Linus Responds To Mundie

Thanks to Dan Gillmor for pointing out Linus' reply to the comments that Mundie from Microsoft made this week. The response is vintage Linus - but the points he raises regarding openness vis a vis science & learning and open source is very cogent.

Comments

Re:quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"His only recorded contribution to debate in parliament was on a motion to open the window."

Sure it wasn't "windows"? Ahhh, the things that appear once we follow the thread:)

Wrong way to look at it

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming that the massive investment companies made in R&D with the patent system in place still would have been there without that system. That's obviously wrong--many, many inventions and advancements would not have been made, including many in the medical field, where drug research is hideously expensive, without the chance to recoup those expenses provided by IPL.

Re:Wrong way to look at it

[donutello]

Thanks for proving your own point wrong. Here's the bottomline: It's not illegal to build an operating system, office suite, etc. just like Microsoft's. The only IP laws protecting Microsoft right now are copyright laws, not patent laws. (Yes, they own some patents but I've never heard them go after anyone for patent infringement). And these copyright laws are with respect to actually copying the software instead of buying it, not with regards to the source being open - the source is not and would not be open regardless of what laws you made. (Short of a communist regime, of course)

So, inspite of all the opportunity to do so, none of the other companies have yet come up with an OS or Office Suite (among others) that really competes with Microsofts offering.

Re:Wrong way to look at it

[vu2lid]

You are wrong here, because almost all the research these drug companies do is based on fundamental research already available publicly, goverment funded research (money which comes from persons like you and me) ... There are some extreme cases where drug companes are made direct (massive) profits from results of government funded research. There are numerous studies on this area.

Re:Wrong way to look at it

[jmv]

where drug research is hideously expensive

Did you know that drug companies spend more on marketing than in research... Besides that, there's a large part of research (no idea of percentage, though) that's publicly funded and that happens in universities and hospitals (at least in countries, like Canada, where hospitals are public)...

Re:Wrong way to look at it

[Fesh]

I grant the point, because not everybody has the skills and equipment to discover new drugs. The point with software today is that you can buy a few books, twiddle around a bit, and if you're not dense as a brick, you can pick up the skills. The equipment is avaliable for less than $1000. There is nothing stopping some person or group of people from recreating everything MS has done to date given the time and the will. Nothing except outdated IP Laws, that is.

What intellectual property is about in the software arena is maintaining a high barrier to entry (remember that fun little phrase from Penfield Jackson's FoF?). Otherwise, MS and others are vulnerable to sheer market force. Prices go down as supply goes up. And if the barriers keeping people from supplying the market become lower due to wider dissemination of skills and tools, companies who have gotten fat because it was hard to enter the market suddenly realize that they can't run as fast as they have to to compete.

Microsoft may have been more agile than its competitors in the proprietary arena, but it simply cannot keep up with an army of people armed with skills and a PC who crank out code to deal with their own needs and then release the solutions for free. That is the threat they're facing, and that's why they're trying so hard to keep the sheep in line. Once people's expectations for software quality are raised, they won't be satisfied with the pitiful drek that MS pushes on them. And they know that they can't (for whatever reasons) provide that quality.

--Fesh

Re:Wrong way to look at it

[BJH]

Not necessarily. Look at it this way - if companies weren't able to abuse the patent system, I think they'd put even more money into R&D, because they would have no artificial means of suppressing competitors.

For example, there's a brand of vacuum cleaner available in the UK that has a TV commercial trumpeting the fact that their latest model has 136 patents on various parts of it, so "If you want a Dyson, it's going to have to be a Dyson." This is unbelievable - they're actually proud of the fact that consumers can't obtain a similar cleaner from any other source, because they've got it locked up so tight with patents that no other company could reasonably produce a similar model.

Once upon a time, patents were given on entire devices, not little bits of such devices. If Dyson had only one patent, their IP would be protected, while other companies could make improvements on that design. But no, Dyson have 136 patents, so any improvement is likely to be obstructed by at least one of them. And then they have the gall to say that you can't get one from anywhere else, because they've got it stitched up tight.

Now, consider the case of software patents - in many cases, the patent is on an algorithm that can't be implemented any other way, because it's based on fundamental mathematical calculations that can't be done any other way (such as multiplication and division). What does that do for R&D at other companies? Kills it dead, that's what.

Re:quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants in those times was nothing more but a phrase and Newton by itself was quite an asshole.

Get your history straight, not meant to be trolling, but if Newton would be alive today he'd beat Bill Gates hands down, really. He later became head of the Royal Mint and responsible for some people ending on the gallows.

Oh and it was him, too who said to be glad about having broken Leibniz's heart.

Good example: the WWW

[Anonymous Coward]

The very WWW is an example of technology which intellectual property rights have been given away by their designers (CERN). They could have kept it for them, or patented it, and started their own business on that. They might even have created a few jobs this way. Instead, they decided to give it away and started the revolution which you are using to read this very text. I believe they have created somewhat more jobs and economy by doing that. Is that argument enough to refute Microsoft's fallacious theory?

Alan Cox also replied

[Anonymous Coward]

You can find his remarks here: http://www2.usermagnet.com/cox/index.html

Re:Alan Cox also replied

[frknfrk]

One of the more interesting things he had to say was about IBM in the 1960s:

So is 'Microsoft Shared Source' a failed attempt at Open Source? Not really. In fact it is a demonstration of how far Microsoft are from grasping the entire concept of Open Source. IBM were providing source code in the 1960's under similar terms. VMS source code was available under limited licenses to customers from the beginning. Microsoft are catching up with 1960.

See, it only took IBM 40 years. So by 2040, Microsoft should actually be doing some real open source work. But I'm not holding my breath. And on a funny/ironic note, compare Linus' comments about 'stinking up the room' and the following from Alan Cox (out of context, of course!):

A generic baked bean manufacturer does not worry a great deal about IPR. They worry about providing a product the customer wants, and selling very large numbers of them. A Free Software company worries about providing what the customer wants and selling a lot of services, and on customizing and improving software as customers pay for it. This is the recognition that with over one hundred million computers in the world a large amount of software is firmly in the baked bean camp.

:)

Linus got the Newton quote's meaning wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus is a very smart fellow when it comes to software. He should, however, refrain from engaging in any sort of commentary about the history of science because of a lack of knowledge. I will confine my arguments to his misunderstanding of the meaning of the Newton quote.

In his reply to Craig Mundie's attack on open source software, Linus writes:

I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton? He's not only famous for having basically set the foundations for classical mechanics (and the the original theory of gravitation, which is what most people remember, along with the apple tree story), but he is also famous for how he acknowledged the achievement: "If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants".

This is a total misunderstanding of what this quote actually means. Sir Isaac Newton, to separate the man from the myth, was a mean, nasty, individual who engaged in intellectual property theft by publishing other's work under his own name. (While it is not clear that Newton plagarized Leibniz, it is clear that Newton pulled strings to be declared the inventor of the calculus. Newton is reported as being gleeful when Leibnitz died early, reportedly of a broken heart.) The quote about "standing on the shoulders of giants" has a very interesting history and should not be construed as an example of humility, which Newton was not known for. Nor does it have anything to do with science being built on work done by others. Far from it.

This comment was, in reality, a direct attack upon Robert Hooke, with whom Newton had longstanding animosity and whose work Newton had, at best, failed to cite and, at worst, appropriated wholesale. Hooke argued that Newton's "Discourse on Colour" was unoriginal, as all of the observations and conclusions appear in Hooke's earlier publication, "Micrographia".Hooke had complained about Newton's paper on the diffraction of light which had been presented to the Royal Society, which infuriated Newton. The two had a furious argument about whether a particle dropped to the center of the earth would spiral (Newton) or move in an ellipse (Hooke). After determining Hooke was right, Newton claim to have "lost" his calculations. Newton lifted so much from Hooke and engaged in so much poor scholarship that he suppressed the publication of "Optiks" until after Hooke's death, in an effort to avoid further charges of bad science, plagarism, and poor scholarship.

When it became clear to Newton that some sort of acknowledgment of Hook was required, Newton acknowledged the contributions in the most indirect fashion possible without crediting Hooke. He simply said:

If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.

The statement is, however, a coded ad hominem attack upon Hooke. How do we know this? Because Hooke was a man of rather short stature, hence the reference to "giants". Snide, mean, and nasty; that was Sir Isaac Newton's character. Upon Hooke's death, Newton succeeded Hooke as the President of the Royal Society and served for 24 years. During Newton's tenure, Hooke's papers were mysteriously "lost" and his lab equipment was allowed to be destroyed.

I would send this to Linus as well, but I don't have his address.

Just sign me, the Sacred Cow BBQer.

Re:Linus got the Newton quote's meaning wrong.

[ahde]

just because some hack writes a historical expose`'`'`'`'`'`'` doesn't make it god's truth.

They dug up tyler, and guess what, no poison cherries.

Nice troll

[yet another coward]

Your bait of "it's articles" is a nice try.

One cannot get whether its spellings are correct out of a Slashdot articles. As argued above, Slashot articles give little information about standard English usage.

The pitiful level of language gets tiresome. I'm not asking for beautiful literature on Slashdot. Basic adherence to conjugation and spelling rules would do. Misuses are bumps in the road of coherent expression. The ignorance distracts from the messages.

Re:Be fair...

[DunbarTheInept]

The inclusion of web-browsers and a tcp-ip stack as "standard equipment" in an OS.

Yeah, gee, thanks MS for coming up with the idea of putting TCP/IP into the OS, I mean, wow, what an achievement! Boy, you really scooped everyone else on that one didn't you? Nope, nobody else ever did anything like that before, no sir-eee.

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[Paul Crowley]

Furthermore, the person that Newton was speaking to at the time was unusually short.
--

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Eccles]

Well, Thomas Edison was rather a sharp fellow, in particular as far as money was involved. However, he would probably have developed the light bulb nevertheless.

Joseph Swan invented the carbon filament light bulb,and published an article in Scientific American, before Edison did any patenting. (And then Edison's patent was ruled invalid due to William Sawyer's prior art.) Edison's efforts did result in 10x improvements in the lifespan of the bulb, however.

Not everything you know is wrong, but a disturbingly high amount is.

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[On Lawn]

Maybe its becuase I'm in a good mood that I feel this, but consider the lillies of the field, the ravens and that hording more fruit than you can use is a good way to get rotten fruit.

Purely socialistic is to extreme, and purely capitalistic is too extreme. Honestly the best line I've seen drawn in this matter was drawn about 2000 years ago for those that actualy understand it.


~^~~^~^^~~^

Unemployment will change your tune

[heroine]

After being unemployed for a while I've come to the conclusion that not having to pay for software is nice but after college you'd better start thinking about charging for it anyway. If you want learning and pedagogy get a MSEE under your company's tuition reimbursement plan.

As for accessing the source code, beyond a certain point the source code becomes an afterthought. If they can understand 110,000 lines of C++ they're more likely to write another one from scratch than study the existing source code. What really matters is not having to pay for the software.

Re:The nature of the GPL virus

[Chemical Serenity]

Not necessarily true. As I understand the GPL (my understanding of which may be flawed, but...) you could also give a copy of the code you personally made to that other group under a different license. You couldn't take back your GPLed version, of course, but you are free to hand out your personal endeavours in any manner and under any license restrictions you see fit.

You could NOT, however, hand out the entire original code that you'd patched as a non-gpl'd product.

--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

Open source is bad... for large companies.

[SiliconJesus]

Here's a quick analogy, and it almost ties in to the earlier slashdot article about the car that runs on rotten cabbage. If the Oil community could purchace the patent on that engine and keep it from the general consumer, it would effectively keep potential users from weening ourselves off of our Oil dependencies, thus keeping them happily in business selling us fossil fuels. Conversely, if Microsoft were able to purchace the patent on Linux, they would be able to keep it from the general consumer, and maintain our dependance on Windows products. Since the GPL prevents Microsoft from doing such a thing, the next best thing they can do is try to discredit it to such a point that people don't see it as a viable option. Ergo, open source is bad, because they can't control what they can't buy.
Secret windows code

Re:Open source is bad... for large companies.

[columbus]

Open source software creates greater dangers of security risks,
wait, remind me - How many viruses spread through ms outlook?
software instability
the ms software I use crashes at least once a day
and incompatibility
so ms omnicompatibility will mean I will have no problem porting legacy 16 bit msDOS apps to win 2k professional, right?
and could force valuable corporate intellectual property into public hands, Mundie said.
I for one find it ridiculous that this corporate tyrant can say things this full of holes and patently self serving and be taken seriously. As to Mundie's warnings that Open Source is detrimental to the electronic economy and market forces, I think we should remind ourselves who is in the middle of a landmark Anti-trust case. You won't hear me crying for a billion dollar behemoth.

Re:Open source is bad... for large companies.

[Tet]

If the Oil community could purchace the patent on that engine and keep it from the general consumer, it would effectively keep potential users from weening ourselves off of our Oil dependencies

Sadly, this stuff has been going on for years. Philips bought up the patent on an everlasting lightbulb, for example, but you don't see it for sale, because it would hurt sales of their traditional bulbs. There are numerous other examples that are happening right now. Heinlein wrote about this in one of his books (Expanded Universe, I think).

Re:Open source is bad... for large companies.

[clifyt]

Sure they do. It costs about $15 a bulb and folks don't want to front that kind of money for a lightbulb when you can get 8 bulbs in a package for $3. I live in an old house where the circuitry means I get about 4 weeks on average before any bulb goes out...Its a chore just running around changing these things. I found one of these with a buy one get one free sale a year or two back and picked them up. They are the only bulbs in the house that haven't burned out.

Will I buy any more? Probably not, because I'm cheaper than I am lazy. I'm sure if they were the same price as standard bulbs, I'd buy them in a heart beat but they ain't

clif

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[SiliconJesus]

Apparently you haven't read much from Linus. This is pretty much par for the course, in fact he's usually more blatently obnoxious regarding things of this nature. Its actually refreshing in my humble opinion to have a head figure that "tells it like it is" instead of using the doublespeek of the Marketing department.

Secret windows code

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Politas]

Think about it for a minute here. Obviously, you can't just remove patent protection without having sdome kind of alternative. For example, give pharmaceutical companies a tax rebate for all funds spent on research. Suddenly, they have a great reason to research, but no reason to keep it a secret. They can spend their extra cash making their products more convenient, better tasting, whatever, in an attempt to improve their market share. Medical research could leap ahead with all the free flow of information.

All you have to do is find some way to make research spending reduce costs rather than increase them. Currently, that is provided by patent protection.

There are certainly companies making money on pharmaceuticals that are no longer patent protected, and they continue to spend money researching them. Look at paracetamol. They keep coming up with improvements to the shape and size, obviously spending money in the process.

How does that make sense, eh?

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[JetJaguar]

Actually Leibnitz' notation is what was adopted. However, Newton's notation is still used in mechanics classes.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[tzanger]

This is a rather personal attack.

Howso? I took it that the views expressed by Newton were better than Mundie. "To stink up a room" in this context often referrs to poor performance, not olfactory sense.

I don't know about you, but Mundie's performance did stink.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Squash]

I think your car comparison is flawed. If there was a community of developers that designed a car, they would be able to get funding based on the quality of the engineering that they did... Then they would sell the car to the masses. Open source and commercial are not mutually exclusive.

How many of us would feel better about riding in a car that was subject to mass review? Your reward for assisting the project (bug fixes you know) would be your ability to buy a high quality car with way lower design overhead. I personally would love it.

NOT a personal attack

[kidlinux]

I don't think that Linus meant Mundie stinks in the literal sense of how he smells. But that he causes a "stink". ex: Mundie, with his comments, upsets a room of people far greater than a dead corpse would.

Shut up MS lackey!

[Moritz Moeller - Her]

Wow, Windows 95 sounds really cool, where can I get it? Seriously, this is idiotic. OS/2 was the better system than Win95. The Mac has been easier to use. The Amiga has been easier to use. Lets have a look at the MS inventions: The ability for average non-technical persons to use a personal computer. Crap. Not even Windows 2000 or XP. A Mac is easier to use. No invention at all.

The inclusion of web-browsers and a tcp-ip stack as "standard equipment" in an OS. WOW. My SuSE Linux comes with TCP/IP-stack (Unix based anyways) and several browsers. No invention. Except for the technologies, which were created on Unix.

And by the way they made many Americans a lot of money. But they made many more people pay too much for bad products. Money is not made, it is transferred. I claim that MS has had a negative effect on the economy as a whole since about 1996.
--

Re:Shut up MS lackey!

[Danse]

They dont make the best products, they dont make them first, and they dont make them cheapest or free-est. But despite that, they are the dominant software company. And despite everything, the mainstreamed computers.

True, they managed to make enormous profits despite the fact that they did nothing better than someone else, and they made very few innovations themselves, instead buying out the companies that were innovating. I think their success is attributable to a few things. Number one, IBM didn't realize what it was creating when it began distributing DOS on all it's PCs. Number two, customers didn't really have expectations when it came to computer software. Bugs, crashes? They were considered normal. Number three, Microsoft had absolutely no compunctions about using any method they could, legal or illegal, to destroy their competitors. This is evident from the internal email and documents that were revealed during their anti-trust trials.

Is this a good thing? I don't think so. Had they not used those sort of practices and beat down their competitors, the innovations would still have been made (since MS wasn't the one innovating really) and consumers probably would have gotten more for their money. Without one monolithic corporation controlling 90%+ of the desktop OS market, there would have been more choices and more focus by individual companies to make sure that they adhere to standards so that their software interoperates with others. Instead, we have MS, which gives us the minimum amount of interoperability that they can get away with. All in all, I think that the mainstreaming of computing was inevitable, and it would be better for all of us if Microsoft didn't dominate it.

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[kulmala]

Sarcastic? Not necessarily. See this essay by Andrew McNab for a discussion on the quote, its background and possible meaning(s).

--

Re:Be fair...

[Anthony]

The Internet. The internet is cool stuff. but really, how useful or widespread would it be if not for MS? Would 66% of Americans have daily access to it? Would it have grown in acceptance faster than telephone, radio or television? I don't know, perhaps, and perhaps not.

When the Internet was taking off, MS provided nothing to support it because it was still pushing its proprietary LAN technologies and MSN. Win 3.11 PCs often used LAN Workplace for Windows for TCP/IP, Trumpet for PPP, Mosaic/Netscape for their browser, Eudora for their email. MS was nowhere to be seen.

go through the IETF RFCs and seen when MS started contributing, c 1995. Before that, squat.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[kevin lyda]

actually leonardo da vinci sketched out the first designs for aircraft of various forms. he didn't implement them, but this is a discussion about "intellectual property," not manufacturing.

Re:OS hatred wars

[Chas]

Personally, most of us could not care a whit about what OS anyone uses.

We DO care when one of those OS/application companies tries to attack (through FUD) the the software distribution model for the OS or OSes we happen to use.

WE are not the ones trying to lock someone into using our OS.


Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[doomicon]

"we'd have light bulbs that laste(d) for 30 years" If you visit the Edison Museum you will find that the lightbulbs he created still function. So just to elaborate your point further, we'd actually have lightbulbs that NEVER burnt out until physically broken.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Art Tatum]

Yet, backwards conservatives ignore the fact that it takes an investment in a person to allow him to produce - no one can develop into an educated, free-thinking, happy, productive individual if his entire life is an uphill battle to survive.

Well, you're partially correct. However, there is a long list of people who have done just that. My fear was that you were proposing that the purpose for taxes is to take money from the rich so they don't "get above themselves." It seems, to me, that many believe this to be the purpose for taxes. Unfortunately, it is entirely possible that our society is so jaded and immoral that volunteer charity won't work anymore. It's just a shame to realize that most of the money that could be going to the poor is feeding the bureaucracy that it takes to administer it all.

I saw an article on American economic progress yesterday. People were polled on the issue: "Who is better for the economy, the Republicans or Democrats?" Very few picked the answer that was actually correct: neither. The American economy has historically grown three times as fast in periods of gridlock than in periods where a party controlled the entire government.

Yeah, I never understood why people were so opposed to gridlock. ;-)

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Art Tatum]

Ah, but if you've ever seen an interview with him, it becomes rather obvious that he couldn't care less about making money. He's just a guy who loves to experiment with things.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Art Tatum]

In retrospect, that seems pretty obvious. The only viable system is to take away between 25% and 75% of every person's income and redistribute it. The U.S., right now, is going with a figure of something like 45%, I believe.

So, you believe that the troubles in the world are all due to concentration of wealth rather than evil human beings?

Re:ESR's response

[Cary]

Unh, how can it be a response to Mundie's speech it it was composed before ESR read it? This is more like a response to the announcement.

Re:Be fair...

[Type-R]

Heheh, good enough troll that I'm going to take it... How many copies of MacOSX (BSD) have been sold?

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[demo]

On the other hand - losing the IP laws we don't _need_ the GPL :)

Re:Inventors throughout history

[panda]

Until food wants to be free, why should we care what information wants?

For those of us in the industrialized, Western world food is next to free. You'll notice that the majority of the folks working on Free Software fit the description of your early scientists. We must necessarily have our physical needs met, or we would not have time to devote to giving away our software.

So, what is your point? Are you putting scientists down for being "aristocrats" as opposed to proletarians? If so, then you are attacking the Open Source/Free Software folks with the same argument.

Quite frankly, there is no reason that food, fuel, medicine, and shelter cannot be freely given to every inhabitant on this planet so that they are free to do as they please with their time. There is no reason other than the existence of the capitalist system and its oppressive tendencies toward hoarding, bullying and maintaining the "superior" financial position. If the capitalistic greed of petrochemical corporations were removed from the picture, I wonder just how far along geothermal, solar and wind power developments would be today?

Anarchy roolz! :-)

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[Ouroboro]

Many, if not most, people here on Slashdot seem to prefer ESR-style 'Open Source' over RMS-style 'Free Software'. That's fine, I like to think we can "agree to disagree" about the details.

I guess the problem with RMS is that he is often so vehement in expressing his thoughts and ideas that it is very easy to dismiss him as a ranting loon. He is of course not, but that is irrelevant when he is viewed by the outside world. I think that is probably why ESR sees a wider base of support. He represents a less strident voice, with a set of goals which appear to be compatable with, but less ambitious than those of RMS.

Alan Cox reply is quite interesting too.

[renoX]

Frankly I really liked Alan Cox's reply: it is very sound, clear.

You can see it

Re:Alan Cox reply is quite interesting too.

[CrackElf]

Did you mean here
-CrackElf

Re:This got me thinking ....

[Omnifarious]

And you just now started thinking this?

*grin*

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nathanm]

But there are very few examples of scientists creating consumer goods for the love of discovery. One or two perhaps - I'm not sure what the intention behind invention of the lightbulb was.

Actually, Edison would only work on an invention if there was a lot of money involved. Most of the inventions he's credited with were really created by his many workers.

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

They may not be passenger aircraft, but look at the homebuilt aircraft community. Thousands of people build their own (mostly kits but some original) aircraft and go to airshows & meets just for enjoyment. There's an even bigger hobby car community, even though most just rebuild old cars.

Re:Open Source - Open Music - Open Pharmaceuticals

[nathanm]

Music scores are generally open - if Mozart had not written his down and shared it we would not only not be able to listen to his works today, but other musicians would have had more difficulty building on what he did.

Unfortunately, only the original score & really old printings are now public domain. If you go to a music store and buy the score for a Mozart piece, that particular arrangement is copyrighted.

Pharmaceutical companies publish their work, generally in the form of patents - but other companies can build on those patents.

I wouldn't speak so soon. Luckily, 39 of those companies dropped a lawsuit in South Africa, because they weren't getting their profits from generic versions of their patented drugs being sold to help the AIDS epidemic there. See this CNN story. One of the drugs was even partially developed at my school using gov't money. See this press release.

it's called capitalism

[Cheeze]

Microsoft can use any legal vices to increase their market share, upto a point. this is the american way. there will always be a microsoft. in the early 80's, before the real microsoft, EVERY personal computer was IBM. they made their money, and then started losing market share because they lost contact with the public.

the only way alternative operating systems will gain widespread acceptance is to get installed by default on pre-packaged computers that you can buy at the store. only by being easier to use can linux/bsd/BeOS begin to gain market vaule. your grandma does not want to have to recompile anything to get her scsi card to work. when dell, compaq, and other OTC (over the counter) hardware providors finally drop the extra $100 added to every PC they sell, they will realize that they can make DellOS, CompaqOS, and stuff like that made out of open source software. all they have to do is make it easy to run, foolproof, and compatable with existing software (like .doc files). this undermines the "hacker mentality" that some of us have developed (i'm cool because i run linux). this is necessary if you believe open source would be better for society than closed source software.

if you give it to them, they will take it. if they don't know what to do with it, they will give it back and buy something else that is easy.

open source benefits society overall, while closed source benefits someone that wishes to sell the binary version.

Re:Giants

[ethereal]

Of course, why didn't I think of that! Without all of that damned competition, surely Microsoft would have ushered in the new millennium with flying cars, butler robots, and nanotechnological medicine for all. We could be living in a paradise if we'd all just shut up and let Microsoft innovate for the world.

Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

Re:This got me thinking ....

[Sloppy]

Just ask the guy in South Africa who is building a car that runs on compressed air. He's received numerous death threats. I wonder who is behind those?

SETAMGNPE. (The Society for the Ethical Treatment of Air and Maintenance of God's Natural Pressure Equilibrium.) Air is free. Man has no right to enslave it and put it under unnatural pressures! We got Jacques Cousteau and we'll get your air car inventor too! Valves are oppression! Death to pumpers!

---

Re:We must protect them !

[Tim C]

Is savemstrex.org still available ?

According to whois, yes :-)

Cheers,

Tim

pointing out the obvious

[aerobee]

it's interesting that microsoft is fighting so hard to protect it's right to sell, distribute, and control trash while the open-source community is fighting so hard to give away software that works so well. There's a certain irony here.

As for standing on the backs of giants, we are. Linux et al. is simply extending on the works of others over the past thirty years or so. If one of us learns it, the rest learn it as well. It's the scientific way and it works well enough to eventually displace the rest.

Socialistic darwinism at it's finest.

