethics and integrity after the Mitnick ordeal.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
This guy actually has the audacity to exercise his right to free speech?!
--
KDE part of the Linux kernel? Well, that is on the list of features to be added into 2.5... Heck, we already have a web server in there, so why not?
I know once they put Netscape in there my web browsing will be much faster, I won't have to upgrade my 300 baud PPP connection after all... ;)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Well, we can just show them Sendmail (which handles the majority of internet mail), Apache (the most popular web server), and Linux (rapidly gaining market share in everything from servers to embedded systems). We can show them gcc, which runs on almost every system. There are countless other notable examples, and there will be more in the future.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Not to mention that free software could do a lot to bridge the digital divide, so the causes are more related than you'd think. A poor inner-city school can afford as many Linux licenses as it wants (since they're free), but few or no Microsoft licenses.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Anyone else notice that they are promoting their "open-source" efforts to business flunkies? Not to the Engineers, who would know better, but the to the business majors who will be making the buying decisions. If you didn't already realize it, it's a little insight into their business model: FUD.
.NET against your wishes. I personally make sure that I am seen to know about computers and what is best for the company and others should too.One good way is to set up a stable network that does exactly what the PHB wants. Thence, some marketing drone gives their speil, afterwards they come to you saying "What do you think of...?"
Whoa there. I was with you until the last word. They USE FUD, correct, but they know quite well it aint the techos who hold control of the purse strings. They go for the accountants, the Execs, the people who sign off the cheques. Most are technical illiterate and easily FUD'ed. Microsoft sales and marketing know this. Why should they spruke to technical people when we dont or wont buy their product? Sell to the people who really matter, the people with the chequebook. If we are lucky, we can get to a postition to counter Microsoft marketing, but that takes things like political skill and gaining respect enough so that your word can matter
If you dont, you will be ending up installing XP and
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
This is funny, because just this morning I was reading how Microsoft is expanding their services and consulting branch. Just like Oracle, IBM, SAP, and everyone else that have already figured out that they don't make that much money by selling software.
Isn't this exactly what rms said umpteen years ago? Free the software. If you want to make money, sell support or other services.
According to the Wall Street Journal which I read this morning Mundie is actually going to talk about Microsoft's plan to open-source it's operating system to key partners and thereby gain some of the benefits of open-sourcing.
This seems like a perfectly good strategy and will allow Microsoft partners to submit code fixes to bugs they find. This should improve the quality of Windows dramatically.
I am somewhat disappointed at the gross misreporting of the story on Slashdot. It would be refreshing if the stories were not outright lies.
Thanks for reading this.
Hopefully I won't be modded down into oblivion because I have not towed the party line in this case because it happens to be baseless. Slashdot readers need to realize that living in a fantasy world made up of fake news is not going to give open source an edge over anything. Pretty soon we'll end up living on a hill in Montana disconnected from reality.
Let's argue from facts instead of baseless fabrications.
---
Milk, it does a body good.
IMHO, Open Source really isn't a good thing in general. Sure, as it relates to Linux and other free products, sure. However, in any software development I'm involved in, I wouldn't let anyone know how I do what I do.
You can't make nearly as much money off something if you're showing how it's done and the software industry is a market for money to be made in!
Sure, open source leads to the finding of bugs, the patching of said bugs and general neato evolution in the software, BUT it also leads to exploits, stolen ideas/code, etc.
*nix open source? Yay. MS Open source? frankly their source code is none of my business or anyone elses.
and Yes, I'm one of those people that believes MS is not a monopoly and is the success it is today because of good marketting and half (hey, I said Half, I'm not giving them TOO much credit) decent programs.
If you're hearing rhetoric about Linux, open source, or Mac and everyone's bashing Microsoft, you've found Slashdot.
people paying for free software. find these people, toss them in my direction, I've got some Grade A oxygen that I'll let them have at a reasonable rate.
If you're hearing rhetoric about Linux, open source, or Mac and everyone's bashing Microsoft, you've found Slashdot.
How about just thinking of the GPL as a corporation?
(before I go on, I don't know if anyone else uses this analogy, so I don't mean to steal anyone else's idea here.)
Anyway lets call the company "GPL Inc." GPL Inc. produces proprietary software, just like any other normal company. Funny thing is, the cost of all this proprietary software to the public is $0. And just like any normal evil corporation, there is no way in HELL that they are going to let you see their code unless you are an employee.
But everything's okay, because it's REALLY EASY to get a job at GPL Inc., you need not even fill out an application. Downside is the pay sucks, and the dental plan just isn't going to happen any time soon. By working for GPL Inc., you have access to the source of their vast collection of proprietary software. Just like an employee of a normal company, you can work on that software and improve it. But since you're an employee of GPL Inc. whenever you work on that software, all the work you do is the property of GPL Inc.
If you're company sells Linux boxes, you're just reselling software from GPL Inc. If your employees work on that software, they're being contracted out to GPL Inc.
So herein lies the problem: GPL Inc. is a massive international corporation. They just might write more software and have more programmers than even MS does. They write some of the best software in the world and people are starting to realize it. They have partnerships with all the big players in the industry, with the obvious exception.
And that is called competition, which is a very very bad thing.
--
Heres the problem with the majority of the ./ readers:
Microsoft runs a buisness. They are successful because they are very good at running a buisness (yeah I know its sp). To prove my point, take a look at MS versus your Linux Distro companies:
(A): Linux Distro Companies - With the exception of Redhat, most range from failures to be failing in the buisness world. Redhat of course got lucky and broke even. Why is this? What is that one of them offers that other doesn't? Not a damn thing. Each of these companies is haunted by the fact that joe blow down the street offers the exact same product for free - and probably something close to the exact same service/support agreements.
(B): Microsoft - Microsoft is a successful buisness. They have sucessfully penetrated and conquered numerous buisnesses. They offer a product which is unique and like no other. (They are the makers of the only MAJOR OS which is NOT FULLY POSIX compliant or UNIX based) They offer service/support agreements that simply cannot be met by other companies in the sheer quality alone (sometime take a look at MSDN - you'll be amazed at what MS will just give to you) simply because they dont have the knowledge of the product that MS does.
Now I understand that its the tendency of people in America to "root for the underdog" and for a long time a I did as well. But sit down and take a long hard look at MS' buisnesses, their success, their products, and their support and you'll find something that any of your beloved linux communities/companies have yet to offer.
Gam
Troll = Somebody who would dare disagree with the herd of Slashdot. (In otherwords ME)
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
"The Red Cross should be destroyed! They are taking away valuable business from our Doctors and our relief workers! Their volunteers utilize anti-business practices in what they called 'helping' their and other 'communities' while taking away the opportunity from all the starving doctors and workers around the US! We must act now to purge this ugly system from our country as it promotes communistic ideals and is not the 'American Way'."