Corbis - Gates' OTHER Monopoly

[PRickard]

Gates founded Corbis several years ago, 1995 or 1996 as I recall, so he'd have somewhere to store the Codex, which he had purchased at an auction some time before. Corbis has since then bought out the Bettmann Archives (10 million + photos), plus the original photographic archives of the Chicago Tribune, United Press International, Sharpshoters, New York Daily News, Saba Press (French), and other news agencies. Corbis has additionally purchased smaller archives of fine artwork, and has exclusive digital reproduction rights to the collections of several major museums.

Gates wants to control all intellectual property and licensing rights to most of history's artifacts. The only companies anywhere near the size of Corbis are Getty Images, Corel's Photodisc division, and Superstock. Next time you get a magazine like Time or (especially) US News and there's a generic or historical photo in it, check the margins and see if it doesn't give a credit to Corbis. I just picked a random news magazine off my desk and 2/3 of the stock and historical photos in it were credited to Corbis or Corbis/Bettmann.

Additionally, Corbis is taking millions of photos that have never been digitally reproduced and locking them into an old mine in Pennsylvania for safe keeping. The company apparently has no plans to ever make copies of them, and will let them rot in that mine instead of hiring more employees to speed up the process of sharing them with the public. (see WinInfo for a decent report)

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[Mr. Piccolo]

He is too a total loon, otherwise he would have the good sense to attempt not to sound like a total loon.

Re:Be fair...

[flink]

The World Wide Web. Again, same as above. What use would the WWW really be if only the original academics/nerds were into it? If every site on the 'Net was like slashdot.org, how great would that be?

If I remember correctly, when I started using a PC to access the internet, it was in spite of Microsoft, as Windows 3.11 had no TCP stack. Remember Trumpet Winsock? This was before IE, of course. Setup was easy too, our ISP (UltraNet) mailed us a disk, you ran a setup program and you were online. Even my mom could handle it ;-)

In France, there was a service called MiniTel that was ubiquitous there before most people had heard of the internet.

So I think that the explosion of information technologies would have happenned regardless of Microsoft's participation. If they had not embraced the internet, some one else (Sun?) would have and swept them aside. And we'd all be using JavaStations or something.

Alvy Ray Smith and Jim Blinn?

[cpeterso]

Who are Alvy Ray Smith, Jim Blinn, and Turner Whitted? What did they create?

just curious..

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Bobzibub]

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

What about an Operating System?

-B

Re:Hahahahahahah!!!

[Axey]

The "Hall of idiotic and childish personal attacks"?

Yes.

Re:Linus has earned the right...

[Axey]

Not to mention wrong.

His implication that he somehow deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Einstein and DaVinci makes me want to vomit.

And people thought the MS guy was full of hot air...

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[BeNude]

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I saw Linus' last remark as an attempt to place Mundie's EMPLOYER in the proper perspective. Remember Mundie is simply Bill's pawn. Linus' comment thus falls short of being an actual personal attack.

Re:Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[BeNude]

Linus may not speak for you personally but his words do echo the sentiments of many of us "nerds".

Mundies Past - a True Seer of the Tech Future

[reneky]

http://www.ntk.net/ :

Craig's speech is all about the nightmarish future of an open
source world, and is rather heavy on predictions. But then
Craig's job at Microsoft is to make gambles on the future of
technology. According Marlin Eller's account in "Barbarians
Led By Bill Gates", one of Mundie's first acts at Microsoft was
killing the company's 1993 low-bandwidth Net project in favour
of the *real* future - broadband interactive TV. That said,
once Gates caught on to this Interweb thing, Mundie was first
to catch on. "We'll tune it for all the platforms, then get
hardware companies to build accelerators for it", he
predicted, of the Net's most guaranteed success - VRML. Oh,
then he masterminded that whole WebTV deal, spending $425m MS
mad money on the sure-fire Internet/TV convergence. "We view
the Internet as one of the 'features' of digital TV services",
he eerily prophesised in 1998. "PC this year, PC-TV's next
year", he again predicted - in 1997. Going further back,
Mundie features in "Soul of a New Machine" as the nameless guy
who loses the race to build a supercomputer. His own
supercomputer company went bust in 1992. Should anyone believe
his observations about the future of Open Source? As Mundie
himself once said "We persist. We're driven by some innate
belief about how these things are going to unfold." Even, it
seems, when they unfold in completely the opposite
direction.

Re:quote

[Bun]

Actually taking a look at the historical surroundings of famous figures sheds light onto their beliefs. It just forces us to realize that these men were extraordinary in their discoveries, not their convictions.

If I had points, I'd mod this post up for this observation alone.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[ScottKin]

Reading this post brings two words to mind

"Rabble-rouser"

It's posts like yours - ones that claim not to be "flame-bait" at the end of the tirade (because that's all it is...a childish tirade) that usually end-up being the equivalent of a massive, topical heat-sink.

Do us all a favor and drop the leftist double-talk..."talking head"...sheesh - say what you freakin' mean. Linus is just as wrapped-up in your so-called "PR speak", because he's trying to sell something, too! I'm sure that Linus gets a pretty penny for licensing fees and such - he's not as altruistic as your saintly adoration would evoke. You look more like a "talking head" for Linux yourself - look in the mirror once in a while.

Care to tell us where Mundie lied? Show me; I figure that you saw it due to the blows inflicted on your skull from the other protests you were attending in Seattle or elsewhere - because you sound like one of the same ilk of people who just love get angry to vent their own frustrations.

You want "reality"? Here you go;

Linus Torvalds != God
Bill Gates != God
Steve Jobs != God

And where do you get this "...have made contributions to humanity, and by most accounts did so with passion and vigour..." brand of bovine fertilizier? He wrote a freakin' Operating System, he didn't create a cure for cancer!!

Do us all a huge favor and make sure to take your hypertension medicine next time you post this bullcrap - you're about ready to bust an aneurism.

'nuff said!

ScottK

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[mcfiddish]

The opposite of love, and of hate, is apathy. It's not caring, in the least.
What I see in most messages is that everyone cares enough about Microsoft to hate them...

Well, if everyone were apathetic towards Microsoft and their tactics, we'd have Microsoft innovations shoved down our throats in no time and have no choice about it.

I, for one, would hate that.

:-)

Re:As Linus said, Mundie just does not get it...

[mcfiddish]

I think Mundie does get it. His audience, however, does not. Mundie and his employer just want to keep it that way.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[catfood]

Thank god the [.us income tax] system is based on voluntary compliance.

Yeah, it's "voluntary" the way the cops might say a suspect talked to them "voluntarily". It's voluntary until you choose not to comply.

The quotes you link to only confirm that interpretation.

Re:Linus ignored the mis-statements regarding the

[oolon]

That would be LGPL not GPL, personally I much prefer LGPL.

James

Re:This got me thinking ....

[Sogol]

There is a rumor that GM is holding patents on ceramic engines that could topple the oil industry. It's an interesting dilemma, tehnological advancement vs. wealth.

Re:Leonardo

[lbergstr]

Does Corbis own the rights to all reproductions of the art, or only the specific reproductions they have? If I take a picture of [artwork Corbis has], can I post it/sell it/put it in a book, or do I have to pay them?

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[Caball]

The way I was raised, everyone gets respect... you dont have to earn it, you can only lose it. Now whether or not Mundies had done that is up to you.

Personal Attack Needed

[Zaxo]

I don't believe Mundie/Microsoft made any such direct remarks about Linus...

Read it again, then.

Allchin destroyed his intellectual reputation and public character by saying this script. Mundie just did the same. That needs to happen to every Microsoft mouthpiece who does. Their managers may become reluctant to fall on their swords.

This is an attempt to get politicians to enshrine Microsoft's business practices, and to convert them from crimes to duties. It must be stopped. Microsoft wants to be the Government of the Internet -- including taxation.

Zax

Re:Be fair...

[blazerw11]

I just did an install of Win95 on some old computers at this place where I volunteer. Does anybody know what protocols this operating system that opened the Internet and the WWW to the public installs by default?
I do.
Net-frickin'-Beui and IPX/SPX.
We're really surfin' now!

My point is, Microsoft missed the Internet and had to catch up. It was "tacked on" to Windows. I believe MORE people would be using the Internet and it would be a better experience if Windows were NOT the way 66% of users experienced it.

Re:Leonardo

[tommck]

The sad fact of this is that Bill Gates OWNS all the rights to most of Leonardo's works today including the Cotex.

You mean Bill Gates bought Leonardo Da Vinci's tampons?
Wait... Tampons didn't exist then! Was that yet another invention that Lenardo dreamed up before its time!? Wow... it seems that we discover more and more things that guy invented every day!

(I believe you meant the "Codex"... and, yes, I know it is "Kotex"...)

Re:This got me thinking ....

[Stonehand]

Well, there's an arrangement by which some the drug companies look the other way with regards to IP violations re: locally producing generic versions of drugs, as long as the local companies and the government play by certain WTO (or was it WIPO or WHO?) rules. There's a company in India, for instance, which clones quite a few drugs researched here, that is basically being permitted to do this for at least several more years IIRC. They're even thinking of exporting the drug outside of India.

Likewise, part of the South African mess was that the government didn't want to admit that there was, in fact, a state of emergency regarding HIV.

Re:Is Linus a hypocrite ?

[Stonehand]

I don't see a problem if it were purely a defensive patent -- one taken specifically to lower the success probability of anybody else being granted a patent that would interfere. He could explicitly grant usage rights to everybody so nobody would be infringing. *shrug*

Re:Inventors throughout history

[Stonehand]

The primary obstacle to the distribution of aid to, say, the poor in other countries is their own governments and own cultures. For instance, don't expect to get very far in treating HIV in Africa until promiscuity and prostitution are massively reduced, and various myths (e.g. the concept that sex with a virgin cures AIDS) thoroughly dispelled. Don't expect to be able to efficiently distribute food in an area wracked by civil war, either -- not when all sides are willing to use starvation as a weapon. And so forth.

Re:The nature of the GPL virus

[Stonehand]

If you use university resources -- hardware, network, and so forth -- you're definitely operating under their IP policy. Even if you don't use their resources, you still may; chances are, you agreed to abide by *all* their policies, of whatever kind, when you enrolled.

OTOH, despite the policies, if it's a SMALL project utterly disconnected from any profit motive, staff may look the other way and not really care about the license. They may not care if you release a small set of Perl modules useful to other researchers for calculating various metrics; they probably *will* care if you form a startup with work that you did for a course, or for a formal research project.

Re:Be fair...

[steffl]

"I have, I gave them WinNT 4.0. And my grandmother. And my sister. And my other sister. And my brothers."

what did your family do to you?

erik

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Gladiator]

So go ahead. Develop a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer. Who's stopping you from doing this?
Who ever stopped anyone doing this through patenting?

That's exactly the problem facing software developers, however. It's getting harder and harder to develop anything without being stepped on by monopolistic patent holders.

Sorry to burst your bubble

[Camel Pilot]

But Newton was a very religious fellow.

Newton's science was closely related to his theology. In the General Scholium of his Principia, he states that its purpose was to establish the existence of God.

Westfall, Richard S. The Life of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1993) pp 205,290

not what I meant

[Ender Ryan]

When I said they call us hippies I didn't mean that being a hippy was a bad thing. But when they have made those statements, they meant for them to be insulting.

That's all.

I myself am not a hippy, but I'm closer to that than a corporate whore like all those asses as MS.

Re:quote

[Kidbro]

And all these crimes in the enlightened 18:th century where tolerance towards cultural minority groups were abundant, society having an understanding attitude towards people with abnormal physique and politicians were all around good guys who cared about nothing but the general good of the masses.

What a jerk!

--

It makes us look bad, though...

[Rexifer]

If this were a personal matter, I would agree. But, personal attacks in a public forum make us look bad to the average joe. Righteous indignation just makes us the "linux crowd" look like a bunch o' wingnuts...

Re:It makes us look bad, though...

[naasking]

personal attacks in a public forum make us look bad to the average joe.

Are you kidding? The average joe loves fights! I can hear him now... "Ooooo! You gonna take that Mundie? Fight! Fight! Fight!..."

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[CausticPuppy]

If Wozniak created his machines purely for self-actualising joy, then I guess he really didn't need these patents after all.

Re:A Point Missed...

[VB]

"If a private company dumps a load of money into research and development, they deserve the opportunity..."

Agree absolutely...

It's just too bad they dumped so much more effort into staving off competition that for better than a decade, there was no competitive environment in which consumers could compare other products to see what M$ gained from that R & D.

IT is an incredibly new field, taken in perspective. We need all the minds possible to look at the complex issues we face when deploying it. Not just 20,000, or so, proprietary programmers...

Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com

Re:Be fair...

[StorminNorman]

Mac OS had one since the introduction of Mac OS 7 in 1991.

Re:personal rant...posted for my own benefit :)

[AtrN]

Funny. I always though Unix was the place holder until all the other OS's got "up to speed".

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[mr]

t was a april fools joke sent to linux-kernel

Nod, that is why I've never seen the actual post somewhere else.

Thanks for the info

Re:Free Scientific Research

[naasking]

with more funding they could become the academic playground and free-thinkers paradise they once were.

Unfortunately, they were never really that.

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[naasking]

Newton was, in fact, responding sarcastically to claims that he had stolen ideas from either Leibnitz or Hooke (I forget which).

It was Leibnitz and Newton who came up with the fundamentals of calculus but Newton's version went into wide spread use. The Leibnitz calculus became known as Leibnitz notation and was particularly useful at solving some types calculus problems(so it was delegated to those areas).

-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[AJGriff]

Because corporations only live if they can sustain an income, products are created that will fail to function in a timely manner.

I'd have to disagree, at least with regard to anything BUT software. Businesses that manutacture a product rely on the fact that it won't fail, and that it will live up to the customer's expectations. If a company produces, say telephones, they're not going to engineer them to break after six months in order to get people to come back to buy another one. The consumer is just going to throw the piece of crap telephone away and buy another brand of telephone. Every physical product has a logical lifespan. Materials wear out, gears grind down, and materials corrode. That's just a fact of nature. That's why we don't have lightbulbs that last 30 years (yet) and cars that last a lifetime (yet). What Microsoft has done is convince people that software acts the same manner, as if a program can "wear out", requiring you to buy a whole new one every few years. So comparing software to products like cars and lightbulbs isn't viable.

I don't think it's fair that the quest for wealth kills the spirit of discovery, if anything it's the opposite (again, except for software). Companies must innovate, they must discover new and better ways of producing their product or they will fail.

We have to remember that we're still in the very early stages of the software revolution. Capitalism may not be perfect, but it's the best system around, and it's treated us very well.

Re:Newton != Linus

[ahde]

science isn't art, either.
but I guess semantics is.

anyway, *scientists* now generally agree that Newton was full of shit and relativity is the spelling of the everlasting gospel. It is a mere coincidence that Newton's theories give accurate results ninety nine point infinity minus one percent of the time. that's what you get for using empirical data, gentleman and ladies.

Re:Mundie Made Some Good Points

[ahde]

He said that Microsoft now realizes that open sourcing increases the quality of software and as a process can reduce bugs

No, he said that Microsoft's "shared source" policy and internal review is on par or better than open source, and provides "most of the benefits"

Re:Technology Vs. Application

[ahde]

publicly funded (not by donation) AIDS research outspends Microsoft and what do we have to show for it? Private companies with patents on rat poison medicines that don't really work, who watch millions die because they won't share their research.

gridlock

[kiwaiti]

Yeah, I never understood why people were so opposed to gridlock. ;-)

Here in Germany, a tax reform (very necessary) was blocked by gridlock, not because the opposition disagreed with it, in fact they agreed, but used it to leverage themselves into government. Now the gridlock is the other way around, but unlike the social democrats, our new opposition saw sense.

Kiwaiti

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[kiwaiti]

Why not just spell it "patantad" or "petented"? It would be so much easier to type. ;o)

Kiwaiti

Re:If Edison was r&d'ing under a business model...

[bort13]

Edison was an iterative implementer (see incandescent lamp) who ruled his area of the industry through his personality alone.

Not entirely, though. His adherence to direct current generation and consumer supply didn't last, although his personality drove that decision for a fair bit. It was an inferior, wasteful technology that had all of Edison's marketing (FUD?) weight behind it; it would, of course, provide the greatest revenue to Edison's company. The industry, however, corrected itself, as a result, we don't have to have power stations on every street corner or have dim lights if you live far away from one.

You think California has problems with power supply now, if it were DC...

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[benwb]

Newton did his work on the calculus far before Liebniz, but he published afterwards. He was also remarkablty vicious in attacking Liebniz, who he viewed as a thief. Actually his practices are remarkably similiar to some of Microsoft's most questionable tactics. He used his influence and power as the head of the academy to chair the committee that refereed Liebniz' papers, and basically destroyed him personally. Interesting that linus uses him as an open source here. Of course going to work for a closed source company while still championing open source would give anyone some rose colored glasses.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[radish]

Something that interests me is these new 3D printers, that overlay sheets of plastic to build things. If technology like that were ever to become cheap and ubiqutous, and were also capable of printing circuitry and LCD displays, then I bet you'd see something similar to open source, with a lot of consumer electronics companies complaining about unfair competition.

If you are talking about what I think you are, then they actually work differently from how you say. Basically, you have a large glass tank full of a liquid polymer of some sort (not sure exactly what - probably secret!). Outside the tank there two (UV) lasers, firing in to the tank from adjacent sides (i.e. at 90 degress to each other). The lasers are mounted on a mechanism somewhat like a flatbed plotter, so they can moves all over the side of the tank.

A computer moves the laser heads in a scanning motion up and across the sides of the tank. When the lasers are fired, the liquid polymer at the intersection point hardens. So by starting at the bottom and building up, layer by layer, you get a solid object. This object can be hollow, contain other objects (I have seen one create a solid box with an unattached sphere inside) and be basically any shape you want. Once the object is finished you just drain away the rest of the liquid (this is the only problem with totally sealed hollow objects - they're full of liquid).

This was all a couple of years ago - things may have changed since then.

Alas, Linus' argument is built on a false premise.

[Brett Glass]

Linus writes,

One of the greatest scientists of our time, having done more for modern technology (and thus, btw, for the modern economy) that Microsoft will ever do, acknowledged the fact that he did so by being able to use the knowledge (what we now call "intellectual property") gathered by others.

In this passage, Linus confuses basic scientific knowledge with an invention, which is quite different. The discoveries of Newton, Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, etc. were not inventions. They were discoveries of fundamental scientific principles. Such things are not and have never been patentable. By characterizing them incorrectly as "intellectual property," Linus starts his argument with an incorrect premise and thus renders it invalid. Don't get me wrong.... There are good arguments for limits on the scope and longevity of intellectual property, but this one -- because it is built on a faulty premise -- is not valid.

If we assume that what Linus really meant is that we should be allowed to build modern technology on what came before, it would be an argument for the BSD license, or the public domain, and against the GPL (which prevents commercial programmers from standing on others' metaphorical "shoulders"). Microsoft, interestingly, seems to agree. It uses BSD-licensed code in its own products and does not condemn it in Craig's statement.

--Brett Glass

Re:This got me thinking ....

[javilon]

The microserf says:
"This effectively makes it impossible for commercial software companies to include source code that is licensed under the GPL into their products, since by doing so, they are constrained to give away the fruits of their labor. As we think about technology, IP rights, and the public sector of knowledge, we need an intellectual model that encourages interaction, not a model that drives them apart. We believe that a shared source model, coupled with continuing contributions to public standards, provides a path that is preferable to the open source approach founded on the GPL."

I aggree with it, but would add that the problem is on the actual "intellectual model" rather than the GPL. If the IP laws were adequate, the GPL would not be needed.
In my mind, the problem is that laws have been bought that keep knowlege for ever (in software terms 30 years is forever) in corporate hands.

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[Kevster]

I think many people have missed Linus' point: He was comparing Isaac Newton's cadaver's body odour to the smelly arguments Mundie was making, not Mundie's personal hygiene (or lack of it). Hasn't anyone heard the comment "That argument smells"?

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[scotch]

Now I've seen it all - someone quoting Chris Rock in an intellectual discussion.

Off Topic: Am I the only one here who finds Chris Rock painfully unfunny?

That is All.

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[PaxTech]

The Chris Rock routine he is quoting from makes some good points. He talks about how drug companies aren't in the business of curing diseases, they are in the business of "managing diseases". As in "This new drug won't cure your AIDS, but it will manage your disease and all you have to do is take it for the rest of your life! What a deal!"

Funny or not, he has some good insights there..
--
PaxTech

Re:Be fair...

[Glonk]

I think he's going deeper down. The operating systems the people used were very easy to use, which allowed things like AOL and Netscape to take off and take advantage of the WWW and internet.

Most Major Contributions by Govt Projects

[JeffRC]

Linus has hit the nail on the head. Most businesses' intellectual properties are built on the work of others, those in academia and government whose work is in the public domain. If you look at the bulk of the technological advances in the U.S. in the latter half of the 20th Century, you find the the core technology was enabled by Government investment in R&D, that was then "leveraged" by industry for commercial use. The entire computing industry is the result of initial investments by the DoD in WWII on computing machines for number crunching projects like artillery ballistics and the Manhattan Project. The Internet is the result of DARPA's R&D investment in a robust, redundant communications infrastructure. Almost everything these companies claim as corporate intellectual properties are exploitations of core technologies developed by Government or Academia (typically under Government funding).

Re:On the issue of security

[chrysrobyn]

The OSS development model leads to a strong possibility of unhealthy "forking" of a code base, resulting in the development of multiple incompatible versions of programs, weakened interoperability, product instability, and hindering businesses? I wonder what would have happened if, instead of "forking" BSD's IP stack, Microsoft had just embraced and extended BSD-- adding its GUI and application library. You know, keeping all compatibility with BSD but just adding more functionality. What I call "Linux", others call "GNU/Linux". Would those people call this hypothetical non-fork "[Free|Open|Net]BSD/Windows"?

ftp.corbis.com works

[ahaning]

I have not yet browsed their entire ftp site, but it seems to have some images available. Some are even fairly high-res (>10MB TIFFs). However, they aren't all that interesting. Take this for example. Just a guy playing golf.

Anyway, not ALL of their stuff is available for a price. Some of it can even be downloaded by an anonymous coward for free.


kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.

by his words..............

[Mr.roboto]

"We should examine the progress of the Internet to understand the landscape of the software industry today and how intellectual property fits into that landscape." Last I checked Apache web server held a majority portion of the market, and it's open source. I guess that means that opensource reigns supreme by his words. I take no liability for the words said in this rant. =)

You could dual licence it

[sonny]

However, if someone sees the piece of code that I wrote, and decided they liked it, they can't use it unless they place their code under the GPL. I wrote the patch, and probably wouldn't object to this, but they can't simply because of a licencing irregularity.

Nothing stops you from releasing it under a dual license, if you do not mind that somebody takes your patch and uses it in a closed source project.

Of course the patch has to be useful in itself whithout the code the patch is against. And you should propably not assign the copyright to the project or the FSF. I do not think that you can dual license it when you do not hold the copyright anymore.

Does this mean that ..

[(void*)]

we should listen to Linus, rather than Newton or Mundie?

150 years?

[Galvatron]

Hmm... interestingly enough, the period from 150-80 years ago was the most purely capitalist periods in history. Sure, we've got bloated government now. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that since the Great Depression (and the accompanying socialization of America) the rise in income of the lowest fifth has not kept pace with that of the highest? Also, our GDP growth has fallen from a long term average of 3% to 2.5%

The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

I wasn't talking about the specifics of this case, but of Linus' more general comments regarding Patents and Intellectual Property.

I don't disagree with you - if you read my other posts, you'll see that I think the open source movement is a powerful argument for limiting the scope of patents. I just don't think the lessons and arguments used in the context of software can be expanded to encompass manufacturing in general or the development of various other types of knowledge-based assets.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

Yes - of course, but would the toy get designed without the company behind the person, or without the paycheck in return - even if they are enjoying it?

Perhaps designed, in their spare time, but certainly not distributed, unless they became an entrepreneur and therefore a company in their own right.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

Right, but who's going to give them the funding if there isn't a good chance of their making a return on it that will be sufficient to guarantee the reimbursement of that funding, plus a significant interest rate to cover the cost of capital?

If they don't hold the patent over the design that they've built, and other companies decide it's a cool, saleable design, then the best features of that design will quickly be integrated into other models built by more established competitors, and that will quickly invalidate any compatarive benefits their model has over others - also, more established competitors will have a wider manufacturing base and will therefore be able to produce/source the parts more cheaply and compete the newcomer out of the market in no time.

This is a perfect example of people who would *need* a patent in order to commercialise their work. Of course, they could do the open source thing and design the car for the love of designing a car, and with absolutely no thought of reward other than the satisfaction of having drawn up the blueprints and watching others make money off it - but I personally don't think there are many people in the world (other than OS developers in the software field) who are willing to do this kind of work for free - it takes too much time, too many resources, and people want to get paid for the work they do.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

Well, the Wright brothers wanted to fly - they never created a consumer good/service with their invention, and certainly wouldn't have created a free-thinking group of professional pilots who move people around the world for free in aircrafts built out of charity.

The Apple I was certainly built for fun, but later PCs were built to be useful to a vast number of people, and encompassed design attributes that were focused on what other people wanted, rather than what the designer wanted. And they certainly weren't going to give the Apple I away for free - who would pay for the manufacturing costs? What about people who wanted support and help in using it?

In any situation of free economic exchange, the word "exploit" is a bit weird. Individuals choose to purchase something at a price, and enter into the exchange of their own free will - that is not exploitation. Only when you're talking about a life saving drug being sold at a huge profit can you bring exploitation into it, because the consumer no longer has a choice about buying it.

To "exploit" the value of a patent is often the reason the discovery was arrived at in the first place, and you have to wonder whether it is better that the discovery is arrived at, at a cost - or that it was never developed at all.

Re:If Einstein was r&d'ing under a business model.

[nlvp]

I'm in the UK - and I read it a while ago - I'm a bit of a fan... Although Excession remains my favourite.

Free Scientific Research

[nlvp]

I agree, I think the answer to this is to go back to a slightly older model of universities, where people went there to study because they could be in close proximity to so much knowledge and breaking-edge research. At some point they just because teaching institutions, with more funding they could become the academic playground and free-thinkers paradise they once were.

But we still have people spending silly amounts building particle accelerators, and throwing atoms together at ridiculous velocities just to see what happens, so I guess there's still hope!

Re:Free Scientific Research

[Captn Pepe]

No, you're conflating two different things. The SSC (Superconducting SuperCollider) was to be built in Texas; that project was halted partway through construction because the congress-critters got budget happy. The LEP (Large Electron-Positron collider) is CERN's current machine. It was recently shut down to free up the tunnel for an even larger machine called LHC (Large Hadron Collider).

Name --- Energy(TeV)

LEP --- .2 or so
FermiLab --- 1 - 2
LHC --- 7
SSC --- 40 +

As you can see, SSC was quite a loss to the physics community. Still a lot of people grouchy about that.

Re:Free Scientific Research

[HiQ]

Granted, but the funding of what was to be the biggest accelerator (LEP???) was cancelled; it's was getting a bit too expensive.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

These people design computers? In the same way as Dell, Compaq, IBM and Sony? Where can I buy one, and will they be at a competitive price?

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

And in the field of software, the free software movement is a fine example of people creating "consumer goods for the love of discovery" (or at least without serios financial expectations).

I agree entirely with this - I don't disagree with a spirited defence of the Open Source Movement or the Free Software Movement. I do, however, believe that Patents have a role in certain areas where they provide a reason to develop something that would otherwise never receive the necessary investment to get developed at all.

I don't think there are enough people who have all three of - 1) a day job, 2) significant expertise in a certain area, 3) the desire to use the expertise without financial reward - to provide us with the consumer goods we desire to enhance our standard of living.

If the pharmaceuticals weren't over-exploiting this system quite so ruthlessly, they would be a good example, as things stand, I'd be on pretty shaky ground defending their recent actions. But if you took away all protection for any of their discoveries, their business model would fold overnight as people (like myself) bailed out of their shares as fast as the markets would allow us.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

Certainly it took millions of man-hours to produce something like Linux

I agree, but I don't think you're going to find the same community spirit willing to purchase the factory space necessary to mass-produce an open-source car. Partly because such a community doesn't have the cash, and partly because the Open Source movement is (and this is a very personal opinion which could well be wrong) quite specific to computer scientists, ex-geeks and uber-coders.

Something that interests me is these new 3D printers, that overlay sheets of plastic to build things. If technology like that were ever to become cheap and ubiqutous, and were also capable of printing circuitry and LCD displays, then I bet you'd see something similar to open source, with a lot of consumer electronics companies complaining about unfair competition.

This is quite interesting - it would start to break down the difference between software and manufacturing by making manufacturing more accessible to smaller entrepreneurs / free-goods designers. It could create a paradigm shift and kick some of the incumbents out of the top positions in the supply of small, personal devices.

Re:If Einstein was r&d'ing under a business model.

[nlvp]

Just off the top of my head, I agree - the business model of running r&d has proven itself to be a pain and a dinosaur. What we need to do is present an environment where more people would express what they know and come up with new discoveries. And these discoveries don't really have to come from scientists or researchers.

Need to get rid of scarcity - it is, after all, the root of all evil. Without scarcity, no more need to get rich, because seeing as wealth is a comparative measure and without scarcity everyone has everything they could possibly want, we would be free of the rat race and the need for self-promotion and could focus on discovery for the pleasure of discovery.

Ok - so I read too much Iain M Banks...

Inventors throughout history

[mikeage]

Let's think about this for one minute. Science is never cheap, in fact, most of the scientists prior to the Industrial Revolution were either the sons of extremely wealthy individuals, who had no need for more money, or were being financed by a King, who expected some tangable return in the form of "practical" research.

The scientists themselves often either had everything they could possibly want anyway, or were so poor that they'd have no chance of ever selling anything practical, since the first thug (back then, it was a punch-and-grab thug, now it would be a cut-and-paste thug) that came along would just easily take their stuff... there goes business.

Until food wants to be free, why should we care what information wants?

Re:Inventors throughout history

[Mr Skreet Nite]

An excellent contribution, but I'm curious to know where Marx talked of "replacing one tyranny with another". If you're by aany chance referring to the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' that was actually Lenin. I suspect that like many people you're going by what other people have said about old Charlie Marx, rather than reading him for yourself. That's not meant as critically as it may sound. Seriously, try reading more of the original Marx, you may enjoy it more than you suspect.

Re:Inventors throughout history

[tdye]

Okay then. The reason you can't give away food, fuel, etc to every person on the planet is that it costs lots and lots of money. You have to own and maintain land, hire people, maintain equipment, buy seed, plant, grow, harvest, and distribute food. All of that requires people, people who should be compensated for their labor, not to mention the guy who owns all the food he grew. Same for fuel, except it's about a thousand times more dangerous to get oil out of the ground, and very very expensive to even find it. If the US were to federalize the oil industry with the intention of giving away free gas, the economy would disintegrate. There are a million people who'd be out of a job because it's not profitable to run the corner stop-n-go. Their families would all have to rely on the government for not just their food and gas, but their clothes, medical care, housing, etc.

Wait, the goal was to have everyone rely on the Govt. for all their food, gas, medical care, housing! Congratulations, you've just created North Korea.

The two reasons for not doing this: First, if you think corporations are bad, wait until you take all the power all the corps have and give it to the fed. Second, capitalistic greed flows from individual greed. Don't forget, corps are created by people. You can only make an idealistic socialist society work if the entire population is willing to not be greedy about anything. They must all be wiling to freely give away the fruits of their labor, they must be willing to do extremely dangerous jobs in exchange for government grants and standard housing. They must all be happy with whatever they're given and unwilling to strive for more.

Because as soon as someone starts to want a bigger house, they will start looking for a way to get it. Eventually someone will realize that there are lots of people looking for big houses, and he'll start offering them. Of course, he'd have no reason to do this unless they gave him something back... and then you go right back to big, evil, capitalism, or else you get hard-core oppression from the govt. aimed at preventing it.

Socialist societies only work in the minds of idealists. People are inherently too interested with self-preservation and achievement to take what they're given and while away the days contemplating their navels. That's why the only countries where it still goes on are ultra-oppressive 'communist' countries like China, N. Korea, and Cuba.

The real fact is, corporations are out to make money, and the capitalist pursuit of wealth often does stand in the way of the socialist version of 'true progress'. I'd take the USA, and the (I'm assuming) false progress we have here over the 'real' progress they have over in China.

Ohyeah, one more thing: Flamebait is a post worded such that it is not exactly offensive but will likely start a flamewar anyway. Trolls are posts designed to generate as much response as possible, by whatever means necessary.

Posts designed to get an argument started are rated 'Interesting'.

Re:Inventors throughout history

[tdye]

You're missing my point completely. Fine, we abolish money. Everyone has everything they need and no one wants for anything. We have a happy,. joyful, egalitarian society where no crime exists and no one has to work for what they get, they all work for the common good.

Now imagine that I (since I have all the free time and resources I need) think up a cool new widget. Everyone thinks it's really neat. In fact, so many people would like to have one, I can't keep up with the demand. Widgets become harder and harder to find, since I can only make about 10 a day and there are about 200 people a day who hear about it and would like to have it.

Suddenly, I have a commodity. People start offering me their televisions in exchange for a higher place on the widget waiting list. Maybe they offer to give me lots of strawberries (I like strawberries).

Now, I've got so many offers, I set up a list of things I'll take to bump you to the top of the widget list. Now I've got a price list, and we're bartering for services. My widget for your 3 bushels of strawberries. It's not paper money, but it's commerce.
Commerce is the destroyer of your money-free society; it's completely unavoidable, and that's a good thing! . Even if the government makes all commerce illegal, they'd have to jail me or shoot me to stop me from making widgets, and then they'd have to outlaw all the widgets, confiscate them, and jail (or shoot) anyone caught with one. Now we're back to North Korea or the old USSR.

People will always desire to be compensated fairly for their work. Some work is inherently more valuable than other work. What motivates a doctor to spend 10 brutal, abusive years learning medicine? Certainly not ONLY altruism, though that's probably a factor. We'd have a lot fewer doctors if they got paid what a teacher gets. Teaching is a noble profession, but teachers generally suck at what they do, because the best potential teachers become network admins or scientists or journalists or CEOs. The teacher's pay can't support their desires, and there's nothing wrong with having ambition. Who's to say a CEO would rather be teaching, but for the money?

Doctors are more valuable than checkers at Wal-Mart. They should not be compensated equally. You can either let the people negotiate for themselves and get paid what the market will support (capitalism) or you can dictate prices, nationalize industries, assign jobs in grade school, artifically depress prices, and coerce your population into accepting it (communism USSR style). There is no middle ground... society will always trend toward free markets and capitalism unless artificially prevented by an oppressive government.

People are also greedy! Some people won't sit back and take what you give them. If they can't get what they want in their lives, they will migrate toward the places where they can. See "Animal Farm" by George Orwell for the perfect example of how this works.

Re:Inventors throughout history

[tdye]

That was a pretty good troll until you threw in the petrochemical corporation thing...

Re:Inventors throughout history

[EastCoastSurfer]

Fact is, large corporations do often stand in the way of true progress. Take a good look at history.

You forgot the other big hurdle to progress -- religion.

Re:Inventors throughout history

[panda]

It's not a troll if you sincerely believe what you've posted. It's not a troll if you want to start a discussion.

A troll is posted only to get an argument started. Flamebait and troll are really just synonyms.

Fact is, large corporations do often stand in the way of true progress. Take a good look at history.

Re:Inventors throughout history

[panda]

Who says we *NEED* money? Imagine what I said going on in a world without money. I'm not talking about the world you've been told you live in. I'm talking about a world that doesn't exist, but could exist. All it takes is a different perspective.

Re:Inventors throughout history

[panda]

Would reading Das Kapital count? :-) You're right, though, I am agreeing with the common view of Marxism, particluarly as it has played out in recent political climates.

I much prefer Kropotkin's view of the world over that of Herr Marx.

Re:Inventors throughout history

[panda]

Large corporations, national gov'ts, what's the difference?

The entrenched institutions and stone age ideologies greatly inhibit freedom when they tell you that your options are more limited than they are.

The first step to achieving anything is to visualize that which you wish to achieve. I ask you to imagine a world without gov'ts, religions or other entrenched interests. I ask you to take the Free Software ethic, which is at it's core the socialist ethic of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," and extend it to every facet of life. Consider it a mental exercise if nothing else. Do it as a favor to your Nintendo-addled brain.

The capitalist system of exchange is predicated on a world of scarcity. No matter what the corps tell you, we DO NOT live in a world of scarcity. There is plenty of food, plenty of land, and plenty of power (a practically unlimited supply of energy hits us on the head every day and we don't utilize the smallest fraction of it efficiently) for everyone. The scarcities that do exist today are artificial ones, created and maintained by the greedy systems of power spawned the very real scarcity of the past.

We now face a very critical juncture in history. We can make choices now that no society on this planet has ever been able to make. We can obliterate ourselves in a heartbeat. We can slowly use up the non-renewable resources on this rock and starve ourselves into oblivion. We can choose to the follow the path of our ancestors, or we can choose to use and to share the world's resources wisely and improve the life of the entire planet, until the Sun goes red giant and swallows us whole.

You can laugh and joke and call me a hippie, a communist, a crackpot, any name you like. (I prefer Anarchist, myself. :-) Take some time to look at the world from a different perspective. Stop thinking about what you want, and focus on what you need, on what we all need. Greedy capitalism is responsible for creating the world we live in today, and are you proud of that world?

Don't point to the Soviet Union and try to tell me communism failed. First, I am not a communist, and second, anyone who has actually read Marx knows that the Soviet Union never even came close to "real" communism. Anyway, Marx is fundamentally flawed because he talks of replacing one tyranny with another. I am for the abolition of all tyranny.

I'll leave you with one last quip: "Free your mind, and your ass will follow."

Re:This got me thinking ....

[jaf]

What if a AIDS medicine company stumbled over a
perfect sure for AIDS.. Being commercial they would be faced with a dilemma - release the medicine for free and save the world from AIDS or
continue making money??

Okay, for fetched.. better example: Someone in an
oil company stumbles over the design for an
engine that will run on water.. what does he do?

Re:Leonardo

[gilmae]

Gates controls a company named Corbis (sp?) that charges a fee to access digital versions of a range of Da Vinci works. But before Gates bought out Corbis (what, 5 years ago now?) they were public domain. Conceivably, if someone had made copies of these digital versions while they were still public domain, then all of Bill Gate's money would have been poorly spent. The copies would be *yours*, not Bill's. You could do with them as you please. Say, put them up on a free access website...

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[grunyon]

Respect is earned, not just given out of hand, and the statements that Mundie is making certainly don't give me any reason to grant him respect.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[grunyon]

Apathy is the curse of our generation.

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[donglekey]

That's a good point, but software for life? There is no way I am going back to using lightwave 2.0.

Re:quote

[sracer9]

"I think this quote was common among medieval scholars, I don't remember whos said it first though (Saint Bernard?)."

No, I think it was that other man...What was his name again? Oh yeah, Dober Man.

What helps the economy is not what helps humanity.

[mk-ultra]

Let me just say that this is said in regards to -business economy- I mean, we all know that when Microsoft says that open source is bad for the economy, they mean it's bad for Microsoft's economy or whomever, regardless of if this is true...

But in any industrialized nation, where there is a primary concern on business economy, you can be sure that what is good for business is -bad- for everyone else.

Even if you could prove that proprietary closed software was good for the economy by looking at charts and graphs which show how well business was doing, you'd still be missing the macro view where everyone below the top tier was suffering as a consequence.

We arent talking about mom-and pop companies, because nobody gives a damn about that... but IBM, Microsoft, Merck Pharma. etc etc, are given consessions that not only deprive consumers of their rights (UCITA, DMCA..) etc, but actually create poverty at the lowest level.

The goal when we say -good for busines- is just that, good for business... its bad for anyone else. And you can look at any industrialized nation and see evidence of it.

Re:personal attack? bzzzt! wrong

[e-Motion]

Linus was using the phrase in a to make a rather mild joke. How it is that Linus, a foreigner, has a better command of English idiom than you, well...

Speaking of personal attacks...

You can see it however you want it, but the fact remains that Linus's joke _sounded_ like he was referring to smell, not performance. When you compare someone to a rotting corpse, how else are you supposed to take it? It could be a play on words, but it was a poor attempt at it.

And I would say that a more proper description for that idiom is just being of poor quality in general. As in "You stink at analyzing sentences"

Re:Is Linus a hypocrite ?

[frknfrk]

In life there are TONS of compromises. I work for perhaps one of the biggest patent-producing software companies as well, but in my spare time I write nothing but free software. If Linus had turned around and patented Linux (which I think he still can, although the GPL would still protect everyone's source, I think) THEN he would be a hypocrite. However I do not suspect any such action :)

Re:Is Linus a hypocrite ?

[frknfrk]

Patents hardly have to be innovative anymore, see 'one click shopping', etc, etc. I'm sure a moderately skilled patent lawyer could draft up something in a few hours which would pass right through.

Re:intention behind the invention of a lightbulb

[porky_pig_jr]

without it we wouldn't have all the great lightbulb jokes. that was the intention.

Re:I think linus' reply is a bit out of focus

[jeremyp]

Yeah, the point about the "forking codebases" is demonstrably wrong. Very few (actually none that I can think of off hand) OSS projects suffer from having a forked codebase. Moreover, interoperability of separate products is very good in the OSS world. For example, if you have a mail client that is IMAP compliant you can guarantee that it'll talk to any IMAP server. Even where the protocols are not well defined standards you can make things interoperable by looking at the source code of of the products you want to interoperate with.

Newton != Linus

[cheezit]

Let's see---on the one hand, we have Newton: creator of the foundation of all physics, whose theories and equations have lasted centuries with little modification.

On the other hand, we have a set of folks, Linus included, who ported an OS---one with a long pedigree and known advantages---to cheap and popular hardware.

Ummmm...does typing "cc" constitute scientific discovery?

I wouldn't disagree if Linus said that open-source drew from the same idealism and desire to experiment that science does. Or that OSS uses the same combination of open distribution of contributions with credit given to the individual authors that is characteristic of academic science journals. Or that devotion to a worthy goal without monetary compensation is (sometimes) laudable.

But guys...software isn't art, and usually there's not much science in it either. It's engineering.

It'd be more honest for Linus to point out that OSS isn't the same model as academic science, but in fact a new model: an ethical approach to engineering. Unfortunately, no zinger there.

Re:Newton != Linus

[cheezit]

My point was that Newton's was a scientific achievement. That's different than an engineering achievement. Different order of magnitude, different impact.

Linus comparing himself to Newton is like the Edison comparing himself to Einstein (sort of).

Re:Be fair...

[CaffeinieBaby]

I've been in the Unix/Linux community for ~10 years, not counting a three-year detour developing Java on Win9X/NT. Every time either my dad or father-in-law calls for tech support, I think "why didn't I have him buy a Mac?"

Re:We must protect them !

[iainl]

'you can feel the "Titanic hit iceberg" desperation comming thru'

No, according to Microsoft its all the fault of those visciously fast and nimble icebergs crowding in and restricting the Titanic's freedom to innovate...

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[TomV]

either Leibnitz or Hooke (I forget which).

It was Hooke, his long-standing rival for the succession at the Royal Society.

The issue was the idea that white light was made up of colours, as expounded in Hooke's "micrographia". The Giants, if there were any, were the likes of Descartes. Hooke was described as being 'of low and crooked stature'

And Newton was a remarkably unpleasant chap by any standards. Although being a closet heretic probably didn't help his attitudes in a world where he could have easily got burned at the stake for a slip of the tongue. Had plenty of nasty digs at Leibniz over the calculus, too, but this one was aimed at Hooke.

TomV

Re:Cry me a river...

[tclark]

I cash my paycheck too. I get paid for helping people use free software. I GPL the software I write and give it away. I wouldn't want to give users any less control over their software. If you don't like it - too frikin' bad.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[Lozzer]

"The answer is always somewhere in the middle."

Removing the endpoints of a line doesn't really lose very much

Re:Leonardo

[Darth Turbogeek]

Bill Gates owns the RIGHTS to Lenonardo's work? WTF? I thought all rights to any work of a certain person ceased to have any protection under copyright or whatever 50 years after the author's death, case being Shakesphere and the fact anyone can use his work without hinderance, as long as you work off the original scrits (I think).

Are you saying Mr Gates owns the original works, because that's the only way I could see that possibly happening and if that is the case.... that sucks. Shouldnt such important works be placed in the hands of someone who will allow us all to use them?

Linus plays into the hands of the enemy!

[Dr. Spork]

Microsoft were hoping for this sort of a response from the open source community--one that stirs the common man (especially of the geek variety that appreciates theoretical physics) but not the upper-manager in charge of licensing decisions.

Microsoft is confident (perhaps irrationaly) that they can bulldoze a "loose-knit band of hobbyists" writing OSS, but the way they see it, two things could go wrong.

1) Companies with gangs of professional coders might decide to release commercially-viable software under the GPL. If HP, IBM, AOL (Mozilla), SGI (XFS), Sun (StarOffice) are allowed to set a trend, the resulting system would cause them headaches no "casual hackers" could induce.

Remember that Mundie is a running dog whose master commanded him to prevent this by oration. What he said was perfect: nobody gets rich in the software buisiness without owning IP. The argument is targeted for the ears of an upper-manager who matters, someone actually calling the shots about licensing. Sure, s/he may have techies who beg to have their code released (as long as they keep the jobs) and they may promise there are all kinds of other ways to make money. After Mundie's speech s/he will say "Oh yeah, like what? Is it the sort of sure bet that our company owes its shareholders, or are the motivations more "ideological"? Because if they are then I would have to be a crappy manager to take them seriously. I've been appointed to make the company rich, or at least stay above water--not to enforce justice.

Now in comes a rebuttal from Linus (paraphrased): "Open source produces great things; forbidding "giant-stacking" only hinders great things." Only an idiot could disagree. But someone who is making the final call about the licensing of some good software now feels this as a tension between the nobility creating great things and making money. Sure, there is some honor in being a Xerox-type: They'd have us by the balls if they defended their IP, but instead everyone else was allowed to make the personal computer revolution out of their ideas. Humanity is better off, but try explaining that to the stockholders!

Newton, Rutherford, Bohr, Einstein--giants who would have been much smaller had academic IP been closed--but how can this comfort a manager? Two problems: One is that not one of these guys was filthy rich, not within two orders of magnitude of Bill Gates. For an individual there is some glory in being poor and noble, but not for a company. The second problem is that all these guys are brilliant, and as an upper manager you can never assume your people are--but it's your job to make money anyway. Nobody uses a piece of GPL code unless they think it's the best that's available. The runner-ups fall into neglect. This is good news because the cream should rise to the top, but it's bad news if you're not sure whether what you have is creamy. One good example is AOL: they invested serious money in the development of Mozilla and it's beginning to work great, hell, I'm using it right now. But with Konqueror and other competition around, there is not even a guarantee people care about Mozilla in two years. This is because Mozilla might not be the absolute best OSS program of its kind. Same goes for XFS and StarOffice. So what's a manager to do? To succeed in OSS you have to make absolute best program available, and even if you do there is still no reliable model for sustaining a company (never mind getting rich). Who could go on and say "oh, let's do it anyway"? What sane venture capitalist would put his money down?

With these professional elements out of the way OSS again becomes a project of hobbyists and Microsoft feels safe. If it weren't for

2) Governments legislating OSS software for their departments or maybe even for their populations for whatever reasons. /. is full of murmurings about this from France, Korea, China, Argentina and even certain US departments. Mundie has to try and stop this. Here he was not very convincing. His line about how IP boosts the economy could only ring true in the US, where Microsoft pays taxes. In the rest of the world, the allegation that Linux is un-american is the shrewdest advertising campaign possible. Anyway, we see Microsoft is worried about it, and it looks like they don't yet have a strategy for fixing it.

But they do have a perfect strategy for convincing capitalistic software firms to keep their code to themselves (and die clutching it). No one doubts this situation is a win for Microsoft.

Re:Linus plays into the hands of the enemy!

[fors]

I doubt it. The longer it goes on the more it gets into public conciousness. This war will be won by public perception of the individuals involved. When this battle is in the news Linus will become the hero in public perception. When the public starts asking about this Linux they keep hearing about companies will have to listen. Everyone here seems to be basing their decision on what the IT industry will think. The IT industry really doesn't matter in this case. Software companies will produce software that their customers will buy. If the customers are screaming for Linux products you will have to give them what they want. Most software sales are not to businesses in the IT sector but retail, manufacturing, service, and assorted other sectors. The IT departments in most companies will fold soon enough when they get enough questions by senior management about implementing Linux and saving those nasty license fees. It's all in public perception and Microsoft can't win there as long as Linus is the primary spokesman and speaks for himself.

Re:Be fair...

[sean23007]

let's be completely honest. linux takes a lot more skill to use than windows. sure, it gives a lot more control to the systems administrator, but that control is useless to your parents, because the only thing they know about linux is that it's the computer that all those "horrible hacker people" have used when they were arrested, and that linux must be bad when compared to windows, because all their friends use windows, and they basically don't have to know anything about the computer to use it successfully. (granted, your definition of success is different than microsoft's, but that's ok for the elderly windows user, because no matter how much skill a person has, they can't get any more positive things from windows.) All in all, you guys really need to stop complaining about microsoft. Basically, they have figured out how to sell their "inferior" product, but since you cannot sell your "excellent" product, they have the industry by the throat.
Fine, you've made a nice little operating system, but the time for hiding behind the penguin and throwing sticks and stones at Locutus of Billy Gates is over. None of you has any more right to complain about this until you take more action. If you really think your product can compete with Bill's, go head to head, and if you don't think you're ready, then stop glorifying your accomplishments and accomplish them!

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[leinhos]

Actually, I believe that the GPL and Open Source model are based on capatilistic ideas -- the dominant one being intelectual property. In a capitalist system, the GPL is a great way to release intelectual property to the general public without losing property rights to it. GPL preserves copywrite protections for the author, which are based on the idea that the author owns the work in question as a product of his/her labor. Get rid of the idea of personal/private property ownership, and the GPL is useless.

my two cents

[bob_jenkins]

I know nobody asked me, here's my two cents. (BTW, isn't this instant worldwide publication stuff great?)

This is how IP law should work for software.

1. If I write it from scratch then I can do what I want with it.
2. If I write it from scratch then you can't sell it without my permission.
3. I'm allowed to write it from scratch.

It turns out that software isn't as nonobvious as it seems. For example, the incredibly nonobvious orbit-integration algorithms I found in 2000 were exactly the same as the ones someone else found in 1990, and those were the same as ones someone else found in the 1973. This is the norm. It's happened to me over and over and over again.

Software patents should not exist. Authors should start with all rights to their code. Software patents claim that authors have no rights to their code if their code reinvents something that a previous author patented. It is extremely common for code to reinvent things that have been coded (and patented) before. Therefore software patents should not exist.

Re:Linus sounds like a real jackass

[edinho]

wtf? Its nice to see that the world will laugh when a man unknown for anything makes trite unthinking statements? Its not a black and white issue. All budgewood is doing is pumping this anti-linus bullshit. Listen, think for yourself... don't dismiss listen or anyone before you take a serious look for yourself. budgewood has failed to distinguish himself.

Re:Alas, Linus' argument is built on a false premi

[xp]

Also Newton's discoveries weren't GPL'ed. It would be interesting if Linus argued that that if Newton was GPLed that would have helped science.

Mundie's main argument against the GPL was that it limits reusability of code. And in fact if Newton had GPL'ed his discoveries in a similar way (not that it is possible) that would have been disastrous for physics.

So in conclusion Mundie makes a good point and the Newton analogy only works for non-GPL software. The best analogy for GPL software is the mafia where once you are in it you can't get out. GPL restricts the freedom of its users and as such will never be as influential as non-GPL code.

----
Milk, it does a body good.

But what are the terms for looking at the code?

[n0ano]

MicroSoft talks about making their code available in some sort of shared arrangement. The point that worries me is what conditions will they place on people who are allowed to look at their code? The last time I was in a position to get access to NT code as a non-MicroSoft employee there was a clause in the agreement that I could not work on any other OS for 2 years after I stopped having access to the code. This kind of restriction would make MicroSoft's talk of sharing completely worthless.