Honestly, that's what Microsoft sounds like. What is so wrong about people volunteering to do something worthwhile? They enjoy it and provide something (often) useful. The GPL is there as a safety measure against such things as people freeloading and taking someone else's hardwork, adding to it, closing it, then not giving it back. The only problem is, that's exactly what Microsoft WANTS to do with it. It's like, if someone volunteered for the Red Cross and they needed to help clear someplace a ways away and they flew you by plane there, they'd sure want you to help clean up if you volunteered, instead of just getting a free plane ride. Look at Win2k's use of the FreeBSD TCP/IP stack: Free plane ride to where they need to be. No agreement to do any work.
Just my two cents
--------------------
A list of innovations Microsoft bought is here
Craig Mundie, a senior vice president at Microsoft and one of its software strategists, will argue that the company already follows the best attributes of the open-source model by sharing the original programmer's instructions, or source code, more widely than is generally realized
I realize that in some *very limited* circumstances, MS does share their source code, but to make a comment such as this is just plain deceitful. To make a comment such as what Craig is saying, that MS shares their source code "more widely than is generally realized," is akin to saying that I can pay down part of my student loan by submitting one cent to the Financial Aid office. Technically it's true, but in practice it's just plain BS.
Question for Craig: If, as you say, Microsoft shares its source code "more widely than is generally realized," then why don't any freelance programmers have access to it? For example, why doesn't the Wine team have access to it (not even one member)? And so on.
Leave it to Microsoft to make up stories like this.
[end rant]
---
Am I the only Slashdotter who is sick and tired of losing 9000 karma points every time they moderate?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Yes, partially due to the fact that each vendor was restricted from building on the work of others, and partially due to the fact that there were multiple vendors. You won't see "Bob's Win32", simply because Microsoft actively works to prevent such compatibility.
Once solid platform-independent implementations of the various UNIX tools became available, people began switching to them. For all the complaining people do about the various Linux-based OSen, they are remarkably consistent at the most basic user level (drop me on any GNU system and I will be able to at least find my way around the system, write code, etc). And this toolkit is available thanks to the GNU GPL and the enthusiasm RMS roused in the various developers.
Secondly, free software actually enables integration with closed platforms. For example, see Samba or Cygwin, which allow tight integration between Windows and Unix (no thanks to the "open" and "developer-friendly" Microsoft). And the first thing I and most other people do when confronted with a fresh Solaris box is to install a decent userland.
Uh huh. Sure. Let's take the WWW as an example, since everyone lately seems convinced it's the most innovative thing since sliced bread. It was invented by a guy at CERN, and Mosaic, the first massively popular graphical client, was written at NCSA. Since Web stuff became a commercial thing, exactly what "innovation" have we recieved? Bigger and more offensive ads and horrifically noncompliant HTML, that's what.
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
"He cited the history of Unix, which has been replete with incompatible versions. "
What no one bothers to point out is that the incompatable versions were brought about by large corporations creating proprietary versions of UNIX.
The other thing that really stuck in my craw is this: "But he added that the company's proprietary business model was a more effective way to support industry standards than the open-source approach..."
We all know that M$ has been such a champion of standards. Kerebos, oh wait, they put out an incompatible version of that one. How about Java, nope, they tried to add Active X controls there. Well at least they haven't messed with the web standards, except for JavaScript, DHTML... Well crap, I guess they haven't been so hot on sticking to the standards after all!
IANAL... But I play one on
Edison (big bill) vs Tesla (GPL) Similarities..
Edison did this with a series of demonstrations of the danger, in which he invited the public to watch as he used the Westinghouse/Tesla high voltage system to electrocute puppies and other small animals. Eventually he put on a demonstration using high voltage to kill a horse.
Is the GNU organization and the GPL at heart anti-captialist?
I believe that it is. I believe that the ultimate goal of GNU is to provide in abundance the goods needed by humanity and provide them for free. I believe software is only the first step - they dream of robotic farms and mines to produce physical goods for free as well. I've heard these guys and they want to save the world and end poverty.
So once again, is the GNU really anti-capitalistic? Then, if the answer is yes, you should prepare for all-out war in the years to come if you decide thats where your loyalty lies. Captitalism is not just going to fade away, it will put up a HUGE fight.
I think we as a group are ignoring this important question, and if we really want to end captitalism, then we have poorly defined what we want to replace it with and how it will be done.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
1. They ignore you.
2. They laugh at you.
3. They fight you.
4. You win.
Linux spent approximately a decade at step 1. Step 2 was hit this past year (I think) when Microsot ran an ad featuring mutated penguins in Germany. With these remarks, coupled with Allchin's earlier ones (Free Software being un-American and all that), it looks like Linux has entered step 3.
Pity. I was hoping step 2 would last a little longer, but I guess Microsoft isn't in a "laughing" mood these days.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
I mean obviously, Slashdot editors KNOW that they are preaching to the choir, so why do they post this? Perhaps they need more banner hits?
I mean, the fact that MS doesn't like the GPL isn't exactly news.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
woops, for some reason I wrote <a> instead of <\i>©
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
... lies in one word - INEQUALITY.
Nothing in this world is equal. Everything is relative. Some things are stronger; some are weaker. Some people are smart; some are stupid. Some are industrious; others are plain lazy. Get the picture?
The pie of income property of which you speak to divide is grossly inproportionate. Some property is in more demand. Some property is valued more than other property. Try buying beachfront property. It's expensive because lots of people want to live there and there isn't enough of it to go around. When demand goes up and supply can't keep up, price moves up as well. Simple economics.
And what about that pie? Where does it come from? Have you considered the BAKERS of that pie? People created the pie. They also create other pies using their own resources. Should they be expected to share it without compensation? What's to encourage them to bake more pies? Maybe you'll want to distribute the hard earned flour and water and eggs from someone else to the pie makers? OK. But then, how do you compensate your suppliers? Maybe you don't, ultimately. Maybe your suppliers stop putting their hearts and souls into making their products because there's no special reward for them. The pie makers also start doing the same thing for the same reasons. At the end of the process, everyone gets a pie, but the pie created under the new system of distribution doesn't taste as good as the old pies do. They break apart, spoil more quickly and so go to waste.
But wait, you say. Let's EDUCATE everyone top and bottom so that everyone knows the game. Well, you find that not everyone shares your enthusiasm. Some are natually lazy. Others realize that no matter how hard they work, they'll never get ahead. So they either work for themselves on the side, or do nothing more than they absolutly have to. In the end, education means nothing.
Income property remains income property because the owners make it work. They take the risks no one else wants to take and they reap the rewards. The simple rule is this: You work; you eat. Nothing gets handed to you. This isn't slavery. It's survival.
Intellectual property protects artists, writers and inventors from other people wishing to steal what they own and profit from it. Our oceans of laws and rules help us live together in complex societies. If you don't want it, go and live in a jungle. If you do, plan on spending most of your time trying to survive. Food and avoidance of predators (the 2 and 4 legged kind) will consume your time.
The free software / open source movement will succeed, but not because it's the forefront of a great social movement. The ability of dedicated, communally-minded individuals to enter and exit the community of developers via the internet is it's biggest strength. When you have dedicated individuals, the odds of any project succeeding increase greatly.