--
Don Dugger
VA Linux Systems

Re:Newton, daVinci ... Linus

[dwm]

What you seem to be trying to say is that these great scientists, artists and engineers, in addition to their undeniable talent, also had faults and failings.

In other words, they were human.

Thanks for the keen insight. :^/

(And, less cynically, a genuine thanks for the reminder. People should be appreciated, but not worshipped.)

Viagra?? is a great scientific development???

[raaum]

You are calling Viagra one of the greatest scientific developments of the past 50 years??

Four Shades of Software Sharing

[gmp]

I wrote up something arguing that it is impossible for Microsoft to do what they are aiming to do. Trade secret law is simply not up to the task.

This paper has been written partially in response to recent ruminations by Microsoft about their new or newly emphasized source code sharing initiatives. I discuss four strategies for proprietary source code distribution, including a brief Unix history lesson, and a recommendation for legislative action.

Four Shades of Software Sharing

Re:Standing on the shoulders of giants indeed!

[wjr]

What has the "copyright/patent/intellectual property" world contributed to networking? NETBEUI? Appletalk? IPX? Where are they now? Could the Microsofts of the world ever "innovate" anything like TCP/IP without endless copyright/patent litigation and an IRS-like licensing scheme?

Ethernet.

It was developed by a for-profit corporation and patented. However, the corporation decided that making it a standard was more useful than keeping it proprietary, and as part of the standardisation process, the patents were licensed to all comers for a nominal fee (I think it was a few hundred dollars). Since the licensors were all hardware manufacturers, this was not much of a burden - if you're shipping a physical device, money is changing hands somewhere along the way so a nominal fee for patents isn't a barrier to using the standard. In the software world, of course, even a small fee can severely limit the use of a standard.

If you want to measure Microsoft's contribution to the greater good, look for standards that they have originated, where they gave up patent rights in the process. I mean standards in the sense of formal open specifications, where the specifications are under the control of an independent body, not de-facto standards that you have to reverse-engineer to use. I vaguely remember there being some MS-originated standards that meet this criterion - maybe DHCP?

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[kerrbear]

The only viable system is to take away between 25% and 75% of every person's income and redistribute it. The U.S., right now, is going with a figure of something like 45%, I believe. Yet we still call ourselves "capitalist". Ha.

"Redistribute" is a little heavy to describe what goes on. The taxes you pay supposedly benefit the society as a whole- defense, roads, schools, gov. services, welfare, etc.

Its not like the government is trying to give the money to your next door neighbor because he makes 10 grand less than you. Sure, some poorer people end up getting your money more directly but I believe these programs only constitute about 6% of the federal budget.

Your point about pure Capitalism is well taken however. It definately needs curtailed or it will harm society (as has been proven in the past).

Oh, yeah, and uhhh....Linus is cool. Long live Linus (see I stayed on topic).

OT: 2b || ! 2b

[AkkarAnadyr]

If one takes that 'most central' verb and rips it out of the English language, I find that one's language and thought improves.

Re:This got me thinking ....

[moooster]

They sure do... I think it was Watt who first developed a steam driven carriage. He held a patent on it and thought it was stupid or something and no one else was able to develop this technology until his patent ran out.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[Chiasmus_]

I don't believe Mundie/Microsoft made any such direct remarks about Linus...

I don't think it's in the nature of a giant multinational corporation to give raw, emotional statements about a spokesman's personal opinion on a competitor's character.

I think it's a two-sided coin. In an open, free environment, you run the risk of violating logic and reason with ad hominem, emotional statement. In a cloistered, corporate environment, you run the rik of violating logic and reason with sterile corporate drivel written by committee.

My personal political philosophy is "The answer is always somewhere in the middle." Abortion, gun control, welfare, environmentalism, capitalism, you name it - a middle ground always, in my mind, is a saner policy than a "pro" or "anti" stance. Perhaps the very existence of two polar extremes proves this point.

Is there some way to create a workforce that represents a combination of "sterile corporation" and "chaotice open-source"? Is there some way that spokesmen can speak their mind and be honest, while at the same time being vigilant against senseless name-calling and pointless segways? You tell me.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[Chiasmus_]

is that more or less of a personal attack then mundie bashing free software

Well, let me think about that. Mundie is a person, and free software is not. So the answer is therefore... more of a personal attack.

Re:This got me thinking ....

[Chiasmus_]

Okay, for fetched.. better example: Someone in an oil company stumbles over the design for an engine that will run on water.. what does he do?

Patent water, of course.

Re:Be fair...

[Abreu]

My wife uses Linux almost exclusively... She is not at all technically inclined, but she likes the lack of random OS crashes...

She tells me she can understand beta quality software crashing when its free from the internet, but she now finds hard to understand why 200+ USD software crashes just as easily.

------
C'mon, flame me!

Re:standing on the shoulders of giants

[MrBogus]

Here's an aside to your aside:

From "Windows NT Server (4.0) Networking Guide" (aka the Resource Kit):

Remote Procedure Call

Much of the original work on Remote Procedure Call (RPC) was initiated at Sun Microsystems. This work ahs been carried forward by the Open Software Foundation (OSF) as part of their Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). The Microsoft RPC implementation is compatible with the OSF/DCE standard RPC.

It is important to note that it is _compatible_ but not _compliant_. In this situation, compliance implies that you started with the OSF source code and worked forward. For a number of reasons, Microsoft developed RPC from the ground up.

There's your credit. Do you believe the statements made to be untrue? (I personally have no idea if they used OSF source or not...)

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[MrBogus]

In particular the "Woz Machine" Floppy Controller (US Patent 4,210,959) was one of Apple's key technical advantages over everyone else in the early years of the personal computer industry.

Re:philosophy/methodology

[sydb]

Although I generally come down on Stallman's side in the Stallman versus Everyone Else debate, I have to disagree with this

The major difference I can find between Free Software and Open Source is in presentation and style; FSF present Free Software as being morally superior, OSI present Open Source as having pragmatic benefits

One is no more complete a philosophy than the other, they just have different assumptions

The Free Software style assumes people are moved by core human ideals, those of freedom and goodwill

The Open Source style assumes people are moved by whatever moves the individual; they feel they can't generalise this for everyone so they appeal to pragmatism

Some Open Source supporters have no morals : ¥amoral, not immoral So pragmatism is all they've got; businesses are often like this too

I rest with the Free Software side because I'm moved by freedom and goodwill; there's nothing 'philosophically complete' about this, though

Re:philosophy/methodology

[dalinian]

Hmm, maybe my wording was a bit inaccurate. I meant to say that Open Source methodology is a logical continuation of the Free Software philosophy. In Open Source, efficiency is fundamental - in Free Software, freedom.

philosophy/methodology

[dalinian]

The difference lies in the fact that Stallman has a complete philosophy, while Linus is concerned with just the methodological matters.

Re:Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[Fervent]

Actually, I think Linus comes off sometimes like an overly harsh nerd, with little speaking abilities, who's suddenly got the power to speak for thousands, and doesn't know how to use it. *ahem* Sorta like Bill Gates. *ahem*

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Re:Be fair...

[Silvanari]

Now now let's not forget the one product M$ trully inovated M$ BOB.

windoze

[chompz]

Look at windows for an example.

Closed source, closed ears. By that I mean that customer service persons do not care if a customer finds a serious bug in the software, and doesn't listen. I've tried to find the source for windows on sunsite.unc.edu and cdrom.com so I would be able to fix some glaring programming errors which I could identify from the behavior of the binary release. Oh, well, I guess I'll just not use it, its like a car which I need to replace every 3000 miles, because they forgot to put an oil plug in the oil pan.

Microsoft, start listening to your customers, maybe then they will listen to you.

Re:windoze

[SgtAaron]

I've tried to find the source for windows on sunsite.unc.edu and cdrom.com so I would be able to fix some glaring programming errors ...

Pardon me, but why would one waste calories even thinking they could find the source for the Windows operating system, obviously closed-source, on Sunsite? (is this supposed to be funny in an obtuse sort of way? :)

Re:windoze

[Ergo2000]

Yes you could just dive right in there and fix up those errors. It's not like it's an enormous complex software system that isn't a trivial example of a bad variable or something. No you'll just jump like line 742 and fix that typo and everything will be hunky dory.

This whole open source myth is such a ridiculous piece of propaganda. There are products like FreeBSD that have evolved slowly with interest from various people and that is great (i.e. Open source is a convenient way to allow others to join the development at a ground level). But the myth purported by the OSS camp that everyone can just hop in the source and "fix it up" (scratch an itch) is so incredibly inane it has to be the domain of those who have never, ever touched a software system in their life.

Linus sounds like a real jackass

[budgewood]

wtf? Its nice to see that the world will listen when a man known for his intellect makes trite unthinking statements? Its not a black and white issue. All Linus is doing is pumping this anti-MS bullshit. Listen, think for yourself... don't dismiss MS or any company before you take a serious look for yourself. Linus has become a monger.

Re:Be fair...

[richie123]

Are you insane???? MS did all they could to delay exceptance of the Internet circa 93-95, this is well known as biggest blunder in Microsoft's history. MS tries to take credit for "creating the computer revolution" but if anything MS has been the one holding it back.(just look how much better MacOS 6 and 7 are compared to MS-DOS)

Does anyone think that the Desktop publishing revolution would have come along without Apple?

Does anyone think the internet could have come along without BSD, Mosaic, and free portocols like tcp/ip, http and the like?

MS has comtibuted some inventions to computer, namely wysiwyg word processing(Word for the mac is the original if I'm not mistaken), but MS has mostly muscled into the market after the fact in almost every major computer advancement in the last 20 years.

Open source vs IP; Capitalism vs Socialism

[Archangel Michael]

The problem with everyone's arguement on either side is that they all refer back to a distorted view of both OS vs IP and Cap vs Soc. When one takes the time and steps back to get a new perspective of the age old arguement, one comes away with a fresh approach.

We must reward innovation. Socialism (OS) doesn't reward excellence at all, and Capitolism (IP) today is corrupted. If I were king for a day, I would rewrite all the IP laws so that people could profit from derived works, while the originator could retain rights to the original IP. Part of the application process for protection of IP would be a simple question of payment for use (reward), and terms and conditions of use (control).

If a person wished to protect his IP using the force of law, he would have to declare up front, the per unit cost for using that IP, and all terms and conditions for derived works. Then the IP would be open for all to use and improve, and all IP holders of derivative works would be compensated along with the originator.

Simple, elegant, easy to understand, and most importantly, enforcable.

Something sinister

[CaptainZapp]

Either the evil empire lost it completely, since it's acting currently like a 4 year old child that can't get a popsicle in the supermarket, or there's something far more sinister in the woodworks.

Microsoft, throughout it's history, made very few dumb moves. Two of their hot shots within a timespan of a month behaving like spoiled brats in public must be linked to some strategy that they have cooked up.

That said, I'm not only not paranoid. I wouldn't give a shit if they're out there to get me...

Re:Something sinister

[RedWizzard]

Two of their hot shots within a timespan of a month behaving like spoiled brats in public must be linked to some strategy that they have cooked up.

Hey, they're just follow old Bill's lead. Maybe they just caught the video from the anti-trust trial?

Well, of course

[CaptainZapp]

They also didn't quite grasp this "internet thing" and then had to crash in with full force. And I'm sure there are a helluva lot of other mistakes they made (I'd add WinCE to that list, too).

When you run a business you're bound to make mistakes. Two top-executives behaving like that in public is a bad strategic mistake however and those are rare throught M$' history.

This is something either really rotten, or this whole thing will hurt them to the core.

LINUS RULEZ

[cculianu]

He is awesome man. The clarity and simplicty of his reply got to the heart of the matter and cut through the crap. Never trust a guy like mundie that likes to use a lot of techno-babel and really complicated sounding ideas to explain how he wants to fuck you up the ass.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[SubtleNuance]

such as the respect of basic courtesy; the respect of being heard with an open mind

Your right - I may have overstated my point (or not been clear enough). As a personal aside; I am generally polite and respectfull of strangers. I am not rude in public - i dont swear at waitersses/waiters. I didnt really mean to suggest otherwise.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[SubtleNuance]

Yeah - Im a godless Communist. Whats your point?

Re:whatever

[SubtleNuance]

most dirty, smelly

Hippies smell like *HUMANS*. no matter what your television tells you, *HUMANS* do not smell like 'spring sunshine and roses'. That is reality - everything else is marketing.

too stupid to be anything but honest

What? Intellegent people are dishonest liars?

non-accepting

If you are not honest with yourself - and honest with others - how do you expect to be accepted?

destroying IP?

[superdk]

from the destroying-intellectual-property-since-1991 dept.

Isn't open source about keeping IP intact? just open?

Re:destroying IP?

[Cardinal Biggles]

Isn't open source about keeping IP intact? just open?

Open Source may be - Free Software certainly is not. Actually, this may be the most accurate way to describe the difference between the two terms in one short sentence.

Re:Is Linus a hypocrite ?

[RedWizzard]

Transmeta aren't the one's bitching about OSS are they?

Re: Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[arkansas]

A few examples of consumer goods that were created or advanced "for the love of it":

- The Wright brothers design of the airplane
- Many auto-tuner shops (i.e. Callaway, Ruf, AMG etc). This doesn't seem appropriate, but many of their improvements are frequently incorporated back into the next generation of whatever car they are working on.
- And, of course, the previously mentioned example of Linux and other free software.

I'm not so familiar with the early history of the PC, but from what I do remember there was quite a bit of for the love of it work done on the earliest microcomputers.

Open Source - Open Music - Open Pharmaceuticals

[t482]

I often explain the idea of open source to my friends through examples.

For the artistic:
Music scores are generally open - if Mozart had not written his down and shared it we would not only not be able to listen to his works today, but other musicians would have had more difficulty building on what he did.

For the more business minded:
Pharmaceutical companies publish their work, generally in the form of patents - but other companies can build on those patents. With programming there is no building. IBM cannot build and expand upon the works of M$ or they will be sued.

Computer science is a relatively new science. As it progresses, each step in progression takes more work. More work than any one company will be able to handle. Operating Systems will become filled with verticle suppliers, much like the auto industry. Ford is the final assembler, but they source engines from Mitsubishi, bumpers from Magna etc... Linux will take off because of competition within the Open Source movement. Multiple suppliers of Interfaces, multiple suppliers of command lines and multiple final distributors. Open Source is what will keep them tied together and will ensure that there is never a monopoly.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Ereth]

And let us not forget UNIX itself. AT&T didn't ask Ritchie and Thompson to invent a new operating system, they did it on their own, because they were interested in it. AT&T was legally prohibited from making a profit off of computer systems at that time and for decades afterwards, yet Linux and BSD both owe their existence to the development of UNIX at AT&T labs.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[leuk_he]

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

Aircraft

Automobile even more links if you look for "build your own sports car"

Nice looking Computer

I can not think of an example where such advancements are made for mass producing consumer goods. But i think the above examples invalidate much of your story.

One point is that lots of inventors never(seldom earn any money, and only few exceptions make a lot of money.

I think that whilst the great discoveries of our time and times gone by will more often be found by scientists and visionaries of the academic kind
Another point is that a lot of inventions were made by accident.

Disappointed w/ Linus

[COBOL/MVS]

To quote Linus: I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less.

This is a rather personal attack. I would concede that the rest of Linus' remarks were fine since he was responding to Microsoft's attitude towards open source development, but the last remark was at best childish. Stick with the issues. I don't believe Mundie/Microsoft made any such direct remarks about Linus...

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[Rudeboy777]

Well, you certainly got MY vote for most misplaced Slashdot handle of the year!

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[lordvolt2k]

Ya really hit the mark there. Including the recent video game censorship crap, we have really been trying to cloak the world in a false sense of reality being all pure and crap. If someones a dick, call em a dick. Mundie, is obviously only saying things for the advancement of himself and his corporation. Microsoft couldnt give a shit about the 'good of the people' yada yada. They just want the ability to ripoff other peoples work and make profit from it, which the GPL tries to prevent!

Microsoft, Gates, Ballmer, Mundie: You all might want a reality check about what is happening to your company. Every DAY more and more people open their eyes to how your company is fucking them or their company. This will only continue for so long guys...

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[fors]

Linus did it right. The average guy on the street loves to see the underdog fight back. They love seeing the underdog win even more (then he becomes the bad guy and we see the cycle start again). Microsoft will lose in the end just because of this fact. What happens to Linux when this happens is going to be interesting. Remember when IBM was hated so much because they ruled the computer world. Now they get a much more sympathetic audience because they are perceived ad one of the underdogs. Everything goes in cycles and Microsoft will see its day at the bottom.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[fors]

But it is the phrase that will get the most people to actually look at Linux and Open Source. People like to see the underdog fighting back with everything he has. The more public the bashes between MS' champions and Open Source champions the more you will get John Q. Public interested. Most real computer nerds already have an opinion that isn't likely to change. The battle now is for public perception and that one will go to the party that can make its case that it is the oppressed by the other. In public perception this battle is not interesting until it gets to an individual level. However much it may hurt them ESR and RSM must know that the champion for public opinion will have to be Linus. He is the squeaky clean foreigner (with a beautiful wife and kids) making good and trying to benefit society. The public will love him as the underdog in this battle. The worst thing for MS will be for this stuff to start getting coverage in the newspapers and on tv. That is when they will lose the hearts and minds of the public. Linus can make little jibes like this it just makes him look human. If MS responds in kind they look like a bully. They can't win unless they can minimize the amount of exposure this battle gets in the mainstream press.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[fors]

Microsoft will have lost the war when the public views this as a battle between Bill Gates and all of his lackeys and Linus Torvalds. Given the public love of the underdog and the fact that he didn't try to milk every last dime he could out of Linux, Linus will be the hero standing tall and proud before the evil empire that should be able to crush him without a second thought. He can't lose. However, ESR and RMS cannot carry this battle in the public eye. Neither comes off as being very stable and the public doesn't care about ideology. MS could cast them as nutcases and probably succeed. Plus wasn't someone mentioning dirty hippies earlier. This battle will be won by public perception of the leaders and Linus has the best shot.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[MwtrV]

Umm, what exactly was so "personal" about that attack? Granted, it smacked of hostility, but it certainly wasn't something personal he was pointing out about Mundie.

Are icons supposed to be perfectly civil and shining examples of human beings? They can't always be. From the concentrated messages I have seen on the kernel mailing list, Linus strikes me as a rather direct fellow who often can be rather crass. You really shouldn't expect that much from him in the way of politeness. If someone pisses him off, it becomes fairly evident.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[dswan69]

So what, Mundie is scum like all others of his ilk. Good for Linus for just coming out and saying what he thinks.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[FFFish]

I think what it is, is a demonstration that Linus doesn't give two shits for what Microsoft has to say. In other words, Linus has no respect whatsoever for Mundie. The man isn't worth the effort it would take to write a respectful rebuttal.

As a minor aside, the opposite of love is not hate. Both hate and love are strong emotions: flipsides of the very same coin. Love and hate both indicate that you really, strongly care.

The opposite of love, and of hate, is apathy. It's not caring, in the least.

What I see in most messages is that everyone cares enough about Microsoft to hate them...

--

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[hey!]

Your right - I may have overstated my point (or not been clear enough). As a personal aside; I am generally polite and respectfull of strangers. I am not rude in public - i dont swear at waitersses/waiters. I didnt really mean to suggest otherwise.

I expect that you fell into the same trap that Linus did -- it's easy to drop into brain-dump mode when you're typing on a computer and say things you'd never say in public to somebody's face.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[hey!]

Respect is earned, not just given out of hand, and the statements that Mundie is making certainly don't give me any reason to grant him respect.

Some forms of respect are earned; others are not "given out of hand" but are every human being's due. If you don't believe this, then at the very least consider that the way you treat others reflects on you. Social psychologists have found that when you talk about somebody else's shortcomings, people tend to attribute the same shortcomings to you.

You should also consider the effect that the way you treat somebody has on how people process your position. Abe Lincoln was a very effective lawyer, whose favorite tactic was to concede everything he new to be irrelevant so that he could make a bigger impression using his strongest argument. Following this tactic, there's absolutely no reason to personally attack somebody from a position of strength -- it just distracts from your strongest position. Linus's response is a perfect example of this. Many people coming into this argument from the outside and reading superficially through it will be most struck by the "stinking the place up" rhetoric, which is the weakest link in the whole piece.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[MadAhab]

Here here. The layer of bullshit is so thick that it's more and more rare to find people who can cut through it... Kinda reminds me of an old George Carlin routine that traces the path of military language from "Shell shock" through "battle fatigue" to "post-traumatic stress disorder". The cloaking is not accidental; it's there to hide very nasty realities.

The truth is that you can't fight it with language on the same level; blunt words are needed.

You can't say "Lasting innovation in computing has more often been acheived by solidifying the gains of public research institutions into a lingua franca via the appropriate standards bodies than it has via proprietary extensions enshrined in the standard forms of intellectual property; patents, copyright, and trade secrets protected by non-disclosure agreements." The PHBs at whom Mundie directs his fear-mongering have fallen asleep. You can say "Mundie is a lunatic. Open Source created the Internet and E-mail, which I hear even Bill Gates uses. Microsoft didn't even invent windows. Mundie doesn't wear a funny hat and stick his hand between his jacket buttons, does he?"

Allchin sounds like a genius next to Mundie. I guess with Ballmer kicked upstairs, Microsoft is still looking to fill the position of Loudmouth Attack Dog.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[OmegaDan]

is that more or less of a personal attack then mundie bashing free software with arguments he surely dosen't believe -- to benifit (sp?) himself ??

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[connorbd]

Call it spin if you want...

I don't know if I'd call Linus' comment at the end a personal attack, actually. Given that he's focused solely on what Mundie said, seems to me his intent is strictly to criticize the statement. Not tactfully, mind you.

/Brian

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[hey!]

Mundie is really just a talking head - paid for his white teeth and quick wit - why should some dishonest puppet be given respect?

How about because some form of respect should be the default attitude grown ups take towards other human beings?

Respect means lots of things. Some of them have to be earned: respect for business or technical acumen. Other forms should be extended to everyone, such as the respect of basic courtesy; the respect of being heard with an open mind.

By the way I agree with you about PR-speak, but for a reason that also covers schoolyard taunting: it is speech that is designed purely to achieve an effect, not to communicate the truth.

I'm not that disappointed in Linus though. E-mails are regarded by most normal folks as informal and not for the record. Linus is usually more circumspect in formal interviews or speeches. You have to be more careful with journalists. Journalists deal in the same speech-as-blunt-instrument practices as PR people, except they are more interested in the magnitude than the direction of the response.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[RedOregon]

Call a spade a spade. I prefer the direct honesty to a roundabout attack, not mentioning names, but implying snidely without coming right out and saying what you feel.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus

[SubtleNuance]

This is a rather personal attack...but the last remark was at best childish. Stick with the issues. I don't believe Mundie/Microsoft made any such direct remarks about Linus...

I completely disagree. Humanity has cloaked itself in a thick layer of Bullshit and PR speak. This is cased by the palm-pusher corporate types who seek to maintain a fine 'artificially constructed' reality that is suitable to their Marketing Plan(TM).

I say fuck it all - if Mundie is a jackass - I say we openly SAY IT! This is reality - not a fucking Game Show.

Mundie is really just a talking head - paid for his white teeth and quick wit - why should some dishonest puppet be given respect? Because of his Job Title? I would assert that Mr. Mundie has done nothing to earn our respect (in spite of his impressive jobtitle - which i say is irrelevant). Mr. Mundie is a blatant liar and a despicable person, his very character is soiled by this display of shallowness and greed.

The people cited in Linus' email are people deserving of respect - they have made contributions to humanity, and by most accounts did so with passion and vigour. Mr. Mundie is a lap-dog, deserving of only ire and loathing.

This is not flaimbait. I am suggesting that people start re-evaluating who is regarded well in public - lets re-asses how we choose our 'leaders' - and most certainly; lets call a spade a spade.

Did Linus get Mundie's argument?

[mi]

I don't think, Mundie objects to climbing the shoulders of the giants. I don't think, he even objects to MicroSoft's own shoulders being used by someone else.

His idea is, that such giants should be able to control, who uses their shoulders and how they are compensated for such use. And I can agree with that.

Mind you, you can not use Linus' shoulders either, unless you are willing to share yours.

The accents in the Mundie's speach do stink, of course, but Linus' response is misdirected, IMO.

Re:Did Linus get Mundie's argument?

[CrackElf]

Ahh, but ms is not a giant (in terms of innovation, not net assets) and they are standing on a lot of shoulders, who they are not paying, and who believed in the science, and who freely published their works. Seeing another entity on shoulders far away, ms loudly protests that the other entity is not charging money for their product, and thus is invalid, ignoring the fact that ms is, in fact, using technology invented by ppl who gave it back to the community. Now, dont get me wrong, i dont blame them for trying to turn a profit. I blame them for attacking the very community that provided them with the means to do what they do. I would like to see ms do without the prompt, ASCII, mice, a graphical interface, the tree structure of directories, and all of the other things that it uses from the cs community.
-CrackElf

Linus the wicked

[Ergo2000]

At the article detailing Linus' response, I noticed this particular passage:

When Mundie wants you to think about all the work that companies have done in order to get patents, he also wants you to forget about all the work done by people like Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr, Leonardo da Vinci and a lot of other people who have done a lot more for humanity than most companies have ever done.

There is a huge difference between an observation of the laws of the universe (such as observing the composition of an atom or speculating that E=mc^2) and creating practical utilizations of those realities. It's a rather silly comparison.

In practical terms understanding the human body should not be patentable (i.e. like the absurd gene arguments that have gone on), yet if from that knowledge a drug company creates a chemical manipulator that cures cancer, that SHOULD be patentable. As always those against IP have the luxury of living in a society with all of the benefits of IP while superimposing their beliefs. (In other words a large number of you IP fanatics would never have been born as your ancestors would be dead if it weren't for the IP carrot at the end of the drug research stick)

Re:quote

[Phillip2]

"What you just described was the foundation of the Anglican Church, which is one later branch of Protestantism. "

My apologies. Yes of course you are correct. From the context though you will see that I was talking about protestantism as it exists in Northern Ireland. Or rather just Ireland as clearly Henry VIII was pre-partition. The "protestant" community in this sense is essentially Anglican.

"The differences in doctrine are deep and persistant. If you're curious about them, go find Luther's major works on the web (they are out there) and read them"

For one reasons or another I do know most of them. As is the situation on the ground in NI though you often find the reality is very different. Generally speaking I find that the major differences in doctrine between proddie and catholic in this country (the UK) relate to something much more serious than transubstianition, or original sin. Namely which football team you support.

Phil

Re:quote

[Phillip2]

"Since when did loathing Catholics/Jews mean anything to the principles he uncovered?"

And since when did I say that it did? Newton was a good scientist and mathematician. That he was a bigotted shit does not impact on this.

"In my view, those views of Newton are quite uninteresting."

And yet you choose to post on the matter?

"Offtopic"

Maybe. It was just a simple comment that the quote was not quite as magnanimous as it might seem. Its certainly relevant to the judgement about who might leave the worst stink about the place.

Phil

Re:quote

[sabine]

Yeah...at least he's letting other people see it though. ;) Must be nice to have $30.1 million to toss around... ~sabine

Hahahahahahah!!!

[Placido]

omfg! rotflmao! Ohhh my sides hurt!

I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less.

That has got to go in a hall of fame somewhere!


Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"

Furthermore

[ciole]

A good book on the subject of ethnobotany, "Tale of a Shaman's Apprentice" claims that over three quarters of the world's pharmaceuticals are based on compounds derived from plants.

Now, i imagine that researching naturally occurring alkaloids is a hell of a lot cheaper than exploring & testing the huge range of possible synthetic designer drugs, and given the above i'd say is probably done a lot more often.

Just suggesting that our perception of what is involved in 'creating' new drugs may be inflated.

Re:I beg to differ from Linus...

[local($punk)]

And it's expected that you feel this way, since you are obviously falling down togther with M$, while you truly believe it's relatively not that bad. In order to understand the M$ opposition, you need to rip yourself away from them, and take a wide, outside look at the entire going on. You'll then be able to make a more conscious decision. I can now say that it's good to live in the US, but I "say" this because I've never had the chance to step out of my situation and evaluate all sides of it. Anyway, good luck, but please don't bet to differ, because you are not qualified to do so.
--------------

Re:It's too bad . . .

[local($punk)]

I believe that you are missing the entire point. Why do you think that OSS needs respect in the business world? Why do you think that OSS needs to succeed beyond the Slashdot population? Who are you to determine what OSS needs? Linux, in this case, is being managed by Linus out of his bedroom, in his free time. If Linus (who by the way you can't push out of the picture, since he is the creator of the OS and can pull the plug anytime he wants) wanted Linux to succeed in the "business world" he would have started a Linux company or something, looking for cash. Linux was never meant to fall in the hands of money sharks like IBM and Redhat. It was intended to be a free OS, which people can improve and pass around in their spare time. It's people like you that are bringing destruction to OSS by thinking that money is what should be the purpose of all things. Linus' response is the best response to M$'s OS bashing that I've seen in a long time. Original and sincere. No promotional bullshit.
--------------

Re:Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[pezmerchant]

Ack. Rather than do an exact quote (to spare me from storing such garbage in my buffer), but Bill Gates as early as 1995 saw the the Internet? Hmm. What happend to the 1995 quote "The Internet will never amount to anything". Or something dogedly similar. He failed to mention they rewrote and rereleased that book after they realized the Internet boat was leaving without them.

And oh yeah, let us not forget that OSS had nothing to do with the Internet.

This is bad. the reason why is a whole lot of people will believe these lies.

Heh, here is a challenge. Tell everyone the truth, and let them decide on choice of software.

Oh yeah, I forgot, they asked marketing for what the current truth is, and they haven't finished it yet.

Seems like proof Newton was NOT sarcastic

[brlewis]

Unless the writer of that essay fabricated some of his material, it seems a solid case that Newton was not being sarcastic; he was writing in genuine humility and admiration.

They can co-exist, but not everyone wants that

[brlewis]

There certainly areas where non-free software can fill a niche and meet a need until some point in the future when free software gets there. But for a lot of people, the motivation for free software is to get rid of MSFT products, their lack of interoperability, and upgrade treadmills.

Re:Giants

[presearch]

If Microsoft has not got further, it must be beacuse of all the giants standing on its shoulders: DoJ, Linux, IBM, Gnu, Netscape, Word Perfect, Lotus, Borlans, Apple, Corel..

Not to mention the rape of SGI via Irix vs. NT and OpenGL vs. DirectX by Belluzzo,
and the rape of Sega via Dreamcast/WinCE resulting in the Xbox.

Plus buying out and shelving the work of Alvy Ray Smith and Jim Blinn. Turner Whitted too I think....

-Just because Unix sofware engineers can, it doesn't mean they can on Mac OS X.

Capitalism works.

[SecurityGuy]

Until we can divorce the pursuit of capital from advances in science, we are doomed to have any advance kepted restained by the barriers of the a accumulation of that wealth. If at any point, an advancement is deemed to be a money killer, it will be abandoned. [Napster being a slightly trollish example]

And if we divorce the pursuit of advances in science from the rewards of a capitalist society, who will make those advances? Look at those who are doing it now, and ask how many would have chosen that path had there not been a financial reward? Corporate R&D is profit driven, obviously, and University research is profit driven. Nearly everyone building the society you're so fortunate to live in don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it because you choose to pay them well to do so.

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[praedor]

Yet...the information was released for ALL to read and make use of in the proper, NORMAL, scientific fashion. The field of science does not accept "closed source information".

The M$ model would hold that Watson and Crick should have taken out an IP on their correct calculation and thereby charged a fee for anyone who made use of, or spoke of, the double helix.

Science is all about "find out what's up and publish it for the world to see", not, "find out what's up and patent it before anyone else does and charge anyone who makes use of the information."

...I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie.

[Linux2Mars]

from the article: >I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years,
>but despite that he stinks up the room less.

huh, that's harsh...You got to love him for that :-).
Now if onely he would state similar comments about those who stink the world for real...

The REAL sticking point that MS hates...

[HaeMaker]

MS is famous for stealing technology. Mac technology, Stac technology, BSD technology (their TCP/IP stack is bug for bug identical to BSD), Spyglass technology (hmm... or did they buy that?). What pisses them off is they CAN'T STEAL OSS. If they try, there are a whole bevvy of IP lawyers ready to kill them.

Re:Dead scientists love open source?

[teatime]

it's very convenient to invoke an abstract concept like the IP of other countries and companies when they are not around to speak for themselves to pimp your products like Microsoft.
The point is these scientists shared their findings freely without the expectation of being rewarded. Same as open source. If you can't infer the connections maybe you need to take a class in critical thinking.

Oh come on!

[kenthorvath]

Obviously you are not an Amateur (HAM) radio operator. These people basically pioneered the technology that you use in your cell phone and satellite systems and you have them to thank when you get lost on 34th st and whip out you Palm VII with GPA built into it. That being said, having a hobby can only take you so far, eventually you need to devote your time to something that can put food in your children's bellies. And you had better believe that Isaac Newton was richer than God and didn't have to worry about finding "real" work. But then maybe Mr. Gates and Mr. Cox should follow that example. BTW: is the 'x' in Alan Cox pronounced like the 'x' in TeX (i.e. Tech)?

Re:This got me thinking ....

[kenthorvath]

Can you say -- Star Trek? That is the premise of their motivation, is it not? Money doesn't exist and we all serve, but to better the knowledge of mankind.

Re:quote

[gunga]

"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants".

I think this quote was common among medieval scholars, I don't remember whos said it first though (Saint Bernard?).

It was trying to resolve what was seen as a paradox: Ancient Greeks and Roman were supposed to be absolutly superior to people of the middle-age but science could lead to new discoveries.

Go Newton

[morie]

If Linus can only produce such a catchy quote on his own achievement, he will remembered in another 100 years as one of the great Philosophers of computer science. He'll be right up there with Einstein and Newton, also people who understood and produced great quotes.

Unfortunately, there have been many people who were as insightfull but could not produce these great oneliners. Ask the general public about the achievements of Fermi, Van der Waals, Ehrenfest and many others to see what impact a good line has.

Re:Go Newton

[PicassoJones]

I disagree about Fermi. One of my favourite quotations is by him: (paraphrased)

If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd become a botanist.

Re:Is Linus a hypocrite ?

[tmark]

Linus begins his argument with the comment that Mundie's (and hence Microsoft's) claim seem to focus on the assertion that research and development is founded on the principles of "the importance of intellectual property rights"; which is pretty much what Transmeta certainly assumed when they begain their R&D.

And Linus refers to 'some petty "intellectual property rights"', which again, his company would certainly protect vigorously. Moreover, the GPL too attempts to protect these "petty" rights. So if intellectual property rights are "petty", why are they worth protecting at all ? Or did he just call them "petty" so as to sanctimoniously take a moral high ground ?

Disclaimer: I do believe Bill Gates should be sent to prison

Smart as you'll ever be.

[killalldash9]

Just keep this in mind -- if you only read/listen to people you agree with, you're already as wise as you'll ever be.

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[MarkLR]

Considering that it takes 3 to 6 months, a team of thousands and millions of dollars to get a space shuttle ready to fly again I say the Chrysler car is looking quite good.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

But where discoveries require significant investment to bring them to a consumer-ready stage, compensation must be guaranteed for that investment, otherwise there is no incentive other than charity to undertake the work, and the most intelligent minds may not have the funds to obtain the necessary equipment and assistance to leverage their genius - they will need to leverage a future asset to borrow those funds in the present.

The degree to which that is true today is a debatable question. Even in the manufacturing industry (I have personal experience from the bearing industry) patents have become less important over the past ten years, even there the battle cry is "short time to market."

As I had it explained to me; "today applying for patents is only interesting as a way to block competitors, and for barter" not actually protecting our investements.

We are of course sidestepping the issue of software here, where the design cost is the only production cost (a good enough approximation). Where indeed the effort required to "bring them to a consumer ready stage" is a totally different animal than in the manufacturing industry. Witness for example Linux, which is already "consumer ready" for many interesting applications, and the success of which would only have been hindered by patent protection.

Stefan,

Microsoft vs. GPL

[necrognome]

See what Andrew Leonard has to say over at Salon:

Meanwhile, Microsoft's plaintive wail over the future of innovation is just a smoke screen. What Microsoft really wants are new markets to dominate, whether they be overseas or on the Net. And apparently the company sees the GPL as standing in the way. But each attempt to demonize the GPL as the enemy of Microsoft-style capitalism risks making the free-software movement stronger instead.

$ vs $$$$

[BroadbandBradley]

add it up. take all the money ever spent by anyone on software, ever.
how much would that be?
billions?
trillions?
Now take the world and slap the greedy rich bastards around until they all realize that if we work together, we ALL benifit.
put that pile of trillions of dollars to good use for the GLOBAL comunity, for things like housing, healthcare, art, music, cleaner energy....(add your item here). this goes way beyond bits and bytes, open source thinking is about securing your efforts so that they can be used by anyone as long as they provide the same benifit back to the world. What will we do if the humane gene mapping becomes intellectual property? Hope M$ doesn't buy that company out.

Re:Leonardo

[barrym]

guess M$ must be branching out to toiletries now ...

maybe Windows XP stands for eXtra Protection ?

Re:Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[grammar fascist]

I just hope M$ doesn't sick the lawyers on him for libel against Mundie.

They could, and it would be expensive for Linus, but they wouldn't win. For what he says to be libel, the listeners have to have a "reasonable expectation" that what he says is the truth. What Linus said was figurative, which any "reasonable man" (I love that "reasonable" word in law) would not view as a fact.

That said, I love the statement. Comparing the "stinkiness" of a corporate shark to the "stinkiness" of a rotting corpse is just great.

Linus Forgets Apple Owns Newton

[Red Neckerson]

Whoa, whoa there Linus, the world doesn't own Newton, Apple does: http://www.newton.com. Come on, man. Get your facts straight.

Re:Disappointed w/ Linus - let's sue!!

[kipple]

This is a rather personal attack. I would concede that the rest of Linus' remarks were fine since he was responding to Microsoft's attitude towards open source development, but the last remark was at best childish.

Perhaps Microsoft could sue him. And patent the insult, so we'll be forced to check a 'patent-free' insult dictionary when we want to say something nasty to somebody. ...open source is the only way to avoid wasting resources in reinventing the wheel..

Re:quote

[Dragoness Eclectic]

"After all, isn't that why it split in the first place?"

Not really. Henry VIII needed a divorce because his wife appeared to be barren. As the catholic church did not allow divorce the easiest solution was to invent a new religion. He certainly had no ideological reason for doing so. Indeed as far as we can tell he was a "devout" catholic, which was why he was awarded the "FD" title by the pope (It translates as Defender of the Faith and is still in use today).

As a former Catholic turned Lutheran, I can tell you that your view of the Reformation is a bit... off. What you just described was the foundation of the Anglican Church, which is one later branch of Protestantism. The Reformation, which was the birth of Protestantism, didn't start with Martin Luther, but he was the first one to really make it stick. (Earlier reformers like John Hus mostly managed to get burnt at the stake without inspiring any permanent changes.)

"They differ on fundamental Christian doctrines."

The Christian doctrine is really a minor issue in Northern Ireland. Its more about tribalism. Its for this reason that you can't be an atheist in NI. You have to be either a protestant atheist, or a catholic atheist.

That may be true of NI, but it's certainly not true of Protestant vs. Catholic in general. The differences in doctrine are deep and persistant. If you're curious about them, go find Luther's major works on the web (they are out there) and read them--he outlines the major doctrinal problems he had with the Church back then, and very few of those issues have changed in the intervening 5 centuries. About the only things that have changed are the selling of indulgences (no longer done) and allowing services and Bibles in the venacular (permitted finally in the 20th century). Everything else Martin Luther objected to is still a practice of the Catholic Church.

Just to confuse everyone, there are at least two, maybe three different groups of Protestant doctrine--the Lutheran, as inspired by Martin Luther, the Reformed, as inspired primarily by the writings and sermons of John Calvin and Zwingli, and whatever the Anglican church does, which I think is more like Catholic or Lutheran. Further information is left to the student as an exercise in research.

Software vs. hardware

[dcavanaugh]

Granted, the hardware industry has done a little better than than the software industry.

Ethernet, busses in general (ISA, PCI), Video, SCSI & IDE, the list goes on and on. As you state, it's easy to build in a nominal fee when hardware is being produced. After all, no one is going to give away hardware. Notice how the most successful hardware standards have nominal licensing fees, while the companies that fiercely guarded their patents [Digital Equipment] eventually got clobbered.

As far as I know, DHCP has been around far longer than Microsoft's involvement in networking, so I wonder what they might have contributed. The word "Microsoft" does not appear in RFC 1534, 1533, 1497, 1395, or 1084. If they made a contribution, it was after DHCP was well-established. Having said all that, I have to give them some credit for their role in XML and LDAP.

In general, I think the open source model generates better products and more innovation than closed source. If Microsoft wants to prove me wrong by producing the best software in the world (at a reasonable cost), be my guest.

To the extent that open source threatens the profitability of Microsoft, I say they were never "entitled" to profitability in the first place. Besides, they could always redirect their energies to those applications where open source has not been all that effective. Adapting to change is how companies survive.

Re:Be fair...

[freek_daddy]

You make some great points that really, really need to be heard more often in these insular forums.

Thanks for having the balls to post it and taking the time to follow up on the replies.

Re:Be fair...

[blamanj]

Be accurate

The Internet. The internet is cool stuff. but really, how useful or widespread would it be if not for MS?

AOL did a heck of a lot more for network communication than MS. Yes, it was only partially open to the net, but it was just a matter of time.

The World Wide Web

Remember Netscape? The Web was well established before MS relized what was going on.

non-technical persons...browser as "standard equipment"

Remember Apple? And the only reason the browser is "standard" was a business decision to destroy Netscape.

Yes, MS does deserve some credit. But they are almost entirely business practices, not technical ones. The only technical innovation I can think of is Visual Basic. As much as VB is reviled by "real programmers", it made it possible for mere mortals to tackle simple Windows programming. And I'm not 100% sure, but I think VB was actually acquired by MS, not developed in house.

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[Bedouin X]

LMAO

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[rampant poodle]

Actually Thomas Edison's business model was pretty much: 1. Identify a need. 2. Invent/develop a product. 3. Patent it. 4. Sell it. (Hated competition too as evidenced by his bizzare fight to stick with DC power transmission) One of the smartest of American inventors but hardly an Open Sorcerer of the RMS mold.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[RexxFiend]

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

actually you will probably find that the people who design the best toys do exactly that - ie for the the pure creative fun of it. Granted they work for companies who will take that work and make money from it, hopefully giving the designer/inventor money to live in the process. IMHO the best toys are made by people who do it for the fun, not the money.


A crash reduces
Your expensive computer

Re:Linus ignored the mis-statements regarding the

[KenRH]

You must take care not to confuse GPL ( http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html ) with LGPL ( http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html ).

If the libaries is licences with GPL you will have to GLP you product if it linkes with it. If the libary is under the LGPL wou can link with the libary without having to (L)GPL your application.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[KenRH]

I agree, but I don't think you're going to find the same community spirit willing to purchase the factory space necessary to mass-produce an open-source car.

To have such a project everyone woud have to live in a short distance from the factory, or every participant to the project woud have to have his own workshop where he coud produce all the parts nessesary from the blueprints, assemble them, test the car, find bugs, redesig parts, test new design and den send new desig back to project. And everybody woud have to know how to do this.

What makes open source possible is the fact that I can download the source to a project, possibly a software equvalent to an 18 wheel truck, compile it and test it (most often) in minutes. I can participate and contribute without having to get my hands into every part of the application.

Grain of Salt

[mrparker]

I like the kernel that Linus started, but I take anything that he has to say with a grain of salt. Remember, he works for a company that openly patents software.

Don't get me wrong - what he said was true - but it would have more meaning for me if someone like RMS had said it.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[dachshund]

That's really cool. No, I wasn't even thinking of something that sophisticated. I was just referring to the lego-printers that repeatedly print layer-upon-layer of plastic onto a base. But I was only referring to it as a starting point for some much more sophisticated building machines, and what you mention sounds a lot more interesting.

Combine that with all of the recent innovations in paper printed circuits (there was an article on printed paper cellphones recently), along with what's going on in printed organic LCD displays, and you could produce some neat computing devices. And maybe more, eventually.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[dachshund]

I agree, but I don't think you're going to find the same community spirit willing to purchase the factory space necessary to mass-produce an open-source car.

No, but you might see a group of people combining to create the blueprints for one. Of course, a car is a bad example because it's so manufacture-intensive. Open Source is really able to take off because it is completely information-based. However, as much of the creation of any product revolves purely around information-manipulation (people design products every day without ever visiting the factory), my point is simply that the manufacturing stages may be the cork that holds the genie in the bottle.

Perhaps someday a hard-goods company will appear that takes advantage of Open Source design. I have no idea what it would make, and how it would make its developers happy, but it's not entirely out of the question.

Re:whatever

[lordvolt2k]

Well, the USA is *supposed* to be free and all, you know, that constitution thing some old guys wrote up long time ago ? I say Linus made a good remark. Hell, he can say what he wants. He owes nothing to no one. If you feel what he said was offensive or otherwise bad, well, thats your opinion. I for one believe it is time to stop letting MS bully the open source community. If corporations wouldnt take the MS bullying, they wouldnt have the ridiculous license hassles to deal with.

Im waiting for Microsoft's response to Linus's. Are we at the beginning rounds of what could be an all out war-- MS vs. World?

Just my 0.01 (Damn Market Conditions! )

The Ultimate Goal...

[kievit]

...of MicroSoft & similar companies is to make money. Selling software is their means to attain this goal. The only thing that counts is maximum financial profit. You make more profit (at least, on the short term) with closed source.

The Ultimate Goal of OSS developers is to create Beautiful Software. Money is a secundary issue (you need to buy a computer and a cup of coffee). The only thing that counts is the pleasure of programming and the quality of the result. The result gets a lot better with an open source (for obvious reasons).

OK: if MS's software is not good the customers will complain. That is a modest urge for MS to improve the software (cheepo comment: "not so much urge in case of monopoly"), otherwise the customers will buy less. The quality of the software is determined balancing development cost and customer dissatisfaction.

OK: you can try to make money from OSS. But that is not the first issue (for OSS developers).

I think this summarizes many of the issues. Somebody wrote 'do not blame capitalism' or so. This is not about blame. This is about choosing priorities; do I write software in order to earn money or just because I love it? (Both, in many cases, but which one is in the first place?)

Mundy tries to tell us that OSS does not produce good, reliable software. That is nonsense. The only point is that you can make less money with OSS than with CSS (closed source software). Of course he is not honest about this; after all, commerce has nothing to do with telling the truth (except when there is a financial urge to tell the truth, under legal threats for instance).

Cox and Torvalds point out how the passion for programming of OSS developers results in better software than greedy companies can ever produce. But OSS advocates should also have the courage to say aloud that for OSS making money is simply not the first priority at all. That is not really pleasant to hear for the OSS-based companies, but it should be admitted.

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[frozenray]

The classic example, of course, is Watson and Cricke (sp?) celebrating the error of another Linus, Pauling in this case, when he announced that the structure of DNA was a triple helix. Pauling had made a simple calculation mistake, which thanks to Pauling's son they were aware of. Rather than notify Pauling prior to his publishing his information, they kept quiet and continued on their own researches.

Really? I have never heard this one. Got a reference?

Straigth from the horse's mouth: James Watson, The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA.

Been a long time since I've read it, but I remember it was a close race between Pauling and his team at Caltech (IIRC). BTW, Watson and Crick relied on Rosalind Franklin's excellent x-ray crystallography work for their discovery - without her, the nobel prize would have probably gone to Pauling.

Raymond

(p.s. see also this page)

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[bzcpcfj]

"Really? I have never heard this one. Got a reference? "

_The Double Helix_ was the name of the book that describes the process (and the incident). It was later made into a (made for tv?) film that starred Jeff Goldblum as Watson.

Newton was being sarcastic

[bzcpcfj]

I certainly agree with Linus Torvald's comments in general, but his use of Newton's quote as an example of humility and appreciation of what has gone before is misplaced.

Newton was, in fact, responding sarcastically to claims that he had stolen ideas from either Leibnitz or Hooke (I forget which).

Furthermore, Linus' science analogy is not the best one to use because the history of scientific research is filled with examples of closed-mindedness, hoarding of information, and general nastiness.

The classic example, of course, is Watson and Cricke (sp?) celebrating the error of another Linus, Pauling in this case, when he announced that the structure of DNA was a triple helix. Pauling had made a simple calculation mistake, which thanks to Pauling's son they were aware of. Rather than notify Pauling prior to his publishing his information, they kept quiet and continued on their own researches.

Hopefully, the Open Source movement won't stoop to such levels.

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[Alanus]

Newton isn't actually a good example: He kept calculus in his drawer for years before publishing it.

Furthermore it shouldn't be forgotten that he was paid with tax money...

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[MouseR]

both essentially came up with calculus at the same time

2000 years after Archimedes did.

Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[Lars Arvestad]

The classic example, of course, is Watson and Cricke (sp?) celebrating the error of another Linus, Pauling in this case, when he announced that the structure of DNA was a triple helix. Pauling had made a simple calculation mistake, which thanks to Pauling's son they were aware of. Rather than notify Pauling prior to his publishing his information, they kept quiet and continued on their own researches.

Really? I have never heard this one. Got a reference?

In any case, while a lot of actions and behaviour in science is selfish, it works on the openess principle. If you want people to believe you, you have to tell them how you did it. These methods can then be verified and refined, much like how we want to see open source work. I think the analogy is quite valid.

Lars
__

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[Tim C]

Newton was, in fact, responding sarcastically to claims that he had stolen ideas from either Leibnitz or Hooke (I forget which).

That would probably be Leibnitz; if I remember my Maths classes correctly, they both essentially came up with calculus at the same time, but it was Newton's "version" that ended up being adopted.

(Of course, I am dredging long-term memory now, so I may be way off :-) )

Cheers,

Tim

Re:Newton was being sarcastic

[mr]

Hopefully, the Open Source movement won't stoop to such levels.

Too late.

You have Joe Barr creating press that makes it look like Linus said 'FreeBSD is the work of a small group of programmers'. Linus said no such thing.

Richard Stallman calling himself 'chief architect of GNU/Linux' (letter to The Reg)

A sig here on /. that claims Linus called BSD developers 'childish whiners' (never seen the actual source of it)

Some clown who posts for 2 years 'bsd is dying'

GNU/linux vs calling it Linux

Comments about TdR (OpenBSD fame) by others

And on and on and on.

To date there have been no known suicides or murders over open source...but give it the same number of years as science has been around, and there will be a body count.

Re:Conspiracy theory: The MS Tar Baby

[tdye]

One interesting point that I think has been missed is that Microsoft isn't interested in making complex software and creating revenue from supporting it. Their stated goal has been to make software that anyone can use. All their development has been aimed at this target (with various degrees of success).

If they actually did create an OS so easy anyone could use it, they'd never sell any support!

The best OSS products are going to be complex tools that solve complex problems. Easy-to-use solutions to simple problems could never make any OSS company a dime. Could anyone sell support for an open source version of WinAmp? What if RealAudio's premium player was OSS? Could they make any money from supporting or customizing it?

I would argue that all programs are niche products. Name me some gemeral purpose software! Even some complex software would never fly as OSS. I work for a company that creates data modelling and profiling software. It's a complex task that we significantly simplify. In fact, we've streamlined the process so much and been thorough enough that we rarely ever get feature-related support calls or RFEs. We could never give this product away to our customers and sell support or customization.

Flexible code that can be used for multiple purposes, that's where OSS companies will shine. The Linux OS itself is a perfect example. OSS Groupware will be a viable product, but what can you do with a open source word processor that will generate revenue?

Re:Burining source charge question:

[tdye]

No, because you can't prevent redistribution of the source code and still be "open".

As far as a reasonable charge, your customers (the market) decide. If they really think that $1 million for access to your codebase is worth it, they'll pay it.