Giving away things for free makes a lot of sense to people who don't earn a living for one reason or another. Everyone likes a free lunch. The trouble is that the lunch actually costs something, had to made by someone and had to be delivered to the consumer. Once you start earning a living and stop thinking that the world owes you something, you'll see things more clearly.
Actually, isn't he sorta making a valid point for all object-oriented software (which, at last glance, most of the Windows and its API is?) The whole idea behind methods is to hide control not only from the user but the coder -- they should only touch what the original programmer intended them to touch. Granted, Open Source makes life a little easier when the methods themselves are busted, but the point he's making is succinct and valid: if you follow most guidelines for OOP, there is nothing required in knowing the underlying code.
Granted, different people use Open Source for different reasons. I use Open Source (on my dual-boot Win2K/RedHat 7.1 machine) not for its Open Sourceness but because I happen to like Linux and KDE2's (in my opinion) advanced GUI. I could care less if I could read the code, and chances are most Linux users, at least nowadays, will never read the code. To me, user interface is 9/10 of design (and following OOP is 9/10 user interface).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
A few days back Gordon Moore was on Charlie Rose talking about how the only way to get the chip fab equipment Intel needs two generations down the road (that would be 4 years, right?) is through massive capital investment that its current supplier can't afford. Luckily, a Dutch firm has the capital and and the two firms are trying to merge. However, there is significant opposition in the Bush administration to having a Dutch firm in such a 'strategic' position, even though the companies have agreed to produce all the equipment in the US and buy parts entirely from US suppliers.
Now you can be sure if the Dutch are that dangerous, we certainly can't trust the Finns and the Germans for the likes of Linux and KDE!
Moore, by the way, predicts that if Bush blocks the merger (which by law he has to decide on in the next week) the Japanese will make the necessary investments and end up owning the CPU market in a few short years. We should be more scared of the Japanese than the Dutch? It's not like they're an historic military enemy.
Oh, wait....
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Oh, and how widely MS shares its source code is completely unrelated to how many "freelance programmers" have access to it. Plenty (200+) of universities and (large) companies have access. Yes, they had to sign NDAs, but the point is still valid: most people think no-one has access.
John Markoff wrote the book about Kevin Mitnick, which helped the govt to build all the stupid accusations against him and to throw him in jail for years together.
Most of the accusations against Mitnick levelled at him by Markoff were absurd and could only be conjured up by someone who didnt have an iota of technical knowledge. This is the guy who lives on trolling to keep his existance together. Its funny to see that he is still alive and kicking. And trolling..
This is not a flame. If you wish, you can read Markoff's book called "Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw-By the Man Who Did It". John Littman wrote a book which counters all these arguments called "The Fugitive Game" which tries to shed some light in to these absurd allegations against Mitnick.
After which, Shimomura (the so called "hacker" who caught up with Mitnick) and Markoff shared their spoils by pitching together a movie to Miramax about Mitnick, a movie which would even characterise Mitnick as a murderer. Shame on these idiots.
Rapid Nirvana
Well. I think this is a free world.
We must be able to choose the tools we need.
May it be OpenSource or not. I choose the one that
best serves my needs.
I really HAD another userid
OTOH, this gets better by the minute on the FUD fest that M$ is having with the GPL. Open source isn't a bad thing... after all, the BSD licence lets them steal... just the GPL is bad becuase they have to behave. Imagine that! Good behavior out of M$? Oh, no! We can't have that! BAD RMS! BAD ESR! No Windows for you! (Not like they'd use it)
What next, they have ppl that believe in the GPL be procescuted for treason?
Karma whorin' since 1999
Even I can come up with a better arguement then what it appears MS is about to do. Or maybe it's the same, but I don't need to spend as much time explaining it.
Wealth is not how much money you have but how much money you cause to flow thru the economy. It is money that is the most common value exchange media. The more active it is in the economy, the better the economy will appear to be doing.
It really is quite simply about "economy". Making "economy" the ultimate possible arguement against GPL. How wealth generation requires the common media of value exchange to "flow".
Think of it this way. How many people does it take to change a light bulb? A polish joke? Nope, an economic flow of value exchange test. By spreading out the payed tasks to do in what there is to do, the more the common value exchange media "flows" thru the economy.
The GPL certainly spreads out the tasks but causes alot less of that common value exchange media to flow thru the economy. Hence, the GPL being bad for countries, etc.
Now I need to ask myself a question here. Shall I pull the carpet out from under this ultimate arguement now, or wait for MS to verify that this is the essence of their arguement against the GPL?
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
It would be nice to actually wait for the speech before judging content.
Sure, maybe everyone knows what they're going to say anyway, but it seems to me that on "Microsoft's opinion on Open Source", the camp is divided in three groups:
A) Those who know MS is obviously biased
B) Those who don't care what they say
C) Both A) and B).
With the majority on C. Those who already support Open-Source will still do so, those who don't will not, and those who are considering it will ask other people (IBM, Sun, even Apple) about it.
So, in the end the speech will either be as expected and have no real impact whatsoever (positive or negative) or it will be a different attack on Open-Source, in which case it's pointless to post defenses right now.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Provide tools to innovate and you will get innovation. Include a compiler with your operating system and a nice api and innovation will come.
Of the protocols that drive the internet - how many came from M$? SOAP doesn't drive the internet.
Microsoft is worried about countries that have Open Source initiatives - i.e. France, China and others. What those countries here is the sucking sound of monopolistic profits going to Redmond Washington.
How many shares do you have of MSFT? 100? 1000? Hah! I wipe my ass with that many shares every morning. Let's face it, your total holdings in MSFT amount to basically dick. But I'm going to answer you anyway, just because I'm in that kind of mood.
1000 shares of MSFT stock = dick;
[Bill] wipes his ass with 1000 shares each morning;
[Bill] wipes his ass with dick each morning;
Hmm
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Is this the Same Mundie that led microsoft into disregarding the Inernet, and who then went on to mastermind the Famous Web TV Disaster? I don't think I'll be taking his opinion for much, and nor should anyone else.
"Either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language" is the kicker
I highly doubt that this can be held up in court. If RMS is arguing in the DVD/CCA case that computer code in a specific programming language is indeed speech that expresses the unique thoughts of that coder, then he can't just turn around and say that code that's translated into another language is still the same thing as the original.
Of course, the judges seem to very skeptical on whether code is speech in the first place, but that's a different story...
Seriously, why? All that it says is if you want to use code that's licensed under GPL, you better GPL your application too.
However, nothing stops you from looking at the source of GPL software, figuring out the algorithms that are being used and using them in your own non-GPL software later on (assuming, that you actually rewrite it in your own way and don't just copy the source). For instance, there are a lot of very cool algorithms in the Linux kernel, such as the copy-on-write trick (when you fork a process, its pages do not get physically duplicated, but the pages tables are modified to point to the original process' pages, until you actually start modifying them) or their very efficient and cool slab allocator (OO-type memory allocator which actually was first developed by Sun back in 1994) and many other cool tricks.