If not, you won't get any customers.

Re:Be fair...

[parseError]

M$ has been a catalyst for much of what's happened in the last few years in open source - a lot of people have worked hard on developing good, open software. It'd be giving them too much credit to say this a main reason developers work on open source; but they helped build our current culture ( and the corresponding anti-M$ culture ).
I think in the end, M$'s role will be remembered as an incidental boost to a stronger, healthier - and yes, sustainable - developement and technology culture. It's an exciting time.

without dark, there is no light

Miscrosoft's Contribution

[parseError]

M$ has been important for much of what's happened in the last few years - but not like they imagine.

Many people have worked hard (read passionately) to develop good, open software. I think it'd be giving M$ too much credit to say people do this mainly because of M$, but they clearly have affected our culture ( and corresponding anti-M$ culture).

M$ will likely be remembered in the end for an incidental role in helping precipitate a stronger and healthier open development and technology culture ( I didn't just say open software ).

bill,steve and craig: thank you for your unashamed greed, it has opened my eyes and helped me play nicer with others.

--
without darkness, there is no light.

Re:OS hatred wars

[AX.25]

Yes, but Microsoft makes sure that the only choice is Windows. When you can go to your local consumer junk emporium and buy a computer with either Linux, Windows or whatever then come back and we can talk about who hates who.

Re:Be fair...

[fors]

The thing is that at every stage of the PC revolution there have been arguably better and easier to use alternatives to MS software and OS's. CPM, DR-Dos, PC-Dos, GEOS, GEM, and OS2 are just some of the examples. MS was late to the game with internet support and didn't do it very well for quite a while. Their closed source outlook is one of the things that held them back. Microsoft wiped out all competitors through a combination of FUD, exageration, and blatantly breaking other companies products ability to work with their OS's. For most of their career but especially true for the begining, their ability to break other software has been their biggest asset. It created the cash cow of MS-Dos and gave them eventual total control of the desktop.

Re:I think linus' reply is a bit out of focus

[fors]

Especially since MS is a past master at making incompatible versions of software so they could force people to upgrade.

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[fors]

For Open Source to have a chance in the court of public opinion neither ESR or RMS can be the primary spokesman in this. They both have points that would be way to easy for MS to exploit to make Open Source look bad. Linus on the other hand can do this quite well and make MS look very bad in the process. He can come across as an average guy just trying to make computers easier to use and cheaper. He has never tried to capitalize on Linux and has made good. He has a beautiful wife and daughters. He stands up and says what he thinks without being obnoxious about it and the public will love that perception of him. Bill Gates will come off as the head of the evil empire that keeps sending his goons out to deal with this upstart. Each time they get roundly trashed and more public awareness grows. Eventually people will be paying attention to the news just to see the latest in the war of words between the two sides. If that happens MS will have already lost. It will be just a matter of time.

Re:quote

[mazor]

BTW, Liebniz' calculus is in broader use today then Newton's calculus. Same ideas, but very different notation. Newtonian notation is typically used today in the physics, but the folks up in the math department at your university use Liebniz notation.

--mazor
(certified and pedigreed in Liebniz notation)

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[tb3]

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.
I have to disagree with you there. The Wright brothers weren't in it for the money, neither were the pioneers of automobile development (according to the History Channel), and it certainly sounds like Woz built the Apple I for the fun of it, not to get stinkin' rich.
People innovate for the fun of it, people exploit for the money. So Boeing is big because of the early flight pioneers, Ford just applied Colt's princples of mass production to cars, and Steve Jobs saw a way to make money with his friend's toy.
-----------------

Re:Leonardo

[tb3]

Exactly right. Check the Corbis web site for all the art you thought was in the public domain, but you now have to pay for. And although the site says that Corbis is a privately owned comapny, nowhere does it say that Gates owns it.
Dennis Miller was right, "Bill Gates is a monocle and a persian cat away from being a Bond villian."
-----------------

Re:If Einstein was r&d'ing under a business model.

[tb3]

No, you can never read too much Iain M. Banks. I have everything he's written and it's all brilliant. Make sure you get Look to Windward, his latest. It's only available in the U.K. right now, the US imprint should arrive soon.
-----------------

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[dswan69]

Capitalism may not be perfect, but it's the best system around, and it's treated us very well.

Pure capitalism is not the best system around. Even the degree of capitalism practiced in the US is far too vicious and selfish to be tolerated by any civilised society. The best is a free market system combined with a robust social support system providing support for the unemployed, free education, free health care, strong employee-oriented labour laws etc. Of course this requires being willing to pay a reasonable level of tax and give some consideration to others; it also requires that the government targets its funds at what is important instead of military hardware and that it ruthlessly eliminates bureaucracy to keep its systems efficient.

Science being destroyed by business

[dswan69]

Sadly science is being destroyed by government stupidity and business interests. I grew up in a police state and for years universities fought for freedom in what they researched, but today the government would rather spend money on weapons instead of education and universities are forced to go to businesses for funding, so they end up only doing research that has some immediate financial benefit. The same problem exists in the US - the government wastes money on the military, but cuts funding for education and general research.

Read the GPL

[myschae]

In the preamble of the GPL, it sets forth the following explanation:

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

That's a direct quote from the license itself. As has been said in previous posts, nothing about the license prevents you from making a living from your hard work. Just allow others who have talents in that direction to use what you've made to build on your contribution - like you've built on the contributions of others. This is not socialism or communism. You're not asked to work only for the common good. If you can make a buck from your contribution.. more power to you! You're not asked to pay those who's work you've borrowed, just as others who borrow your work won't be asked to pay you.

If you're concerned that someone will take what you've done and improve it... beat them to it! Why, if you're a pioneer in a field, I would imagine that would give you quite a head start.

But, don't take my word for it (or anyone else's either). Draw your own conclusions. The full text of the license can be found here:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Linus Go back to programming, not writing

[Jesus IS the Devil]

I just lost a ton of respect for Linus. His reply was nothing more than a kid shouting and screaming. Want to argue, fine, do it with facts, theories, and proof. That last part about the "stink" really did it for me. Linus, go back to your computer and program, because you're no good with words.


---------
Did you just fart? Or do you always smell like that?

Re:Linus Go back to programming, not writing

[theFlux]

Fight fire with fire, right? Microsoft slung the mud first! What do you think happened when all the VCs of the world read M$'s statement? They reconsidered funding some young upstarts!! You think some "shouting and screaming" is inappropriate? No way!

ding-ding...yes, folks, its...

[BabylonMink]

Celebrity Death Match! In the copyright corner we have Craig Mundie and in the copyleft corner we have Linus Torvalds.

Oooh, Mundie attacks Torvalds with the ingenuity and proprietry ideas of the 25000 Microsoft employees. Oooh, Torvalds counters with the toughts, ideas, code and dedication of hundreds of thousands of talented people the world over. Thats gotta hurt, Fred.

game over.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[dwheeler]

Open source/free software systems are clearly demonstrating that, at least for software, it is possible to develop large systems using an approach similar to the scientific approach of sharing discoveries. To some, this is counter-intuitive, but it's still demonstrably true.

I actually measured the number of source lines of code (SLOC) of a GNU/Linux distribution (Red Hat Linux 6.2). I then used those measures to estimate the person-years and dollar costs necessary to build the same system (if it was developed in a proprietary manner). You can see the results in my paper Estimating Linux's Size at http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc. Here's a brief summary:

1. This Linux distribution includes well over 17 million physical source lines of code (SLOC).
2. Over 4,500 person-years of development time would have been required to build this distribution by conventional proprietary means.
3. It would have cost over $600 million (in year 2000 dollars) to develop this distribution in the U.S. using conventional proprietary means.

No doubt newer distributions would be even larger, with even larger costs to develop traditionally. Some distributions include many more packages, and I would expect some of them to have cost over $1 billion (U.S., 2000 dollars) to develop using proprietary means.

A little over half of the lines of code in this distribution are licensed using the GPL license. This includes gcc, emacs, many KDE programs, many GNOME programs, and other software that tends to be included on *BSD as well as GNU/Linux systems. Thus, it makes sense for Microsoft to particularly attack the GPL license: Removing software licensed through the GPL would cripple many systems that compete with Microsoft. And clearly the GPL does not fit into Microsoft's business model. The notion, however, that business models different from Microsoft's model are somehow dangerous and need suppression is -- well -- laughable.

Re:quote

[raspUSM]

Last I checked, no one was charging for the use of calculus. Wanting to be credited for creating something is one thing... wanting to be credited with creating something so that you can charge people to use it is something else.

Recount please...

[OSgod]

Please provide an accurate number of contributors to significant open source projects over the last 6 to 12 month period.

Somehow I think you'd have several hundreds of thousands less than hundreds of thousands.

The point? Most open source users are users and contributors are still relatively few. As time goes on if open source has a true impact on the user base the percentage will go down from here.

So let's adopt communims...

[OSgod]

... and starve to death together.

What percentage of open source is coming from non-capitalist countries?

Know your audience...

[OSgod]

and Linus' audience was the /. crowd. He will win few points with the stuffed shirts.

Re:Know your audience...

[Genom]

Although I'm sure Linus knew that /.ers would read his reply, it definitely was not written in technical terms.

Who wouldn't acknowledge that DaVinci, Newton, Einsten, etc... were fundamental to our current understanding of science? I don't think even the marketers would go so far as to scorn their achievements.

Who hadn't heard that quote from Newton before (even if it was WAY back in grade school) - I'd imagine even many business majors would remember that one. It's powerful, and VERY relevant.

Linus' reply was VERY well-written, and I doubt that even the stuffed shirts will disagree with the points that he makes. He may not have responded in financial terms - but the terms he did respond in should be fairly universal.

Even my fiancee, who isn't technically minded, said "wow - he's good" when I read Linus' response to her. I'd say that's a pretty good indicator. =)

Burining source charge question:

[OSgod]

who decides what is a reasonable charge? If I believe my source is going to cost a large amount to maintain and give the binary away cheaply but charge 1,000,000 US for the source with no right to re-distribute the source am I open-sourced?

If Edison was r&d'ing under a business model...

[OSgod]

and he did -- a very successfull business model not unlike some software houses today (long hours, etc.).

Many of the same complaints about Edison are being slung against MS today -- not original, not a new thinker, etc.

What you must remember is Edison was an iterative implementer (see incandescent lamp) who ruled his area of the industry through his personality alone. MS is definately an iterative implementation company not unlike the Edison model. Bill G is not unlike Edison in some ways as well.

Prepare for incoming troll attacks!

Classification

[OSgod]

Giants: IBM, DOJ, Microsoft

Midgets: Linux, GNU

Middlings: Apple, Corel

No longer in existence: Netscape (swallowed by AOL), Borlans (I ssume you meant Borland -- not a player in most any market anymore), Word Perfect (gutted the best word processor in any market and relegated to third tier performance by Corel now).

Re:No different than Microsoft...

[socokid]

He was above it, all the way until the end, just as you said. He just plays the game, he didn't invent it...

Re:Illiterate /.

[socokid]

Has Slashdot considered that users not unlike yourself get more out of it's articles than whether spellings are correct?

Probably.

He could be a lot richer...

[Lethyos]

If Linus really wanted to, he could make himself a bundle off the phenomenon that he triggered in a way. But he chooses not to. You cannot blame the guy for taking a very decent position with Transmeta, for example.

Interesting between the lines message.

[Lethyos]

Linus' response itself is an icon of the open source ideology. Mundie's argument was clearly a myopic fabrication, drawing only from Microsoft's own reality. A limited, unsubstantiated view, lacking in a foundation.

Linus does not even try to sound like any of his argument is even his 'own'. No-no, it's simply a continuation of the principles created by former great thinkers.

Linus himself, a giant to us, stands upon many others. His response is genuine in every sense. Its elegance, hopefully, will generate more thought amongst the masses than Microsoft's tiring, confused argument.

Re:OS hatred wars

[kcelery]

Those people who are forced to use or maintain the Windoz beast should be allowed to exercise therapeutic venting. Those who have a whole day comparing apples to oranges should find activities which does not take up the band-width of the public.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[GreyPoopon]

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

OK, so nobody ever created a PASSENGER aircraft for the joy of doing so, but I think you would have to agree that two well-known bicycle shop owners were primarily motivated by the prospect of a human actually flying when they made their first successful flight in Kitty Hawk.

For those of you who don't know, I'm referring to the Wright brothers.

Re:Be fair...

[foobar2222]

I understand your point, but if McDonalds sells more food than any other company, does that make them the best restaraunts in the world?

Maybe a poor analogy, so here is another question, does that mean they have done the most to end world hunger?

Also maybe a poor analogy, but it gives as much to think about as the Mundie speach in question.

Re:quote

[Tech187]

Cultural Imperialism! That's what you're engagin in!

It was clearly first said by the ancient Chinese scholar Chi Hua-Hua.

(rim-shot)

Re:quote

[Tech187]

Bill Gates, however, owns Da Vinci's lab notebook.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[deaddrunk]

If you say so, although the past 150 years have seen the greatest increase in technological, social and economic growth in the history of the human race, even though governments are 'stealing' from their citizens.

What if...

[ARR0]

...we just got rid of legal restraints on the use of so-called "intellectual property"? If these innovations that Microsoft keeps talking about are really so much in demand, simple economics says that someone would find a way to meet that demand.

I agree that people who do good work have a right to be compensated for it, but isn't there a way to fund the work other than grants and other than guaranteeing some corporation exclusive rights to use the result?

I think the answer to that question is important not only for the software industry, but also for other industries that depend heavily on R&D, like pharmaceuticals and biotech. Look at what happened in South Africa a couple of weeks ago. If it's true that the only way to get new AIDS drugs is to guarantee some company exclusive rights to the result, we're in big trouble. There must be another way.

I also think a lot of the recent controversies over the marketing of drugs and genetically engineered seeds stem from the belief on the part of these corporations that "We've spent so many millions of dollars on research for this thing, now we have to create a market for it." As a result, there's no way to tell the difference between products that can really help people and overengineered, dangerous junk.

Re:Cry me a river...

[sup4hleet]

Actually the US is a representitive democracy so technically the somewhat filtered views of the citizens rule (as opposed to capitalism). The words profits, shareholders, and IP don't appear in the constitution, but the word _people_ does a lot.

Re:standing on the shoulders of giants

[47PHA60]

My mistake; I did not mean to imply that I can sell you the CDROM of binaries, and then as part of that transaction charge you an additional $100 for access to the source. I was talking about two different examples of how I could respect the license and make some money. Using the GPL at

http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html

I see the following statements which support my claim. I have added italics.

Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish)...and that you know you can do these things.
...
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have.

In TERMS AND CONDITIONS, section 1:

You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.

In TERMS AND CONDITIONS, section 3:

You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you
...
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange...

I respectfully submit that if I maintain a server, pay for the ISP connection, perform backups, system administration, and so on, I can charge a monthly or yearly subscription fee to access the server to cover these costs. In this example, it took me quite a while to build the archive and organize it, and I spend a lot of time updating and maintaining content. If I want to charge for the binaries, your $100 buys you a login account which has one-time access to the binary and (for 3 years) the source to that particular binary. Naturally, you inherit the license rights what you get the binary version of the program.

If I do not distribute binaries, I can still charge you to access my online content, namely, the source code that I painstakingly catalog and update. Section 3 of the GPL only dictates the terms of source code availability should you wish to distribute machine or object code. My source-only archive is covered in section 1.

By the way...

[dinivin]

The original poster never said RMS was a total loon, just that he sounds like one.

Dinivin

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[dinivin]

Why is it out of line? It's true. In fact, it's true about both RMS and ESR (though for different reasons). RMS is way too militant in his beliefs, and though he has every right to be, that's not the kind of person most people want to speak on their behalf (IMHO).

Dinivin

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[the_2nd_coming]

I realy didn't get that feeling from his statment. I just took his examples as to say, "If you were to copyright all IP". I din't think he was talking about sharing patented Items, just the information on how they work.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[the_2nd_coming]

...or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

how can you not belive that? let me point you to this and this or this. people do it all the time, and I am supprised that you, a /. reader, haven't atleast picked up on that.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[the_2nd_coming]

no, they don't design the computer, however, they do make it nicer. and since the post was in responce to Linus's responce to M$, you must assume that software is included in the statment. that said, my post does make sence.

Re:personal rant...posted for my own benefit :)

[Snodgrass]

I think we're on the same page here. My post actually turned out a lot different then I had planned. I agree with everything you said (especially your reply to my post), I just wanted to vent...

Re:quote

[mrericn]

Regardless of how you feel about Newton, he spent much of his time and energy arguing about intellectual property. He argued with Hooke about who discovered the ideas behind color diffusion. And then later tried to ruin his former friend Gottfried Liebniz's life because they both came up with similar ideas about integration and analysis by infinite series, about the same time. This wasn't for the good of the people (would your life be worse if you believed Liebniz invented Calculus?) this was only because he wanted to use important discovery to inflate public perception of him. Gates took his cue from Newton, and took it a step farther. He didn't even bother trying to innovate, he merely did a good job convincing others that he was responsible for every major PC software innovation (BASIC, DOS, Windows, Word). If he has seen far it is because he stood on the dead shoulders of giants.

Ironical

[Otto Normal]

I recall previous pieces of Redmond-FUD claiming Open Source Software to be un-American and relating the FSF with communism. This is pretty much the type of discourse Senator McCarthy et al made in the mid-50's in the US at the peek of the cold war witch hunt.
The ironical thing about all this, is that MS's attitude towards information (or shall I say disinformation ? ) and public relations is so similar to that of the Soviet Union: keep all things secret (the source) and keep churning out propaganda as a way of life. Is "shared source" some kind of Glasnost and will MS collapse just as the Soviet Union did ?
Another thing that strikes me is how un-efficient (if not even counter-productive !) MS has been with its FUD lately. I just can't find any report about their efforts on the mainstream web medias that is not critical. They have very little credibility.

We must protect them !

[Otto Normal]

MS FUD outbursts are really entertaining, you can feel the "Titanic hit iceberg" desperation comming thru.
But ... what will we all rant and laugh about in 3/4 years time when it's all over ? What will Slashdot an The Reg do without them ? Hell, we need MS FUD ! It's time to initiate a think tank to stage a "Save the MS T-Rex" campaign". Is savemstrex.org still available ?

Re:OS hatred wars

[pacman on prozac]

windows users can use it if they like, I'm indifferent to other peoples choices.

I'm not indifferent to companies trying to retain market share through use of FUD instead of through superior products, and I can easily see why some people would go as far as to hate them and their products for it, which seems to be the general point here.

"People have the right to choose their OS!"
yes but they should be choosing it because its performance/features match their needs, not because they read some leaflet saying the opposition was crap, or because they never knew there was any opposition.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models.

Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internaly only). We have best practise group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and hilights them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries.

We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work.

I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a gaurded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret.

It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondogles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable.

Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works.

Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Re:Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

Sorry for the mutliple posts (Mr moderator), my computer did a crash and burn while posting. Blame it on Win NT...

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models.

Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internaly only). We have best practise group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and hilights them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries.

We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work.

I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a gaurded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret.

It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondogles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable.

Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works.

Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models. Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internally only). We have best practice group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and highlight them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries. We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work. I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a guarded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret. It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondoggles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable. Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works. Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models. Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internally only). We have best practice group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and highlight them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries. We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work. I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a guarded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret. It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondoggles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable. Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works. Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models. Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internally only). We have best practice group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and highlight them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries. We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work. I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a guarded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret. It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondoggles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable. Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works. Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models. Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internally only). We have best practice group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and highlight them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries. We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work. I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a guarded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret. It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondoggles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable. Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works. Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models. Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internally only). We have best practice group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and highlight them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries. We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work. I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a guarded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret. It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondoggles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable. Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works. Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models. Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internally only). We have best practice group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and highlight them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries. We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work. I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a guarded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret. It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondoggles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable. Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works. Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models.

Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internally only). We have best practice group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and highlight them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries.

We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work.

I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a guarded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret.

It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondoggles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable.

Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works.

Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Closed source and closed minds

[jeffc128ca]

I have watched a lot of threads on this for a couple years now. I do get tired of hearing the same old excuses from folks defending close source models.

Where I work our company promotes sharing of code (albeit internally only). We have best practice group that looks through each client teams code to find the best solutions and highlight them for other regions as examples. I am on one client team but I see every other client teams code from my region or other regions in different countries.

We have save A LOT of time and money doing this. I can't tell you how many projects I have eliminated the time and resource costs to nothing because I can borrow another teams work.

I have also seen closed shops at other companies where people sharing the same cubicle area don't show each other code. It's a guarded secret. And then projects go over budget and miss due dates. No one knows if the product is stable or not. There were internal politics galore because everyone had a secret.

It's simple. If you have closed source anything, there are security risk, productivity risks, and financial boondoggles because no one knows what's really going on. MicroSqueeze has only been successful because they keep throwing gobs of customer money at the problem until it's workable.

Open source shops are clean, efficient, far more secure, and get out the door a lot sooner. When the product does go out the door we know absolutely for sure that it works.

Some companies get this and make LOTS of money this way. Closed source can't go very far.

Go Linus

[theFlux]

Since when should art, music, and knowledge be relegated only to those you can afford it? And M$... If your model is sooooo outstanding, why does your product suck?

MS got into the internet to save themselves.

[DunbarTheInept]

Look, I'm sick of this BS about how the internet would have gone nowhere if MS hadn't turned around and embraced it. They started getting into the net only when it became obvious that people wanted it badly enough that they would have it any which way they could, even if that meant dinking around with Trumpet Winsock. What would we have today without MS embracing the net? Simple, the same damn thing we have today, but via third-party vendors. And if you don't think it's possible for a third-party product to become a de-facto Windows standard, just look at PKZIP.

Windows embraced TCP/IP simply because the trend was already in place. First they mocked it, then they fought it (MSN, the proprietary dial-up version), then they embraced it and convinced idiots that it was their idea all along to do so.

Re:MS got into the internet to save themselves.

[DunbarTheInept]

"Woah.. woah.. did I say the Internet would have gone nowhere? I didnt say that."

Uhm, actually, that pretty much *is* what you said. The pertinent point of your post that sparked my comment was this one I quote below:

"Like it not, that really marked the beginning of an explosive growth in the popularity and availability of Internet access to the masses. With only the flavors of Unix, early Linux distro's, and other non-friendly OS's, Internet access would have been rare."

I'm not typical, but I can remember that internet access was the chief motivator behind my trying out FreeBSD and Linux after getting out of college in 1994. Windows didn't have what it takes without a lot of third-party add-ons, inlucuding a TSR just to make basic TCP/IP work. It was *that* threat that made MS put tcp/ip into windows. MS realized that they were starting to look bad by comparasin, and the only thing keeping people away from alternatives was the application availability, and that's a problem that fixes itself over time if people really want to switch badly enough. MS embraced tcp/ip in order to avoid the techies leaving their system, not because they actually wanted to do it. The college-educated programmers coming out all had exposure to the internet and knew how much better it was than AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, and MSN. (I'm speaking here of the older dial-up proprietary versions of those services, before they became nothing more than internet portals.)

Re:Be fair...

[DunbarTheInept]

Every OS I can think of that wasn't Microsoft had a TCP/IP stack by default. The problem is I don't know what you would consider as a "mainstream OS". If you define "mainstream" narrowly enough, then only Windows would qaulify, and your statement would become a useless tautology. If, on the other hand, you define "mainstream" to include anything not from MS, like the Mac, or OS/2, or the wide array of Unixen, then your statement is false. So you've got two choices - your statement is false or if it is true it's only because it's a useless tautology.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Stephan Schulz]

But there are very few examples of scientists creating consumer goods for the love of discovery. One or two perhaps - I'm not sure what the intention behind invention of the lightbulb was.

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

Well, Thomas Edison was rather a sharp fellow, in particular as far as money was involved. However, he would probably have developed the light bulb nevertheless. Moreover, this is a typical innovation that was in the air at that time - Edison was by no means the only one to work on it, nor even the first one to get a working model. He was just the first to make it to the patent office - ironic, isn't it?

And early PCs have been build witout any patent protection for the machine. Even today, patented components, like IBMs microchannel architecture, do not play a major role in PC design.

Consider e.g. Intel. They have a lot of patents, but their real advantages are name recognition and first-mover status. Without patent protection, they would be forced to move even faster.

And in the field of software, the free software movement is a fine example of people creating "consumer goods for the love of discovery" (or at least without serios financial expectations).

LOL... ok

[Danse]

Just so long as we understand:

significant != positive

Just because they were the ones that were dominating and profiting the most from the mainstreaming doesn't mean that that's a good thing or that what they did was really good for consumers or the industry in general.

Re:This got me thinking ....

[hawk]

> where COULD we be on the technology timeline ?

Oh, maybe somewhere between 1940 and 1970? :)

you've also gutted corporate research spending in the process . . .

hawk

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[Zachary Kessin]

I don't think RMS usualy sounds like a total loon, However Linus is much better at puting the same argument into words that are easer to understand by someone who is not a computer person. RMS tends to say Free software for free software sake and leave it there. I like Linus's comment about Sir Issac Newton etc. It puts a nice spin on the argument and puts in a broader context.

awlright!

[jafac]

GO Linus, GO!

Re:Don't blame capitalism

[jafac]

Another point is, many many of the scientists of the classic age WERE aristocrats.

Today's aristocrats are busy buying the next big SUV, snorting coke off of a stripper's tits, or getting that nose job.

Re:Open source packages versus commercial software

[slim]

The same is partly true for commercial middleware. Working on RDBMS, I don't see that feature wall coming for many years yet - there are many requests made by customers for features and enough things we want to get done internally to last another quarter-century at least.

Read up on Disruptive Technologies http://www.zena.net/htdocs/FAQ/DisTech.shtml

Your high-end RDBMS product is exactly the kind of thing that's vulnerable to disruptive technologies, when for many "small-fry" potential customers, something like PostgreSQL or even MySQL is sufficient and far cheaper.
--

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Jason Earl]

Actually, most toys get developed first, and then a company is formed around the toy to market it.

The PC is a perfect example of this trend. It wasn't the corporations that created the PC, it was folks working in their garages. Once they had designed their gizmos they formed (or united with) corporations to sell their work.

Corporations aren't bad, but they certainly aren't necessary for the creation of new technologies. This is especially true in the realm of software development where the barrier for entry is so low. A punk kid with $500 can buy all the equipment he needs to start developing software.

Other industries (say pharmaceuticals) require far more expensive research tools, and therefore incur much higher costs. But even these industries have lately been abusing the patent system to a degree where one has to wonder if there is a net gain for the populace. It is very easy to say that without strong intellectual property rights that no research would be done, in the business world this is a truth that they hold to be "self evident." But Free Software currently proves that this is not the case, at least for software. Plenty of interesting advances are being made every day in the Free Software world, and many free software projects are at least as innovative as anything Microsoft has ever done.

In the long run it almost doesn't matter what Mr. Mundie and Mr. Torvalds say. Software is becoming a commodity, despite whatever Microsoft will try to do. The days when you could charge money for something as basic as an operating system (or even an office suite) are coming to a close. Microsoft can drag it's feet all it wants, but if they make things too difficult for their customers their software will be replaced.

Re:I think linus' reply is a bit out of focus

[Jason Earl]

There are Open Source "forks" but they generally are due to personality problems. The BSD splits and the Emacs/XEmacs fork are good examples.

The other major difference is that the different Open Source forks generally are highly compatible between themselves, and foster the type of "good" competition that makes both projects better. The Samba/Samba TNG and the former gcc/egcs forks are good examples of forks that have been very healthy for the long term viability of the software in question. All in all I would take a Free Software project fork over the differences in the various versions of Windows any day of the week, but that's just me.

Mundie, on the other hand, is almost certainly referring to the Unix wars. His audience will likewise remember them well. The primary reason that the entire world doesn't run everything on Unix right now is that the various and sundry Unix vendors took the original BSD code and turned it into a pile of incompatible vendor specific versions. If Mundie can get his audience to believe that the same thing will happen to Linux, then he will definitely scare some of them away from Linux.

Personally, I don't see it working very well. Especially since anyone with a brain can see that Linux is actually consolidating the Unix field. Two years from now Linux emulation is going to be a major feature of every commercial Unix.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Genom]

I don't think there are enough people who have all three of - 1) a day job, 2) significant expertise in a certain area, 3) the desire to use the expertise without financial reward - to provide us with the consumer goods we desire to enhance our standard of living.

Well, if you want to ignore the government-imposed financial class structure here in the states, there are some people who conceivably *could* fit this bill.

The children of the excessively wealthy.

You're right in the fact that holding down a day job, and trying to do research "on the side" is just unrealistic - people who are holding down a day job to make ends meet aren't going to have the time nor the drive to do that kind of research. They're going to be much more concerned with paying rent, and keeping food on the table.

Once those things are easily afforded, the person in question becomes "middle class", where the government wants a MUCH bigger piece of his/her earnings - making it tougher to put aside money and time to research, or even into investments, where the return on small investments is almost nil.

The excessively wealthy don't have this problem. The legal/financial atmosphere here in the states caters to them, with tax shelters and loopholes and such, which keep their money in their pockets - and the stock market, which keeps their money growing (the return on very large investments is quite good).

The children of the excessively wealthy generally don't have to "put in their time" working as a bagger in a grocery store, or as sales staff on a retail outlet while they are young. Granted, they're quite often sent to boarding schools - but they have so few worries that it's not inconceivable a few brilliant minds could be polished.

They don't have to worry about keeping the family fortune growing -- they hire people to do that.

Conceivably, once they finish their education, they could use some of that money to better humankind, by doing research themselves, or even by using a small portion of their vast fortunes to fund other scientists and/or universities to research things which MAY NOT produce a direct benefit, but which may raise our collective level of scientific understanding and lead to other, side benefits.

Of course, this will never happen. Our society here is so firmly entrenched in greed and personal gain that I doubt those of high financial standing even care about advancing the species. They're too busy advancing their own wallets.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Odinson]

"But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy."

So you are telling me the Plymoth Prowler style car would have never come around with out a Chrysler? I thought they were imitating home built style hot rods. I thought hot rods were almost always built at a loss from scratch. ;-|

What about the home kit that morphed into the early Apples?

Open source a part of the market economy

[TheSync]

Economic analysis of open source (such as this one and this one) come to the conclusion that open source software is often a loss-leader for individuals to advance their careers, or for corporations to sell support, hardware (e.g. VA Linux), hard copies (Red Hat), or books.

I think that we do also need to keep in mind that by significantly reducing the price-of-entry of computers and servers, open source expands the number of people and companies using computers and the Internet, which itself is often a return on the time investment, and drives plenty of for-profit business.

Re:quote

[Kurt Granroth]

So basically the standard Newton quote was a typically nasty, snide put-down to Hooke, saying "even if I did steal these ideas, I certainly didn't steal them from a dwarf like you"

Not necessarily. The idea that his quote was an insult never appeared in any print at the time. That is, there is no response from Hooke claiming insult or no further nasty letters from either side. The idea that it was an insult first surfaced in "Portrait of Isaac Newton" published in 1968... nearly 300 years after the fact!

That doesn't mean that it wasn't an insult.. it's just not as obvious as you make it sound.

The two main arguments that it was an honest compliment go like so:

• The letters, read in their entirety, are not insulting or defamatory at all. They spend most of their time praising what the other has done
• Newton wasn't one for "beating around the bush". When he insulted people (which he did frequently), he was crystal clear in doing so. Insulting by sarcasm was possible, but quite out of character for him

This essay summarizes all the arguments far better than I could ever:
http://www.newton.org.uk/essays/Giants.html

Kurt Granroth

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[landley]

> I think the problem with your argument is simply
> that it's not generally possible to design
> aircraft or cars for the joy of it.

Okay, I'll bite. How much DID Orville and Wilbur Wright get paid? How rich did Chuck Yaeger and Verner Vohn Braun get?

Rob

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[baglunch]

Linus wasn't talking about Mundie's body odor. He was talking about the psychological halitosis coming from Mundie's mouth.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Davorama]

Um, I believe they made quite a bit of money actually. The wright's were aware of the value of their inventiveness and marketted the wright flyer to the military. I don't know numbers but I don't think they died poor.

Re:Quality is a function of IP rights.

[FallLine]

Someone is still going to create the product that was previously protected. Just because a company can not monopolize the product does not mean they will not make any money off of it. Just look at cars. No one has a monopoly on car engines or bodies or airbags. You can get most features in any car in any other car. Yet when you look at the road, there are 100's of different types of cars from so many different manufactures.

No, someone is not necessarily going to. In fact, for many products that is simply untrue. Furthermore, your example is flawed. Car manufacturers have many patents of all different sorts. Although these many innovations may go without your notice (e.g., an engine, tires, brakes, etc), that does not mean you're not benefiting from their efforts, and consequently from patents. They spend millions of dolllars each every year improving their product or even licensing from each other. Cars have been continuously improving.

If IP rights were taken away from all companies, I don't see it as the Doom of the information age, I see companies having to compete for quality products. IP rights only cover an idea, companies then have to implement that idea into a product. Companies can then compete on the quality of their product, not just the one little idea the product holds. And for companies that fear people stealing their code if they open source it, you can't cut and paste quality out of a product.

Oh Hogwash. Companies in technology industries compete very much on the quality of their idea, not just on the quality of the finished product (the finished product ultimately derived from those idea(s)). If you kill IP, you may see lots of people competing on better manufacturing existing products, but there would be no incentive in the vast majority of cases to actually create new ideas/innovations. Although it may sound better if you can get the idea AND have competition in developing the idea, this ignores the fact that if they originator of the idea is competing on equal footing, they by definition have achieved no competitive advantage. In addition, contrary slashdot's belief, mere posession of a patent or two does not mean you no longer need to worry about quality. Take, for instance, the car industry. They own patents, but that does not mean they have no competition. They may have no competition on that ONE innovation, but there are thousands of others out there to draw the consumer with. To compete in most industries, competetive markets, you need idea AND quality.

In your totally unfleshed out world, WHY spend money on R&D? So why innovate at all if it costs you and you get no (or nominal) advantage? If competitors and/or consumers can easily and legally copy your innovation, then your efforts are wasted doing R&D. Make no mistake about it, if you kill IP, you kill technological innovation with it, for all intents and purposes. Although there may be some rare and notable exceptions, these are but a drop in the bucket.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nathanm]

I seem to remember that he was a bit of a 'closed source' kinda guy. He basically (iirc) sat on a lot of his discoveries and did not share them. This is why he is listed as the co-discover of Calculus, because it was unpublished for so long.

No, he's listed as the co-discover of calculus because Leibniz independently discovered it at about the same time. Newton made some discoveries in the late 1660s, but didn't publish his Principia Mathematica until 1687. Liebniz published in 1684.

Also, their notations were different. Newton used what we call summation notation and limits. Liebniz used his "Characteristic Triangle" with legs dx & dy and hypotenuse an infinitesimal segment of the curve y=f(x)

Re:Be fair...

[MSG]

Since your follow-ups seem to indicate that you don't think people are getting your message quite right, I'm going to try to be particular about this reply...

The internet is cool stuff. but really, how useful or widespread would it be if not for MS?
No less than it is now, and possilbly more. Seriously. I recall using the net *Way* before MS got interested in supporting it, and in those days it was significantly easier to find what you wanted. A higher signal-to-noise ratio, if you will. I believe that qualifies as being more useful than it is now.

As for widespread, well I don't believe the utter bullshit myth that MS brought computing to the masses. MS didn't bring us innovations or ease of use, they stopped anyone else from doing it. PC users from back in the day will tell you about MS superior competitors: Geoworks, DR-DOS, OS/2. Guess what? MS's monopoly is universally attributed with the death of hundreds or thousands of good products. Now, you may notice that over the years every part of the PC has decreased in cost except for the OS/software, which has increased, largly because it's MS and no alternatives are left. In most cases, the software bundle included in a PC is the most expensive component: more expensive than the CPU, more expensive than even the monitor. Expensive enough that a lot of people who can't afford a computer now could afford one if not for the cost of software. I suggest that you consider that MS has actually hindered the spread of home computing, not helped it, and that widespread computer access and use is a reality despite MS, not because of them.

The ability for average non-technical persons to use a personal computer... With only the flavors of Unix, early Linux distro's, and other non-friendly OS's, Internet access would have been rare
Now, the post to which you were replying was counting the *contributions* of MS vs. Open IP, so you *are* suggesting that MS is responsible for this here. I don't believe that MS really is responsible for or contributed to the ease of use of computer systems. As a matter of opinion, MS has always been behind its competition in terms of ease of use. Always. It still is. Maybe it's true that with only UNIX, Linux or unfriendly OS's internet access wouldn't be as widespread, but that wasn't all that there was. As mentioned before, MS out-marketed most of those competitors that stood to really bring ease of use and widespread computing to everyone.

The inclusion of web-browsers
I hate to repeat arguments, but... again, what leads you to believe that this was a contribution? It was being done before MS did it. Netscape was available with new computers before IE was, but MS killed that because it was allowing customers to grow at a pace and along a course that MS could neither keep up with nor control.

Like it or not, MS filled a serious demand in the computer world. They broke lots of laws, squashed lots people, and did it the closed way, but...
I'm not going to argue that MS filled that demand, but the point that has to be made is that the demand would have been filled by someone else if not for MS. Squashing competitors, killing products, and stiffling the growth of an industry isn't something that MS should be lauded for just because they ended up with a lot of cash and customers. And, they may have made more money than any other company, but if their prospertity came at the cost of the jobs and businesses of thousands (easily tens of thousands) of competing developers, so they've cost us as Americans more than they've made us.

Writing MS off because we don't like they way they do business isn't "a serious mistake", it's the responsible course of action.

Re:personal attack? bzzzt! wrong

[Alternity]

In your reply, you are assuming that COBOL/MVS, the writer of the original comment, is of english origin. I am a foreigner and I too misunderstood that last sentence from Linus. I thank you for clarifying it but I find it disturbing that you assume everyone here is from english speaking origin.


"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...

Untrue...

[mindstrm]

I'm sorry. Someone speaking publicly on an issue saying outright FUD to the public IS speaking to everyone, and FUD should be called as FUD.
Those who knowingly spread FUD should be called for what they are. Mundie said a bunch of misleading bullshit, so why shouldn't linux call it as he sees it? Mundie is responsible for what he says.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[WNight]

Ok, stop driving on public roads, stop calling the police, don't use a hospital. Don't use anything invented by/during the space program (basically, any modern plastics, or alloys). Don't consider getting any modern prosthetics, or artificial organs. The list goes on. Don't read any books, they were all written by authors who went to public schools or used other publicly funded infrastructure.

These things are publicly funded because we're much better off with them, the number of people who could afford these things on their own is very small (could even Bill Gates have funded all the research that NASA did?) And those who could afford these things are that rich through theft (ie. hereditary rulers, offspring of the 'rober barons', etc.)

If you want to cough up the bill for your share of all the publicly funded works, throughout the ages, that you rely on to be where you are, we'll let you out of paying any taxes.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Vryl]

I do believe that there are probs with Newton.

I seem to remember that he was a bit of a 'closed source' kinda guy. He basically (iirc) sat on a lot of his discoveries and did not share them. This is why he is listed as the co-discover of Calculus, because it was unpublished for so long.

Mind you, I could have this mixed up or just plain wrong ... anyone care to back me up, or refute this ??

Right message, wrong messenger

[Salamander]

If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants".

That's one of my favorite quotes, and coming from anyone else I would applaud it...but not from Linus. Why not? Because Linus has one of the worst "my farts smell better" attitudes I've ever seen. It's well known that one of the *worst* ways to get an idea incorporated into the Linux kernel is to say that it's been tried and found successful in some other OS. Linus, and the other senior Linux developers, seem to loathe the idea that someone else thought of something before they did, or - heaven forbid! - better than they did. The spiffy new Linux way of doing things - union mounts, kiobufs - is always assumed to be better than anyone else's way of doing the same things just because it cam from Linux people.

Getting back to the topic, people need to read some of the exchanges between Linus and Andrew S Tanenbaum of MINIX fame. Does that look like proper acknowledgement of a debt owed to another for inspiration or ideas? No, Linus has one of the worst records out there of failing to thank the giants on whose shoulders he stands. For him of all people to throw that quote in someone else's face is the very height of hypocrisy.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[gorilla]

But there are very few examples of scientists creating consumer goods for the love of discovery.

Scientists don't create consumer goods. They discover the science which lets Engineers design consumer goods.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[gorilla]

Well, Thomas Edison was rather a sharp fellow, in particular as far as money was involved. However, he would probably have developed the light bulb nevertheless. Moreover, this is a typical innovation that was in the air at that time - Edison was by no means the only one to work on it, nor even the first one to get a working model. He was just the first to make it to the patent office - ironic, isn't it?

Except, didn't get the patent on the lightbulb because the prior art showed that he didn't do sufficent innovating. At that time, the Patent office was doing it's job, and ensuring that only things which are patantable were actually patanted. Comparision with the current US Patent office is left to the reader.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[gorilla]

I think the problem with your argument is simply that it's not generally possible to design aircraft or cars for the joy of it. It's just too specialized,

But there ARE people who design & build planes & cars just for the fun of it. John Denver was killed in such an experiemental aircraft.

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[EasyTarget]

The 'Total loon' comment reflects how the 'interested public' would percieve Stallmans (and RMS's!) comments on this sort of issue.

Mundie was not speaking to us (people who are experienced in a technical sense), he was speaking to investors, legislators, CEO's etc.. not stupid, but lacking full exposure to all the arguments.

Linus was speaking to exactly the same audience, in language and concepts they understand and are familiar with. He made a bloody good job of it too.

I severely doubt if either ESR or RMS could have written anything so accessible to the same audience

EZ

word 2000 is soooo advanced man!

[nuintari]

it has that paper clip thiong to help you get more confused!

Re:This got me thinking ....

[1010011010]

The U.S. Intellectual Property protections were designed to be a compromise, by giving inventors (not discoverers) limited protection for their inventions. This was done in order to harness the profit motive for the common good. Unfortunately, Congress has extended patent and copyright protections far beyond what they were originally.

- - - - -

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[OkkieP]

The problem here is not capitalism, but the large range of options to create monopolies. A few of the most obvious:
1. Software patents that are so broad they encompass an entire type of application software (one-click shopping springs to mind). Especially large companies can prevent any newcomer to enter the field.
2. Legislation that prohibits use of information (DMCA), combined with limited availability of software: you buoght the DVD, but you are not allowed to view it, because you have linux.
3. Using copyrights and closed formats (Word vs. WordPerfect)

The problem here is information: it is a scarce resource by law; not by nature. However, capitalism also works if ideas and other information is not thus restricted. After all, if I get/take an idea from you, you still have the idea. Only the concept of "intellectual property" makes it theft. If "intellectual property" doesn't exist, new business models should be used to make money of information. Some examples:

Artists may want to make free demo's, and only distribute their work if they've been paid by the interested part of the public.

Software companies can make more money by providing service for a good product, than by making&releasing bugfixes.

Medicines will still be developed, because the development of those medicines is already (partially) funded by the public. Examples of successfull medicine development without intellectual property rights can be found in Cuba.
As an additional bonus, right after development medicines can also be bought by the poorest customers, which will help preventing mutations in virusses/bacteria that will render the medicine useless.

All these solutions have one thing in common: providing information is not the same as providing a product, but is providing a service. Services of course, also have to be paid for. The biggest problem here is that it requires a drastically different business model.

Science != Commerce

[CoolAss]

Is anybody bothering to think about what Linus said?

He is basically comparing open source to the open sharing of scientific ideas. How you can compare these two things, in the context of commerce, is beyond me.

Science is NOT a product. Pure science is the search for truth. Software IS A PRODUCT.

What the MS guy was saying (well, I think what he tried to say) is that the primary purpose of creating software, in the business context, is to make money, and there are no examples of OSS being successful in this endeavor despite many failed attempts, so it must be bad. Is that a valid conclusion? Not really... but there are no examples to counter act it, so for now, it's true.

The primary goal of science (when done as it should be, like how Bohr, Einstein, Netwon, etc. did it) is to discover truth. The sharing of that science openly can facilitate that discovery because more minds = more ideas.

For making money via OSS, that's not true. You HAVE to make money to survive as a business. Duu. You DON'T have to make money to survive as a scientist... or rather, for your research to survive. :-)

There is no money involved in the pursuit of pure science. (I know... funding, blah blah, technology, blah blah... you miss my point.) Newton, as much of an asshole as he was, was not out to make money from mathematically proving the inverse square force represents gravity acuratly, nor was he in it for the buck he could make off calculus. (Good book: Newton: The Last Sorcerer, by White.)

Linus implying that he is somehow anywhere in the ballpark of being as important as Newton, Bohr, Einstein, or any of the other great minds of the past 400 years, is about as arrogant as it gets. (And don't start saying that wasn't his intention. Linus knew exactly what he was saying.)

Yes, the MS guy had a lot of claims that have little data to support them. (Or, rather, HE had little data to support them.) But Linus oozes arrogance and egotism in that "reply."

Gimme a break people. The fact few of you saw this confirms my belief that Linux users are just as, if not more so, brainwashed as they claim Windows users are. They are just brainwashed by different people.

Woops

[konstant]

Sorry, I meant to post the above comment as myself, not as AC.

-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[UnknownSoldier]

> The only viable system is to take away between 25% and 75% of every person's income and redistribute it.

Two words: ponzi scehme

When I exchange MY TIME for a commodity item, it is NOT the government's to steal back from me.

Thank god the system is based on voluntary compliance.

Re:Don't blame capitalism

[MEK]

One of the great plays Bernard Shaw wrote in his old age, the Apple Cart, deals with this very issue. Alas, few people seem to have read it -- and it is rarely staged (the Canadian Shaw Festival did it last year, however). A synopsis follows:

******quoting*******

The Apple Cart (1929), set in a mythical kingdom of the future, typically (for the extravaganza) rationally follows out an irrational proposition--what would happen if a popular constitutional monarch should abdicate out of frustration with his powerlessness and run for office? King Magnus uses the probability that he would be elected as a threat to force the politicians and bureaucrats to govern more wisely. But ultimately, as Shaw wrote in the preface, "the conflict is not really between royalty and democracy. It is between both and plutocracy, which, having destroyed the royal power by frank force under democratic pretexts, has bought and swallowed democracy."28 Capitalism in the form of a corporation called Breakages Limited runs everything for its own ends, to make money, and cares not what social wreckage it creates in the process, wreckage being as profitable as any business, if not more.

****end quoting*****

extracted from:

From British Drama 1890-1950: A Critical History,
by R. F. Dietrich

http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/britishdrama5 .h tm

Need To Know's summary

[cananian]

NTK's summary at http://www.ntk.net/ is by far the best Mundie retort I've read so far. Quoting:

You can't stick a postfix next to a variable these days
without causing the imminent collapse of society. The day
after US assistant attorney Daniel Alter told a New York court
that DeCSS was like "software programs that shut down
navigational programs in airplanes or smoke detectors in
hotels" (you know, *those* programs), Microsoft's CRAIG MUNDIE
was across town, declaiming that the GPL was a virus that
would shut down intellectual property inside people's heads.
Craig's speech is all about the nightmarish future of an open
source world, and is rather heavy on predictions. But then
Craig's job at Microsoft is to make gambles on the future of
technology. According Marlin Eller's account in "Barbarians
Led By Bill Gates", one of Mundie's first acts at Microsoft was
killing the company's 1993 low-bandwidth Net project in favour
of the *real* future - broadband interactive TV. That said,
once Gates caught on to this Interweb thing, Mundie was first
to catch on. "We'll tune it for all the platforms, then get
hardware companies to build accelerators for it", he
predicted, of the Net's most guaranteed success - VRML. Oh,
then he masterminded that whole WebTV deal, spending $425m MS
mad money on the sure-fire Internet/TV convergence. "We view
the Internet as one of the 'features' of digital TV services",
he eerily prophesised in 1998. "PC this year, PC-TV's next
year", he again predicted - in 1997. Going further back,
Mundie features in "Soul of a New Machine" as the nameless guy
who loses the race to build a supercomputer. His own
supercomputer company went bust in 1992. Should anyone believe
his observations about the future of Open Source? As Mundie
himself once said "We persist. We're driven by some innate
belief about how these things are going to unfold." Even, it
seems, when they unfold in completely the opposite
direction.

Re:Need To Know's summary

[Spoing]

NTK's summary at http://www.ntk.net is by far the best Mundie retort I've read so far.

Agreed -- the details are devistating to Craig Mundie's argument. How he got and kept his job is a wonder.

If you get a chance, take a look at Alan Toffer's Future Shock in a used book store. It's quite funny, but was also taken very seriously back in the 70s. The difference being that Craig Mundie has a bad track record now and Toffer didn't back then.

As Linus said, Mundie just does not get it...

[mach-5]

He sees OSS as some sort of business model. It is in no way any kind of business model. It is a way to get great software that is stable and fully featured for a great price (free as in beer) and be able to do ANYTHING you want with that software. Money has nothing to do with it. There are some people out there that are not greedy, then there is Microsoft.

Don't blame capitalism

[Matt_Bennett]

Linus brings up an interesting problem with society, although he doesn't go into length about it. That problem is the reliance of capitalism in our society for intellectual advancement.

Unfortunately, scientists still have to pay the rent, and buy food. Science has never been free. Even when people are doing it just for the love of it, someone still has to support the scientist. You must remember that the scientists of the classical age had patrons, usually aristocrats, that paid for their research, supported in much the same way that artists were. Capitalism has changed the patron from an individual to a corporation, and unfortunately, corporations have stockholders that insist on a return on their money.

We've gotten pretty far away from the patron/scientist model of scientific research, in part because there is little prestige in supporting a scientist, and also because science has gotten so complex and expensive. To do much serious scientific research, you have to have many specialists with complex equipment that is often very, very expensive (the machinists that make the stuff need to feed their families too!). Open source is similar to, but not equal to scientific inquiry. It has been proven many times over the past decade that a single person with an idea can make a big difference. You can start working on open source with a minimum amount of expense- what it takes is a desire to create. Now you can do your coding on your own, without a big corporation to back you. In 300 years, this may not be the case, but by then, we should have other technologies to hack.

Competition is supposed to push better products to the fore. If that worked, we'd have light bulbs that laster for 30 years, cars you bought for a lifetime, and software for life.

We would have all those things right now, if it were not for the people that are unwilling to spend $100 on a light-bulb, $200,000 on a car, and $500,000 for a word processor. One way or another, things have to be paid for, otherwise there will be no incentive to produce more. Yeah, capitalism sucks in a lot of ways, but so do all the other -isms. Capitalism has been very successful in inspiring people to create, because by creating they can make a better life for themselves and their progeny.

Until we can divorce the pursuit of capital from advances in science, we are doomed to have any advance kepted restained by the barriers of the a accumulation of that wealth. If at any point, an advancement is deemed to be a money killer, it will be abandoned.

This is not the fault of capitalism, it is the failing of an oligarchy- where the rich have the political power. At that point it is in the best interest of the rich to keep around the mechanisms that keep them rich. The recent attacks on technologies haven't been counter-attacked on the technology front, they have been attacked on the legislative front. Don't try to tear down capitalism, try to build a democracy that isn't financed by the rich, for the rich.

Multiple meanings of 'stink'

[Miles]

From Mirriam-Webster's online dictionary for 'stink':

1 : to emit a strong offensive odor
2 : to be offensive; also : to be in bad repute
3 : to possess something to an offensive degree
4 : to be extremely bad in quality

And for 'stink up':
Main Entry: stink up
Function: transitive verb
Date: 1941
: to cause to stink or be filled with a stench

I think it's safe to say that the intended meaning was 'to cause to stink,' where stink is the second meaning, or the third or fourth with an implied 'something' (either the something in 3, or the quality that is bad in 4) that is not a personal attack.

Andrew.

whatever

[Ender Ryan]

Yeah, maybe not personal attacks against Linus, but they sure do make personal attacks against us as a whole, calling us hippies and stuff.

Besides, who are you to be disappointed with Linus? Let him speak his mind, he's entitled to it. MS has done nothing but spread FUD about all the work that he's done, I think that deserves some personal attacks.