There is absolutely NOTHING that prevents Microsoft employees from looking at that code (other than their internal strict policies not to do that - I have a friend who interned their for the summer and he tells me that they are prohibited from visiting open-source projects that do something similar to what they are working on), figuring out how the algorithm works and how it's implemented in the Linux kernel and then taking that IDEA and implementing it in Windows. As long as they are not copying the code, it should be perfectly legal, right? However, you cannot do the same thing with Windows, since you don't have access to the code and thus can't see whether they are using any cool algorithms that you can also put to good use in your own OS.
http://www.achtung.com/opinions/dotcommunist.html
Anyone else notice that they are promoting their "open-source" efforts to business flunkies? Not to the Engineers, who would know better, but the to the business majors who will be making the buying decisions. If you didn't already realize it, it's a little insight into their business model: FUD.
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Wait a second folks. Everyone here at slashdot loves open source. We use it everyday, contribute to it and live by it but there might be something we're missing in our enthusiastic defense.
...to suggest that companies adopting the approach are putting their intellectual property at risk.
The speech is part of an effort by Microsoft to raise questions about the limits of innovation inherent in the open-source approach
Are there limits to innovation using the open-source approach? Well there's certaintly less money involved and to be brutally honest money equates to work. The hardest working most dedicated open-source advocate cannot get as much done as an employee. The open-source developer has to take large breaks from work to get money to live while an employee earns while he works! Revolutionary idea I know... I mean earning money for work! Who would have thought.
Hmmm. Well yes they are and since profit margins will drop there is a large risk to any company trying to make money from open-source. Take for example
Stormix cashes out
SuSE lays off most US staff
VA Linux Announces planned 25% staff cut
But that's where M$ made their mistake. Open-source doesn't have to belong to a company. It can be created and maintained by the community (I almost said 'The People' but I've got an aversion to that expression.). M$ are stating the obvious. Open source is dangerous to companies and it slows innovation but that doesn't mean it should be stopped. What we need to know are the long term effects of open source. I'm not too sure what the end result is going to be but it might turn out alright in the end...
Red Hat Breaks Even
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
From the GPL:
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
...
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
I think the the GPL abilities that you cite (charging for the mechanical distribution of free software and charging for warranty protection) do not in any way contradict the original claim: that incorporating GPL'd code in a commercial product is not feasible. GPL has been called a virus for good reason.
I am not asserting anything bad about GPL, and I am not trying to enter into an argument about its merits. I'm a big open source fan (though I have some problems with GPL). But I do understand why software companies developing licensed intellectual property need to be very cautious about using GPL'd software in the development environment. There are lots of very smart guys who are open-source on weekends who don't let GPL through the doors of their labs at work, because the nature of their business depends on IP license fees.
There's plenty of pro-GPL rhetoric asserting that proprietary software is intrinsically immoral, and that IP is evil. I agree that the GPL as written doesn't go that far; but GPL advocates often do, and the bottom line is that GPL places very substantial restrictions on a for-profit software developer/licensor.
JMHO -- Trevor
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
To my mind, #1 and #2 are clearly true. Proponents of #'s 3, 4 and 5 love to piggyback their ideas on the success of Linux, Apache and FreeBSD, without any real justification. Yes, Linux has shown that community development works. It hasn't proven it superior. There's no a priori reason to think that giving away source is a sound business decision, and the people who have tried have hardly convinced me. (Red Hat sells code mostly written by others and now has cut their losses to the point that they round off to zero? Wow!!) And the "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" mentality not only isn't proven by the fact that Linux is good, it's laughable to most of the developers actually creating free software.
It seems to me this speech is mostly targeting arguments #4 and 5. I'm inclined to agree with Microsoft and my objection is with the people who invoke Perl and BSD to defend Eazel and Napster.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
<sacrcasm>
And you'll soon realise more people spend more time looking at Microsoft programmer's instructions than ever look at Linux's.Think about it. All that crap on the BSOD has to come from somewhere - namely programmer's instructions. Use the simple equation:
</sarcasm>
Why, oh, why must the prime example of all that is rotten with capitalism send forth it's trolls, as if wandering from the lost underside of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, in search of some ear to disgorge into it's utterances? The Beast of Redmond issues proof, once again, that it fears Open Source. What else is new? You'd think they'd co-opt it like Apple has BSD... sheesh.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
MSDN did NOT explain to me how to convert my .psfu) to a
...
;-)
font (either plain binary or
Windows raster font.
If you can tell me, I forget it. If not,
someone shall install *BSD on MSDN
--
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
Hey, NT 5 is POSIX compliant:
;-)
D:/WINNT/SYSTEM32/POSIX.EXE
(Just no-one can tell u how to use it
--
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
Hey, NT 5 is POSIX compliant:
;-)
D:/WINNT/SYSTEM32/POSIX.EXE
(Just no-one can tell u how to use it
Guess it's so the gov't can use it because
of their standards etc...
--
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
First off I'd like to say open source cannot be bad.. if open source project rise up to the point where the FREE MARKET decides they are good enough to compete with the software put out by giant software firms, then where is the added value of the giant software firms that you are paying for? That is a basic concept at the foundation of a free market. If the market decides the added value of an MS product doesn't warrant its cost, then it isn't purchased. MS can then add value or reduce its price until it is competitive again. The whole arguement of open source being bad for competition is bs.. it's bad for corporations who can't justify their existance in the face of a strong open source movement. Obviously all these people making open source code are surviving somehow, aren't they? And also managing to release free software that *somehow* meets the standards of the market. I don't see a problem. Unless of course you work for a software company that can't beat open source code even though they are paying professional programmers to do nothing else. Don't expect laws to protect mediocrity boys and girls. That's a giant step backwards. Finally, MS attacking the GPL is so completely transparent: obviously there is GPL liscenced code MS wants to incorporate into their programs and they want to do it without open sourcing their own software, obviously. Sorry boys! You can't take the benefit of GPL without the downside! No free ride for you! If it weren't for the GPL you wouldn't even have it to pirate.. I mean, incorporate... so I suggest you take those highly paid programmers and actually make them code something that works nicely. Or you can take the short route and end up open source, of course, though why MS would do that with GPL software is a little beyond me. Or, if you are MS, you can try to shape the country's laws and society to suit yourself. Failing that, you can lie, cheat and steal whatever you need. Enjoy! The options are limitless!
Open Source is both good and bad and we all know it. It's perfectly good in the sense that hackers can look at the code, create patches, easily create drivers. We can learn from the code and create something better.
With today's fourth generation languages we can do any of this in no time what-so-ever!
Open Source is obviously bad for someone like microsoft.
They're in the business for profit, nothing more, nothing else. Open source would cut into their profit and obvious monopoly.
I.E., They're extremely afraid of Open Source.
But, that's not the end of our story.
What if Microsoft went open source?
How about just making the OS Open Source... I firmly believe that the hold MS has on the market would not change... Probably get better because of peoples renewed trust in the Company and even the OS knowing that others are looking at it and making fast patches for obvious holes.
Hopefully the prices of computers would drop since the MS tax would be gone. It would be Free to download.
But where would Poor Microsoft make their money???
They would still sell the software... and they would also sell the OS's prepackaged with tech support.
Just some rambling Thursday morning thoughts....
Linuxrunner
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
Seriously, these guys are idiots relying on sound bites. ESR and RMS would eat these idiots for lunch in a philosophical debate on software. They can't even sort out the differences between Open Source and the GPL.
It would definitely be in Red Hat's best interest to do this kind of thing, if for no other reason than to just say "Red Hat" alot and brand like crazy. (Microsoft is a master of this, just count the number of times you read MS, Windows, or Office brand names within an MSNBC article related to the tech industry) Given what IBM and Sun could gain, I can't see why they wouldn't do it either...
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Step 1: Open your source code under the GPL Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit
Simply wrong. Proprietary software causes forking for the sake of competition because vendors cannot use one another's work. Microsoft has no competition, so obviously monopolies can regulate forking by simply saying no. But if you are talking about proprietary vs oss, prioprietary models are the ones that encourage forking. With OSS, if there is something out there that does the job, you get to use it. With PS, you need to fork no matter what.
are you sure you didn't mean 'baaaaaaaaad?'
"It's happening very, very broadly in a way that is troubling to us," he said. "I could highlight a dozen countries around the world who have open-source initiatives."
We have seen Mexico City move away from Microsoft. We have just seen Argentina take the first baby steps away from Microsoft. The above statement FROM Microsoft tells us that those moves away from MS are the tip of the iceberg of an international movement away from Microsoft.
Why is this happening now? Two things have happened in the last couple of years that make this possible. First is StarOffice and the other liberated software office productivity applications that have come out. The application base of liberated software has reached critical mass. The second is simply price. You don't have to have a Microsoft OS to run the key applications you need to get business done any more. The other thing is that Microsoft software is expensive. MS software is seen as expensive even in the US, arguably the wealthiest country in the world. In every other country it is seen as outrageously expensive. It is also seen as American and not to be trusted because it is to some extent under the control of the US government. (Remember the NSA key?) If you use liberated software you don't have to pay MS's high prices and you don't have to worry about who has set up backdoors in your system.
And yes, this means we are in a very dangerous place in history. We have already won many battles we didn't even know we were fighting. But, now the beast has been awakened. MS will not rest until liberated software is illegal.
StoneWolf
P.S.
I'm using the phrase "liberated software" instead of "free software" because I hate having to say "free, as in free speech, not free, as in free beer" to make people understand what I'm talking about.
Maybe Microsoft is learning how to cry from Metallica. You know: "Money Good! Napster Bad!".-
-----------------------------------------------
You think Bill Gates is evil?
The best attribute of open-source model is the free use of their software. And considering that in Countries like India most people do not pay for installing the MS Software due to piracy, he's probably right.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
All your memes are belong to us.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
Mr. Mundie cleared up the issues surrounding the open source movement. I, for one, will now abandon all of these free software schemes that could trick me into using software without paying for it. If the company only makes money through supporting the software, there is obviously something very wrong with the software-- they must have built in bugs so that people will have to pay the company for support.. ohh, wait, umm, microsoft already charges 300$ a question... umm.
Maybe the GPL is bad because, well, it will break down the corporate power structure that we have been building for so many years. Ohh, wait, that corporate power structure is built on skimming money off of workers to give to the person who holds the license- taxation without representation anyone? We must all pay the man!!!
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
is there a lawyer in the house?
isn't there some law about lying to the public?
if Ford says "best of class" the had better also include the source of that "rating"
If Ford went further and said that General Motors cars are unsafe, they'd better have definitive proof before making those claims, or prepare to be sued.
MS seems above the law in this respect, as these claims that you are "risking your intellectual propoerty" as a company by using GPL'd software is total BS. If I put my data into MySQL, there is nothing that says I need to share that data with the community. Furthermore, say I hack MySQL to talk to some weird server in the back office, GPL doesn't require me to make those changes public unless I intend to redistribute my new MySQL version to the world, and only then would I be required to post my modifications to the community.Even then, those lines of code will likely reveal nothing about my company unless I'm stupid enough to hard code passwords or something just plain dumb like that.
we as the public ought to have the right to sue MS for false advertising, for obvious attempts at bashing the hard work that so many good poeple have decided to share with the world for the benifit of all of us.
isn't it SLANDER? I'm not a lawyer, if you are, please elaborate on this class action thought.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Open source bad?
Just a few articles lower we see "Remote 'Root' Exploit in IIS 5.0". Just a "simple" buffer overflow as it seems.........
Nuff said.
Simple case: MSWin sucks
Complex case: MSWin really sucks
Recursive case: Well, that's what this article is about now, isn't it?
Last step: You've gotta believe
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
So Microsoft only dislikes the GPL... I guess that this piece of opensource software is acceptable....
In fact, once you've read the MS sources, you've effectively left the Open Source camp, as any MS NDA these days is incompatible with GPL or even BSD license.
Microsoft is against freedom of speech!, how's that for FUD? ;-)
my other sig is a 500 page novel
This scares me even more when you consider the number of lawyers MS has constantly lobbying the US gov. There is no doubt in my mind that they are doing everything in their power to make Open Source and the GPL *ILLEGAL*. next thing you know it'll be illegal to have a compiler, period.
--- it's pelvis to be cube
Then everybody better watch out for killer GNomes.
They'll be led by the evil 2.4 Kernel Klink.
Whatever floats your boat. In my case, that would be a sea of Mercury.
This Markoff guy is scary. According to Kevin Mitnick's interview with forbes he almost single handedly created the "Mitnick hacker legend". I always thought that yellow journalism was something to rant about in American history class. I guess that was just practice for real life.
Maskirovka
I agree, everyone needs to earn a living. Does that mean that Microsoft must attack the open-source movement? Craig Mundie, senior vice president of Microsoft, recently stated: "open source programming created software with greater danger of security risks, product instability, a breakdown of common industry design standards that could force valuable intellectual property into the public domain." He is attacking the quality of open-source software (anyone who administers windows NT servers and Linux based servers knows who has the longer uptime). He is also wrongly portraying the open-source community as "Robin Hood" types that want to steal from the rich to give to the poor. This just isn't true. Instead of trash talking the competition, why doesn't microsoft step up to the plate and give me rock solid apps that I WANT to pay for. My first request is an OS that doesn't need rebooting when a web browser crashes. -ted
I also run both Windows 2000 and Linux. Microsoft does have the ability to write good software. Exchange server is a damn cool product. I have yet to see anything in the open-source area that beats it. There are uses for both types of products, but I expect more from Microsoft....why? Because I pay top dollar for the product. -ted
The free software ideal cannot hope to win in a capitalist system where a person's livelihood depends on his or her labor. Intellectual property owners (such as Microsoft and the music industry) will fight it with everything they've got. Right now they have two formidable weapons: IP laws and powerful police states to enforce them. But those who yearn to be free also have a formidable weapon, the internet.
The internet and other communication technologies (e.g., file sharing systems) are the first major kinks in the armor of a sick system. As technology progresses, the system will eventually die a horrible death. What will happen to a slave-based economy when robots and advanced artificial intelligences replace everybody, i. e., when human labor, knowledge and expertise become worthless?
And don't think for a minute this won't happen in your lifetime. The internet is the latest giant leap in human communication. Before that came mass telecommunication technologies and before that was the movable press. If history is any indication, we can expect a giant leap in technological progress and scientific knowledge. In fact, it is happening before our very eyes.
We should all demand a system where everybody is guaranteed income property, a piece of the pie. There is plenty for everybody.
Communism confiscates all property and enslaves everybody. Capitalism gives property to a few and enslaves the rest. It's sad. The land should not be divided for a price. It should be an inheritance for us and our children and their children. It's the only way to guarantee freedom in a world where human labor is about to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Intellectual property laws exist only because we have a slavery system. Our livelihood depends on working for others so we can pay our taxes. The reason that we have to work for others is that 99% of people have been deprived of an inheritance in the wealth of the land. Income property is owned by a few and the state. The others are slaves. Artists, programmers and inventors depend on their work to make a living. Can we blame them? We all depend on our labor because we are all slaves. So now we are swimming in a ocean of laws and rules that take away our remaining liberties, one by one.
Demand liberty! Nothing less.
On the other hand, I talked to a wireless software start-up founder recently. He said that the biggest obstracle he now encounters is that many companies are reluctant to adopt new (closed sourced) technology because they are afraid of becoming hostages of a software company.
So, in a sense, a company loses money developing GPL'ed software, on the other hand, the marked wants GPL'ed software. The obvious conclusion is that Open Source development will live, but it will be left to individuals entertaining themselves or monopolies that don't care about competition.
Just my $.02 worth of truisms.
Wroot
P.S. I may even go to NYU tomorrow and report back.
When Microsoft denounces open source as a hurdle on innovation, it somehow has a point Open source is very good at incremental evolution but no one in the community really has the power to rebuild a full OS from scratch and ram it through the throat of the installed base as Microsoft can. With its monopoly, Microsoft has more opportunities to implement a serious technologic shake-up (and a serious shake-down for the end-user at the same time
And when you think about it, GNU/Linux or BSD are indeed old technology grown from the 70s, still stuck with unsexy monolithic kernels, etc. The support for desktop is still unconvincing. They lack productivity applications. All things considered, Microsoft did a fairly good job at creating and enforcing some software consistency on this nightmarish hardware piece of crap which is the PC.
In Microsoft's eyes, open source OSs just have one little tiny annoying inconvenience. They work. Day after day, they faithfully fulfil all the obscure brutish jobs they're being asked, lost in some remote corners of the sever farm, toiling endlessly, alone amid their peers, all those other servers also toiling endlessly on their own obscure brutish jobs. They're no good for the end-users but ask them to do one specific thing over a network, tweak them a little bit if necessary - hey, you have the code ! - and they'll do it, no question asked, going, going, keep going. Who cares which software is running as long as it runs. Software is a commodity.
They lost a battle and an important one in the most ignominious way. With its monopoly on the desktop market, Microsoft was supposed to leverage its proprietary protocols to pry open the server market and force and cash in its solutions in the machine room. But in retrospect, it becomes evident they made an ugly mistake with the all-in-one NT, the same software on servers and desktops alike. By cumulating the worst of both worlds, it took more than 5 years to turn NT in something close to a decent platform. On the server side, they should have started from an existing proven platform like BSD and extend it as closed source to support the proprietary desktop protocols. It would have been there much faster. The desktop side could have then had a life of its own without slowing the server side. A nasty case of NIH syndrome. And they lost those 5 precious years that allowed Linux, Apache and Samba to grow up and make NT irrelevant in the server room.
But that's not really the most frightening for Microsoft. They not only lost the battle in the server room but, missing their window of opportunity to become the One, the war has shifted to a new battlefield. The fastest growing segments in IT are wireless, PDAs, SAN/NAS and internet-based applications such as database Web access over intranets or ASPs (when they don't die...). And coming on the horizon are residential broadband and internet-based appliances. Microsoft has no serious edges on any of those markets, a bit there, a tad here. It's just another competitor and has strictly not a chance of building a new monopoly as it did out of the original IBM PC. IT is not a niche anymore, the market is huge, the array of technologies to dominate is beyond the grasp of any company, and so much funding is now available that even Microsoft and its $25B in cash at the bank is just one player among others.
The IT market is slowly shifting from the all-purpose PC to a patchwork of heterogeneous specialized devices, both for the end-user and for the infrastructure. With the PC, consistency is in great demand and Microsoft had a global solution, good or bad but a solution. With specialized devices, OS and applications are just tools to adapt, tweak and slap together for such or such tasks. Open source is the evident solution. There's no point for anymore great innovation on the tool side. Like metalwork machine-tools, they simply exist. They are there and they are a commodity. The problem is now to use them.
Microsoft has every good reason to shriek like a swine in the slaughterhouse. Open source killed its only leverage, on the building blocks. After nearing world domination, it's seeing its death, slowly fading in irrelevancy, its edge blunted, becoming just another company in a mature market.
Oh yeah, it won't be fast but it will be painful.
> Are we talking fish or birds here?
Nope. Sacred cows. They come home to roost with a vengeance. (Paraphrased from "The Complete Plain Words" by Ernest Gowers, IIRC)
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
Riddle me this, Batman: If only a commercial model can create innovative software, and if innovation drives the software industry, then how is there a problem? If Open Source software cannot drive innovation, then it won't make any significant inroads, and commercial software won't be threatened.
Maybe what's really threatening the commercial software industry is a failure to grasp the nuances of LOGIC.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
What will happen to a slave-based economy when robots and advanced artificial intelligences replace everybody, i. e., when human labor, knowledge and expertise become worthless?
And don't think for a minute this won't happen in your lifetime.
I think you have been reading WAY too much Asimov! Or maybe Blade Runner?
We should all demand a system where everybody is guaranteed income property, a piece of the pie. There is plenty for everybody.
There already is in the US. Something like 45% of the federal budget is used for "social programs" like welfare, medicaid, medicare, and social security. That is almost $1 BILLION dollars of handouts.
Capitalism gives property to a few and enslaves the rest. It's sad. The land should not be divided for a price. It should be an inheritance for us and our children and their children.
Last time I checked, my neighbors owned their property, not the government. And I'm pretty sure that their kids will get that land when they die. Of course, I am against the inheritance tax.
It's the only way to guarantee freedom in a world where human labor is about to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Watch out for those hoards of robotic monkeys which will be constructing roads and houses!
Intellectual property laws exist only because we have a slavery system. Our livelihood depends on working for others so we can pay our taxes. The reason that we have to work for others is that 99% of people have been deprived of an inheritance in the wealth of the land. Income property is owned by a few and the state. The others are slaves.
Slavery? If you want, you can go live Unibomber style out in the wilderness. No taxes to pay out there! Ah, but you want your shiny things to play with, don't you? But, you would rather that someone else just gave you the shiny things instead of having to work to earn enough to be able to buy the shiny things. You are free to attempt to gain your shiny things any way you want (legally- stealing is bad)- work for someone else, work for yourself, build your own shiny things, try magic, beg on the street, whatever.
So if you had land, how exactly would you be a thriving idependent person? Selling apples, I presume. If you want land, go buy some! Open a newspaper and read the several pages of property listings. Really, the state will not prevent you from buying any! Of course, now that I and my friends own land, we are set to retire. Except that we still want to eat, heat our abodes in the winter, etc.
Artists, programmers and inventors depend on their work to make a living. Can we blame them? We all depend on our labor because we are all slaves.
So exactly who does not make a living by working? If you are rich enough to live off of the interest, you could. But you had to earn that money in the first place. Or if you inherited it, some ancestor at some point had to earn it. No one grew a magical tree of money. We depend on labor because your wry wit is not enough to make people give you money.
So now we are swimming in a ocean of laws and rules that take away our remaining liberties, one by one.
This I actually agree with. Too many laws already.
Demand liberty! Nothing less.
I do. I just don't demand free property and handouts so I can sit on my ass all day because I won't work hard enough to buy the things I want.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Huh, I like that - like Word 95 documents load into Word 97 and still look the same HUH! And do you rekon you can ever actually get the document to look the same again? No chance!
I think that open-source inherently encourages compatibility ... If one version of a program is compatible with previous/other versions and the other versions arent, which do you think people will use?
By the way, the local UPN affiliate here just aired the "Descent" episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Early on, the Borg attack a planet in the "M.S." star system. Heh, someone over there must read /.
--------------------------------
I once saw an interview on tv with Bill G. The topic was about providing access to computers and the internet to 3rd world countries to help their education systems etc.. Well.. Bill G didn't think this was such a great idea. His point was that if you live off of 1$ a day your not going to go out and get a computer. I think he is really worried that people who live of $1 a day will not be able to buy his copyrighted software. Bill G is the pioneer of software copyright. He has fought to keep his code secret. So his company coming out dissing free software is not unsuspected.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win."
- Ghandi's formula for revolutionary change
See? Won't be long now.
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
When Microsoft sucessfully lobbies the U.S. Government to crack down on the 'Communist GPL' and make it illegal to have or make or to use GPL'd software.
Don't think it is possible? Of course the GPL is not communist, and in a true free market the GPL would be free to compete with M$. No one is FORCING people to use GPL'd software.
With McCarthyism people were put in jail for less... 'She reads lots of books, I think she might be a communist! Arrest her!'.... 'Only evil hackers use linux! My neighbour uses linux! Arrest him!'
Luckily with IBM's support of the GPL, this won't happen soon.
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
Did I read that correctly: "Microsoft's move toward open source" ?! How much do you NYU people pay each semester?
It's here.
Didn't see it already posted, so I thought I'd share.
-- B.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Not Stallman. *sigh* I suppose I should let my eyes open before I try to read.
Check out Stallman's reply at:
- 05 -02-019-20-NW-CY-MS
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001
Nicely done.
I work for IBM. Microsoft will provide IBM developers with access to their source code upon request. The request starts off as a printable application form that undoubtedly starts the Blue Tape, as we call it here. But, hey, they do share it.
Someone hates these cans.
You're just simple-minded and naive!
We know about the peer pressure too. "Come on, try it... everyone's doing it, you want to be cool don't you?"
But open-source has consequences! Horrible consequences!
Your business - dead!
Your intellectual property - spread around the internet like a whore, poked and penetrated by every kid with a compiler! They'll laugh at your gotos!
Do it for the children!
A Public Service Announcement from your friends at Microsoft.
"...That creates many problems downstream, many of which haven't come home to roost yet." Are we talking fish or birds here?
In other news, world war two profiteers remain solid on the endorsement of their classic business model. "Taking the best parts of peacetime capatalism", of course, means that it is necessarily superior, even when one isn't considering the bottom line.
Here is my challenge to Mundie: play fair and let consumers actually choose. Here is another challenge to Mundie and Microsoft: stop talking about innovation and actually deliver; so far, no significant innovation has ever been delivered in Microsoft products.
Of course it was. But Sun competed with Microsoft by doing something entirely different from anything Microsoft had done: a safe, cross-platform language and library based on C++ syntax and "Smalltalkish" semantics. Microsoft's response to Java/JVM is to make an almost identical, but incompatible, product.
It was designed to do one thing -- make money for Sun.
Actually, it wasn't designed for that at all. It was an accidental success: the industry was ready for a simple OOL, and the promise of applets pushed it over the edge. Once Sun saw Java catch on, they heavily promoted it.
Hey, stop it, and let us use our dam software!
Why don't you sell your software and we'll sell ours! stop doing it!
LEAVE US ALONE!!!
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Stern School of Business Howard Stern, I suppose!
From the article:
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - The Princess Bride
...slamming the GPL.
Basically, the GPL is a good thing. "Open Source" software is a good thing. It gives people freedom. But it will never be a real threat to the MS desktop monopoly. Heres why...
"Open Source" developers and business dont give a flying fuck about the end user. Not referring to the AOL retards who can only stare at the screen and drool. I'm referring to the person who wants to know more about how thier system works, and struggles with learning the stuff, but is constantly either ignored or bashed because the l33t h4X0r5 just dont wanna be bothered with helping the new guy. I'm not talking about spoon feeding either. I mean people who spend 4 or 5 hours checking the documentation, find it to be worthless when it comes to actual troubleshooting, and then carefully explain thier problem, only to be shit upon by those higher up the knowledge ladder.
As an example...
I know computers, very well my associates would say. I program in C, Ada95, ASM, Perl, Python, and Common Lisp. I work with the Bash and Korn shells on a regular basis. Now, I ran into a sound problem with Mandrake and spent about 4 hours pouring over the docs and testing each nook and cranny I could think of to solve the problem. Nada. The documentation proved to be a waste of time because it doesnt document the meaning of the error messages the software was throwing out. Finally I posted some questions to some message boards carefully documenting what the problem was, where I had already looked for solutions, and asked for advice on how I might solve the problem.
In response, I either got bashed, or the response was along the lines of "...do a search on google...uh...dude."
Now, this type of attitude pervades the Open Source/Free Software community. That's why the software is still unusable for people who want to get some serious work done. The few packages which do actually work(and work extremely well, such as TeX, MySQL, and a few others) are few and far between. That's why professionals will be sticking with professional software from professional programmers/comapanies(IBM, Sun, et..) At least they support thier products when something goes wrong. AND, that's why OSS doesnt have a hope in hell of taking the desktop.
Relax Microsoft. Take some valium or something. Dont let the paranoia get to you. Sure, your crap crashes, but at least it's possible to get it up and running in the first place.
(Note: I've been a Linux/FreeBSD junkie for about eight years now. So dont think I'm a novice, because I sure as hell am not.)
People that say this are typically dogmatic. You dogmatic?
I couldn't agree with you more. It's unfortunate that so many students graduate without learning this lesson.
Don't agree with you here. Training for a particular job was not my main goal, becomming educated was. But the courses in my major that I took exposed me to the tools that I needed to succeed at a my job in the short term. My education and my commitment to learning will ensure my long term success.
Ah, because their ability to make a living could be sabatoged by other people out to have some fun? People acting without the foresight to understand that the same thing might happen to them?
As with most things in life, Free Software is not all good. There are definitely research advantages in a world in which Free Software is abundant. But my only point is that this needs to be moderated because of the cost of Free Software.
Answer this one simple question: How would you feel if you were laid off from your job in which you developed an application that does X. You were laid off because a Free Software project also developed an application that does X. Your company, even though they made a superior product, could not compete with free, and decided to give up and drop this project because it was costing them more than it was making them.
How would you feel?
Think this can't happen?
"The only rights you have are the rights you are willing to fight for."
Agreed. He's just doing his best to put down Free Software. I wish he would stick to more logical arguments.
Ok, some of us. What about the rest of us? Fortunately, I think I'm one of the safe ones. I think.
Again, more silliness by the author.
Is that so far off?
Who, exactly, does Free Software help the most? It would seem to mostly be rich people. We're not saving starving homeless people with Free Software.
Who, exactly, does Free Software hurt the most? US!
I'm not suggesting that all Free Software is bad. But it makes sense that some is. So the important question is: what are the questions that we should ask ourselves about Free Software that can help us determine if a particular project is beneficial or destructive?
"The only rights you have are the rights you are willing to fight for."
Your system isn't running an smtp server.
Let me know were'd you'd like me to reply.
"The only rights you have are the rights you are willing to fight for."
Here is an interesting article on the same subject, except that it was writen in 1998. I actually think this article does a better job of expressing Microsoft's view.
I'm not a Microsoft supporter, but I'm not a Microsoft basher either. This article raises some interesting questions that I think deserve at least some thought. If you read it with a definite bias against Microsoft, then you may miss some of these points because the author is definitely biased toward Microsoft. Try to look past that.
The main point is, let's say you are a developer working at a company developing a product which does X. Does it then make sense for you to go home after work and work on a Free Software project which does X? No, it doesn't. In fact, you'd be a little pissed off at the developers that were working on a Free Software project which does X. It doesn't matter if your company's project is superior or not. The fact is that free is free, and the Free Software project has a big advantage when it comes to price. True, competition is great. But your company had better develop one kiss ass project to be worth actually spending money, and they had better do it for as little cost as possible. This is all great for consumers. But most of us are not consumers. How is this good for us?
"The only rights you have are the rights you are willing to fight for."
Mr. Mundie "The goal of the G.P.L. is sweeping up all of the intellectual property. . . "
A few points, IMHO:
1) good for open source, as "intellectual property" is doublespeak - in US law, there never has been any ruling that says that copyright, trademarks, or patents are inalienable rights but rather a deal between the people and busnesses to maximise innovation NOT to make money. See the Supreme Court ruling in Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal: "The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors."
2) Weather you are libertarian, liberal, or conservative, I think most people would be happy to limit the "rights" of companies and countries - they have been taking too "rights" for them, many at the people's expence.
some further reading
prolebox
i basically agree with almost everything you say here (just disagree a bit on the details). this stuff will happen...it's really only a question of when. the massive paradoxes of capitalism can't hold out much longer.
--how long till the operators are jailed for anime-induced pedophelia and
Kind of funny that M$ would call open source a threat to security; then, same day, we get the following article, from the AP: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010503/tc/micros oft_security_flaw_8.html
Basically M$ Winblows 2000 has a huge security hole. But you should feel safe, because they have issued a patch, and what does that patch do? We'll never know, because its closed source and we doen't get to see it. For all we know it could be 10,000 comment lines saying "Thank you for your money, now bend over" But they would never do anything that wasn't in the best interest of their customers, would they?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
When you download open source you're downloading COMMUNISM
*looks around* Yep, I'm an Egoist.
Of course, there's not anything wrong with that that I can see, but I *do* have some thoughts about Egoism and GPL versus Egoism and Proprietary software.
If I release my software product under a proprietary model, people see my success at a level accessible to end-users. This is good, I have some Egoistic gratification; however, if I release my work under an OSS model, people see my success at both the end-user level, and at the code-inspected, microscopic level. And I'd argue that these people are those whose cheers would gratify my black, little, egoistic soul more.
Who's better known, Torvald or the poor, tortured soul who started the NT Kernel?
Nietzsche on Diku:
sn; at god ba g
:Backstab >KILLS< god.
Actually, Mosaic already started the whole shit with providing a tolerant HTML parser. Netscape just picked it up (as it where essentially the same people).
If they browsers would have been militant against broken HTML from the beginning, and provided decipherable error messages (ever seen sgmls in action?) so people just could have fixed them, the whole shit wouldn't have happened - independant of commercial or open source.
Thank you for warning me us the evil GPL. But I have decided to ignore your warning. For almost everything in the world there is a price. If I buy MS Windows I have to pay money. That is ok for me. So nobody else should care. If I (or anybody, or any company) write a software using GPLed code and I decide to pay some of my so called "intellectual property" in exchange for this code by releasing the finished software under the GPL it is my decision. It is not your (Microsofts) business. So why do you think you have the right to tell me (or anyone else) how to use my so called "intellectual property" Yours is yours and you can do with it what you want. And mine is mine and i can do with it what I want. So please Microsoft go back to making software and stop telling people what is good for them. They can make their own decisions.
I know a lot of people that still use Win95 and Office95. They might not have USB support, or they might not be able to read WinWord2000 files, but they don't care anyway. They bought the computer several years ago, they do some writing with Word and some EMail and Internet surfing stuff. With other words, they first don't want a new computer (bad for Intel, ... ) and second, because on a new computer there is a good chance that M$ Win*** is installed, they don't want new M$ stuff.
But this must threat M$, because as more and more users have a setup that works for them, the less will buy a new one which, in the long run, will reduce M$ income. So, the great idea is to "rent" the software, bind users tightly to the company and get monthly paid.
On the other hand I hope that there is a growing awareness that giving sensible information (business or not) in others hand is a matter of trust. So I expect M$ to show up with a big "you can rely on us" campaign and I think it's important to provide an alternative for the public.
Now do the free software foundation/LPF realize their idiocy in their longstanding boycott of apple platforms due to apple's previous suit vs. microsoft for duplicating the mac's "look and feel"? Apple had some legitimate issues with microsoft at the time, as MSFT really did just piggyback on the fruits of much apple research into human interface preferences. Now look who is on the dark side of GPL. Apple has open sourced darwin while MSFT turns out to be the evil empire after all.
Sourceforge has 20.000+ projects! htpp://sourceforge.net Take that!