Re:whatever

[SubtleNuance]

hippies and stuff

Why is being a hippy a bad thing? Hippies are some of the most beautiful, accepting, honest and trustworthy people I know... self-styled hippies are generally terrific people - it takes a solid person to live your life without falling into the Big Trap that saps most peoples life away for nothing...

If i wasnt a coward - id drop out too.

Re:Is Linus a hypocrite ?

[pfred]

On the contrary. Linus doesn't say anything about IP rights being used for private enterprise. Rather, he makes the point that IP in the public domain is Good Thing. There is room for both ideas in a sane world. Microsoft would like to spin the open-source movement as anti-business, anti-private property, anti-capitalist and anti-motherhood and apple pie.

Re:quote

[wfrp01]

"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants".

I've seen this quote modified somewhat to poke fun at computer science, to the effect of "scientists rise higher by standing on each other's shoulders, but computer scientists stand on each other's feet". ;~)

Re:Newton, daVinci ... Linus

[Paul Neubauer]

In a way, these are examples of the open source model in action.

Newton experimented. Edison experimented. Tesla experimented. Most experiments were failures. Most experiments ARE failures. But without risk of failure, there is no chance of success either.

Da Vinci paid the bills with a day job. Most people do. While there are some programmers paid to work on open source projects, a good many more do proprietary work to pay the bills and do open source work as a hobby.

So Linus experimented. And one of the experiments, at least, appears to be successful. Linus has a day job to pay the bills. And still works with Linux. It looks like he's in common and good company - just, like a few, more well known for one of his successes.

I am curious about this 'machine to talk with the dead' though. I recall reading that when asked what he doing once, a sly Edison replied he was working on a machine that would let you hear the voices of the dead. The phonograph appeared not much later.

Yeah!

[Greyfox]

Back when Windows 3.1 came out it was billed as "The best game of Solitaire $90 could buy."

The Discordian Tar Baby Principle:

[Greyfox]

The more you attack something, the more irrevocably you become attached to it. That works both ways. Expect to see MS release the source to Windows in the next couple of years....

Re:Alas, Linus' argument is built on a false premi

[Brett Glass]

I agree. Unfortunately, those "mafiosi" have teeth.... You might note that my remark two levels up from here was moderated down. Why? It wasn't a troll and expressed a valid opinion. The reason, of course, is that people have been blinded by religion -- to the extent that they'll moderate down comments which violate the "religious" tenets of the FSF. --Brett Glass

You have miss read...

[Error27]

While Linus can often be starcastic and a bastard (his word not mine)

but this time he was being sincere.

When he says: "Gee, what a surprise." He meant that he was honestly surprised at Mundie's insights into the situation and how well he understood open source. I must confess that I also was impressed by Mundie's forthright honesty and hometown goodness.

"I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton?" This could be interpretted as childish sarcasm, I guess, but I wouldn't. Instead Linus is wonderring about whether Mundie has heard of Isaac Newton. I mean what if he hadn't? It seems like almost everyone has heard of Isaac Newton these days but what if they didn't learn about those kind of things in MicroSoft? That would be pretty darn wierd if you ask me.

"I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less." This is a reference to that one show on SciFi where the guy talks to dead people. Personally, I never got into that show. The idea of talking to dead people gives me creeps. I'd rather listen to Mundie over some dead physics guy. Heck! Most live physics guys scare me. More than anything though, I'd prefer to watch the show where the chick has a bar code on her neck and kicks butt! She's hotter than Mundie and Newton put together!

On the other hand I'm a little bit confused by your comment: "Please, set aside for a moment the fact that Linus is god and M$ is the devil." Obviously, Linus is not the supreme deity are you being metaphorical? I'm almost tempted to accuse you of using sarcasm yourself, but I know that you are too wise and mature.

--error27

ps...
(I've had the same slashdot sig since I started reading. I'm too lazy and not witty enough to find/think of a new one)

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Error27]

Discoveries often lead to products in the end.

It's like what Alan Cox was saying about baked beans.

No one ones the rights to baked beans.

In fact I would say that, if open source programmers rejected proprietary food substances like coke and snickers and only ate healthful, public domain foods like baked beans then we'd be a lot better off.

What do you slashdoties think?

OS hatred wars

[skrowl]

Why can't Linux users just let Windows users use Windows, and Windows users just let Linux users use Linux?
People have the right to choose their OS!
All of this hatred and "I'm not wrong, you're wrong" type stuff does nothing for either side.
____________________
Remember, not all /. users hate Windows or think Microsoft is out to get them!

Re:OS hatred wars

[molog]

Why can't Linux users just let Windows users use Windows, and Windows users just let Linux users use Linux?

Why can't Microsoft let Linux users use Linux, and stop trying to impose restrictions on what they can build in the OS? Why can't I buy a pre-made computer without the Windows tax?

People have the right to choose their OS!

You are right, people have the right to choose their OS but we have Microsoft here trying to take that right away. With MS coming out and saying that they need to educate (buy off) legislators to the dangers of open source that means they want to pass a law making it illegal. I have no problem with people using Windows and I think most people on /. don't mind that either as most of them use it. I think most people don't like being told what to do which is what MS is trying to do.

All of this hatred and "I'm not wrong, you're wrong" type stuff does nothing for either side.

I don't think this is what we are seeing here though. This is not Linus saying that Windows users suck. He is replying to allegations that open source is bad thing.
Molog

So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

Re:I beg to differ from Linus...

[Domini]

Interesting argument... not quite unlike religious zeal. Which is my problem. It's the only thing Linux has going for it in the business market. And, frankly, it's pathetic.

What's 'qualified' anyway? Being Linus or Stallman is qualified? This is the world of academics only, there is no place for the common developer who actually has to do the dirty work.

I've done my fair share for the GPL community... I've released some applications under the GPL myself. I've been working under un*x for about 10 years now. Mostly systems programming. For the past year only I have done Microsoft programming.

PS: I don't live in the 'states' or Europe, but from my un-media-bombarded perspective Europe is better, but that's only because I am impartial.

Sigh. I wish things were different, but that's just reality.

I am a Director and owner of a small IT company, and my main fields are unix TCPIP/RPC/Sytem programming. I use vi (even in Windows). I have sponsored the development of many open source products, as well as some with other related licenses. For the best of my company though I have to sumit to the M$ way, or else none of these products would have existed.

I beg to differ from Linus...

[Domini]

I think Microsoft have done a lot of good things for the software industry, although it messed up many other companies in the process... (Like what happened to Stac Technologies' Intellectual Property Rights for instance? Hmm...) I have a foot in both coffins, I guess. I actively use Linux to develop one product, and adhere to the GPL etc..., and with the other hand(foot?) I write COM+ for a commercial Bank. To add to Linus' examples of famous people, I'd like to add 'van Gogh' and 'Ramanujan' who (in my opinion) was a greater mathematician than the ill-tempered Newton. These people also did Science/Art in the name of Art, and was rewarded by dying poor and sickly (mentally and physically). For any 'normal' person out there who does not want to die in this way, they may have to resort to some way of preotecting investments. It's not always easy if you are not Stallman/Linus/Newton to protect your interests, and make profit out of it in some other value added service way.... Forgive my impurtenance (and spelling?) for this article... I hope someone may find it informative at the very least. :)

I beg to differ from Linus...

[Domini]

Perhaps differ may be too stong a word... His reputation is a bit daunting.

I think Microsoft have done a lot of good things for the software industry, although it messed up many other companies in the process... (Like what happened to Stac Technologies' Intellectual Property Rights for instance? Hmm...)

I have a foot in both coffins, I guess. I actively use Linux to develop one product, and adhere to the GPL etc..., and with the other hand(foot?) I write COM+ for a commercial Bank.

To add to Linus' examples of famous people, I'd like to add 'van Gogh' and 'Ramanujan' who (in my opinion) was a greater mathematician than the ill-tempered Newton. These people also did Science/Art in the name of Art, and was rewarded by dying poor and sickly (mentally and physically).

For any 'normal' person out there who does not want to die in this way, they may have to resort to some way of preotecting investments.

It's not always easy if you are not Stallman/Linus/Newton to protect your interests, and make profit out of it in some other value added service way....

Forgive my impurtenance (and spelling?) for this article... I hope someone may find it informative at the very least.

:)

Re:quote

[KyleJ61782]

And had you been around at the time, you would have found that everyone was anti-Semetic. That's not to say that his views were justified, but to say that they weren't necessarily out of line with everyone else. Remember, people's opinions are shaped by the society around them.

Look how far anti-Semitism carried in history. Even in 1939 at the beginning of the second world war there were still many, many anti-Semites - even in the United States! That he was an anti-Semite is a non-issue. Had you been born then, you would most likely have been one too.

And that he was anti-Catholic? Not surprising either. Look at Ireland: Protestants and Catholics are fighting each other. Why (well, originally)? Because they have (and had) different beliefs. It's also quite understanding that a relatively new faction that split off from the Church at the time hated where it came from. After all, isn't that why it split in the first place? Protestants are just that: protesting Catholocism, thereby being anti-Catholic. They differ on fundamental Christian doctrines.

I don't in any way subscribe to anti-Catholocism (except that maybe because I'm Protestant, and even then not in a bigoted manner) or anti-Semitism. It's just that at the time of Newton, such things were commonplace, and so really have no bearing on whether or not he is "a stink" in the room or not. Actually taking a look at the historical surroundings of famous figures sheds light onto their beliefs. It just forces us to realize that these men were extraordinary in their discoveries, not their convictions.

Kyle

Re:Edison

[Fesh]

This needs to be modded up. It's an almost perfect isomorphism to the sort of crap that's happening today in the software and information world, based on real-world objects that a non-techie can easily wrap their heads around. If our message isn't getting out because what we're worried about is too abstract for common consumption, this is a very good example we can use to bring things home.

--Fesh

Re:Linus has earned the right...

[(void*)]

Sorry, but the implication is just plain bad logic.

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[(void*)]

The difference is that Linus, Stallman, and Eric S Raymond are all playing on the same side, so they do give each other the respect that's of a different sort, compared to the one accorded to Mundie.

Open source packages versus commercial software

[tjwhaynes]

If you rely entirely on selling software, open source could be viewed as a threat. If your product fails to perform as well as the equivalent open source package, its time to find another market because you have effectively lost this one.

However, not every part of the software map is likely to be covered open source software immediately, or even the medium or long term. The key components that most people use every day are the ones that are likely to have good quality, completely functional open source packages - so this includes the core OS, mail and browser, office suite as these are used by pretty much everyone. That this fairly squarely knocks a huge chunk out of Microsoft's product line is a problem for Microsoft.

Software companies who depend on less mainstream products, such as graphic suites, music creation suites, 3D design suites are in less immediate danger - the number of people who use each of these packages is only a third or less of those who use, say, an email package and consequently the number of open source developers who might want to build their own software is less. So niche players have a smaller problem - they just have to keep ahead in providing a better package than the open source equivalent.

Eventually though, most desktop software packages hit a feature wall - beyond the wall, only minor or incremental improvements are possible. Look at the number of key features added to, say MS Word between Word 7 and Word XP - how much of that 'innovation' actually affects your ability to write a letter? So even niche market software players have a problem - they can't keep adding features forever to stay ahead of the open source solution. That said, this doesn't automatically mean the end of the road for that software maker - they are still likely to have a considerable user base for a while.

The same is partly true for commercial middleware. Working on RDBMS, I don't see that feature wall coming for many years yet - there are many requests made by customers for features and enough things we want to get done internally to last another quarter-century at least. And the commercial databases vendors also sell service terms along with the database to ensure that the customer isn't left without support. But I feel that on the lower end, we will see more companies deploying open source database solutions for less critical tasks. It is at the high end, high availability, high transaction end of life that will give database vendors most room to breathe for quite a while yet. Even when postgresql or sapdb or whatever reach the feature wall along with the rest of us, there will still be room to sell services bound around each product, and support requires a high level of knowledge about the software in detail at many levels.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Microsoft

[nlvp]

The economist had a great article on Microsoft last week that argued that although it was singing a new song, it had not really changed underneath the surface.

A couple of quotes... watch me use my fair use rights - haha!

..."Yet despite all this, there are good reasons to be sceptical about Microsoft's intentions (or even ability) to reform itself. Granting limited access to the Windows source code, for example, may help to soften Microsoft's image, but it is a far cry from embracing the open-source model. Microsoft has falsely portrayed itself as the champion of open standards in the past, notably during its 'browser war' with Netscape, only to revert to its old tactics later. Might to company not simply be waiting for XMP, SOAP and the other new standards to take off, ask its critics, before hijacking them by creating its own proprietary versions?"

The article goes on to say that the Hailstorm services that are part of the .NET strategy will do the same thing as IE did, by being packaged into Windows XP, they will automatically have every XP user on the planet hooked up. By funnelling all their MSN and Hotmail subscribers into it, they could very soon have an unassailable customer base that would make supporting Java alternatives a complete waste of time for most companies, as 90% of their customers will be Microsoft compliant once again.

The final paragraph reads ... "In short, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, if Microsoft has changed at all, it has done so only superficially. Inside the software industry's 800-pound gorilla, the heard of an incorrigible monopolist beats still".

The article is on page 77 of the April 28th to May 4th Economist.

Re:This got me thinking ....

[istartedi]

Yes, and look what you get. Starships that can go faster than light, but there are no seatbelts in them so whenever they crash on some planet people get injured or even killed by simple impact injuries.

Then there's the holodecks. Every other episode some program goes wild and they can't control it. It seems like kill -9 wasn't maintained in Starfleet OS. A lot of good Open Source did them.

not completely convinced

[luke_]

One thing about Linus's argument is that not all of science is done according to open-source ideals. Many of the greatest scientific developments of the past 50 years have come out of industry because there are certain things only industry can do. I work in biological research and my examples will reflect that, but take things like the development of viagra, for example. Most of the work figuring out the pathways of nitric oxide in penile erection, etc. was done in basic science labs in universities. But there reached a certain point where the large-scale high throughput screens for interacting molecules had to be done in industry because they've got the money to throw at a problem like that (this is kind of a poor example, I guess, since viagra had already been developed as a blood pressure medication prior to people figuring out the erection thing). In any case, even discoveries made with public funds lead to patenting of genes and that kind of thing. While I personally agree with Linus's argument, I don't find it entirely convincing. Open source may make better software, but I'm not sure it makes more money, and that's microsoft's goal.

Re:not completely convinced

[_xeno_]

Most of NASA's "work" is contracted out to industry, though. In fact, most government science and research is contracted out to either industrial groups or universities.

Of the research that government agencies actually do, most of it has to do with helping industry as opposed to raw science - and recent political and cultural trends are suggesting that government-sponsered science is about to stop, as more and more people question why the government should do science the private sector can do cheaply with more "pratical" gains.

Re:not completely convinced

[RedWizzard]

Many of the greatest scientific developments of the past 50 years have come out of industry because there are certain things only industry can do.

Nope. You only have to look at NASA and high energy physics research to see that there isn't anything that only industry can do.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[The Pim]

it takes a profit incentive to push discovery into the final phases of development, manufacture, distribution and sale.

As you say yourself: commercialization is very different from discovery. And as the constitution says clearly, patent protection may be awarded only for the second. So while profit incentive may be necessary for commercialization, it will have to be found without the help of patents. Fortunately, as the history of capitalizm has amply demonstrated, entrepreneurs and businesses have many other means of making profits. (I think that's a good thing, on balance.)

Re:More evidence of MS lifting code from OSS

[Chester K]

Anyone know if they have violated the Perl artistic licence or not?

Do you think the Samba team violated the Windows license? Why is it alright for Open Source developers to reimplement Closed Source stuff, but if Closed Source developers reimplement Open Source stuff, it's bad?

I think linus' reply is a bit out of focus

[nandix]

I agree with you on that one, but also think that linus
missed a few more important points in relation to the
original article.
For instance, Mundie presents arguments against the
business model followed by many internet startups during
what ms (gates, actually) calles the "internet gold rush".
However, it was Microsoft who bought (and at a very
high price, indeed) Hotmail, a company that provided
their service for free. The most important fact about
this contradiction is, i think, that Mundie admits that
Microsofts endorses said business model if is used
on a company which might be useful for MS.

Another important issue that i found on the article
is the remark about OSS being the cause for
"incompatible versions of programs, weakened interoperability,
product instability , ..."
I may be wrong, but i think that issues have
nothing to do with a software being Open Source.
I think that the success of a software projects
depends on a good development group, a good
management (things such as a properly administered
CVS tree, for example), a good relationship with
the customer and proper gathering of requirements
(be it business customers or the user base of an
open source and free operating system) ; but not
on the software being open source or propietary.

Anyway, that's my view, sorry for the long rant.

Re:A Point Missed...

[connorbd]

Your last two sentences sum up the middle-of-the-road argument, and I mostly agree with you. The only problem with the charging-for-IP issue is that IP, being trivially duplicable, is fundamentally different from physical property. My tendency is to believe that once the cat is out of the bag on an algorithm or something similar there should be a legal precedent that says, "Poor baby. Oh, well, time to adapt or die!"

That is of course why people are against software patents in the first place, and the one thing that the entertainment industry is unwilling to deal with...

/Brian

Conspiracy theory: The MS Tar Baby

[Spoing]

MS goads open source competitors into reacting.

Competition reacts.

MS pleads 'please stop beating us! You're just mean and stifle innovation -- you're just anti-american comunists! Thieves!'

Competition gufaws -- 'innovation? Communist? Theives? If it's war you want, it's war!'

Meanwhile: DOJ is deciding fate of MS anti-trust trial. Feels justified that 'real competition' exists...and can publically decide in MS's favor.

End of 2001: MS, in ernest, gets back to incompatability efforts, and runs more 'Works well with others' adds hoping that nobody with $$$ notices and considers non-MS software as only supported by flaky radicals.

Now, I do think that open source is real competition to propriatory file formats, protocols, and operating systems. Most software is really a commodity and abundant. Custimization and expert support is where the main efforts are needed. Because of that, MS is riding a false profit bubble currently based on a propriatory one-user licence model.

In the current environment with high-quality software available with little or no restrictions, a truely competitive market would have both OS and application software distributed and 'sold' following something like RedHat's business plan.

The only items that can be sold with substantial margins or on a per-copy basis are ones that are custom projects, software that is heavy on specific content (games and nitch products), or have service tie-ins making it too painful or simply not worth it to switch to a competitor.

Re:Leonardo

[HiQ]

including the Cotex

Ehrm, that would be Codex. Cotex is a brand of sanitary towels, at least in my country...;-)

Re:Leonardo

[HiQ]

Yep, it all makes sense now, every time my system bluescreens, I'm swearing: "Bloody Windows..."

patents vs. trade secrets

[_|()|\|]

If all the things discovered by companies were free for other people to learn and use

A patent-free world would not necessarily be a Star Trek utopia. The strongest argument for patents is the incentive to publish an invention that would otherwise be a trade secret. That said, I believe that trade secrets are less evil than patents. Rare is the invention that is twenty years ahead of its time. Rarer still one that no one else could reinvent in that time.

physical vs. intellectual property

[_|()|\|]

nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy

You're talking about things that can't be readily shared. Why would I design any of those things? Neither Boeing, Ford, nor Apple need my charity. On the other hand, hobbyists frequently share plans for things that are easier to make--furniture, flight-sim cockpits, automobile "mods", etc.

Software is easy to share. Some of the free software people have created is the software equivalent of a consumer good. Many here have pointed out the folly of Eazel spending all of its venture capital to develop, in essence, a file manager.

The comment had nothing to do with Mundie's hygene

[TobyWong]

get a grip man, the comment was a euphemism.

Mundie is spewing bullshit therefore he is stinking up the room.

I don't think linus gives a flying fuck what brand of deodorant mundie does or doesn't use.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Chiasmus_]

So, you believe that the troubles in the world are all due to concentration of wealth rather than evil human beings?

No. I believe that most of the troubles in the world are due to extremism. Boolean thought works well for processing data, but not so well in the real world - very, very rarely is anything "true" or "false".

Consider this question: "True or False: A government should skim heavily from the rich to give the poor a better quality of life and a chance to succeed."

In my mind, the answer is simple. The answer is that there are intelligent minds that would say "true", and there are intelligent minds that would say "false", and so, chances are, they both have valid points, and therefore the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Bleeding-heart liberals ignore the fact that productivity requires incentive - that if someone feels that all the fruits of his labor will go to others, he usually won't perform the labor in the first place.

Yet, backwards conservatives ignore the fact that it takes an investment in a person to allow him to produce - no one can develop into an educated, free-thinking, happy, productive individual if his entire life is an uphill battle to survive.

And, finally, most world governments seem to be "getting it" - acknowledging that both financial rewards and social programs are a necessity.

What actually makes it work, though, somewhat saddens me. Very few congressmen come out and admit this - they preach either black or white, and then they push so hard against each other that we end up with gray.

I saw an article on American economic progress yesterday. People were polled on the issue: "Who is better for the economy, the Republicans or Democrats?" Very few picked the answer that was actually correct: neither. The American economy has historically grown three times as fast in periods of gridlock than in periods where a party controlled the entire government.

Right now, with our Republican-controlled presidency, senate, house, and supreme court, I am very worried. But no more so worried than if they were all controlled by Democrats. There are so few free-thinking politicians out there that we literally require conflict and compromise to come to the right answer.

Re:standing on the shoulders of giants

[EricEldred]

The origin of this phrase is discussed at http://www.newton.org.uk/essays/Giants.html by Andrew McNab.

What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking ye colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.

Newton to Hooke, 5 Feb. 1676; Corres I, 416

Some people believe the phrase (which originated much earlier, as McNab notes) was used by Newton as an insult to the dwarflike Hooke, a scientific rival.

But McNab argues well for the idea that Newton did not intend it as an insult. Indeed, the surviving correspondence is quite pertinent to our understanding of how science should be carried on.

Significantly, Newton and Hooke agreed not to argue in public, but to carry on their research via private letters--the normal way to publish such information without copyright. It was important to get confirmation from other scientists; it was important to get credit for and defend one's discoveries. (Contrast that to Microsoft's outright theft--without credit--of such technologies as DCE.)

Linus is carrying on in the tradition of his namesake, the brilliant scientist Linus Pauling. Privatizing the public domain of science and technology as Microsoft tries to do, or as Craig Venter tries to do with the human genome, will only lead to disaster for us all, not just the GPL backers. In this age of rampant state-supported capitalism this will be a long battle, but we are off to a good start here.

Re:Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[Fervent]

Ida know. That's kinda general isn't it? That's like saying every computer nerd is in to open source (Which, of course I don't have the numbers in front of me, but would seem abnormally high. There are plenty of nerds who play with computers and never touch Linux).

To me he just seems like an advocate (zealot?) of the movement. I personally think both open and closed source software has its place.

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Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[Reality Master 101]

have light bulbs that laster for 30 years,

Ever heard of compact flourescent lights? Might more efficient, and last around 5 times longer.

cars you bought for a lifetime,

Cars last probably 3 times longer than they did 30 years ago, and get twice the mileage. I guess the Oil Company monopoly wasn't able to suppress the technology.

software for life

You do have software for life. No one is forcing you to upgrade. It's absurd to say that only file formats have changed. If you think Word/2000 has nothing that Word 5.1 had, you obviously haven't used both of them.

Until we can divorce the pursuit of capital from advances in science, we are doomed to have any advance kepted restained by the barriers of the a accumulation of that wealth.

You know, you're right. The government should pick which technologies are the best using a panel of experts, and then finance the winner. That would be much more efficient than having all these competing companies duplicating effort. Then the workers could just do their best work without having to worry about bosses looking over their shoulders and worrying about the "bottom line". Hey, it worked for the Soviet Union! Well, it would have worked, if those pesky capitalists hadn't destroyed the Soviet Union before it could really get started.

from what I've read on Slashdot, I'm not the only one thinking about them.

I know, it's pretty frightening. But don't worry; that's primarily a symptom of the youth of Slashdot. When you get older, usually these thoughts die in the realm of reality.

--

Newton, daVinci ... Linus

[wytcld]

Newton spent more time working on alchemy than on what we'd consider science, including dosing himself with a variety of substances in search of knowledge and insights. Can Linus be serious that _this_ should be the exemplar? The guy didn't care about profits because he was a druggie with an inheritance.

Meanwhile daVinci was engaged in expensive defense boondogles involving diversion of rivers and fantastical weapons. Monies from this allowed him to do a few paintings on the side. Now _there_ is a model for the modern technologist!

Edison spent years trying to build a machine to talk to the dead, while Tesla, who has a lot more to do with modern electrical use than Edison, was suckered by the profit motive into getting totally screwed and impoverished by the corporations who commercialized his inventions.

And then we have Linus. 'nough said.

Re:This got me thinking ....

[SubtleNuance]

Could it be that information monopolies retard technological advancement by sequestering knowledge?

Yes - Welcome to The Economic Domination of Everything(TM).

Technology Vs. Application

[ghostie]

It's all very well comparing open source achievements to the advances made by Newton, Einstein et al. The trouble is there is a lot of patented and/or copyrighted work based on the initial development done by those great scientists.

The difference is technology/theory vs application of the technology/theory.

If you use previously well known and well developed theories (eg - the existence of black holes as an example), to develop a device that uses minature black holes to generate energy - in a format that can be mass produced and used in any home or business - don't you deserve income from that?

A far fetched example, true. A better example may be using the theory of public key cryptography to come up with an easily installable and usable PKC system for the most common mail systems - why can anyone complain that you are asking money for it?

The problem with the patent system IMHO is that patents are awarded on too general a basis. Perhaps the whole patent system is now outmoded?

I always thought the original idea of patents was to make the information publicly available (to encourage others to build on the ideas) but to prevent people from generating income from others hard work.

If you develop a revolutionary new idea or method for doing something you always have the option of NOT making it publicly available (via patent or any other method) but run the risk of other people coming up with the same solution independantly.

Todays economic model and environment encourages information hiding and locking up so-called intellectual property in order to make a profit on it. Hell, companies are obligated to do this. If Microsoft did not do it's best to make money (and gave away the source code for Windows for example) they would be swamped with lawsuits (and not just from Ma & Pa shareholders - but the numerous retirement, investment and superannuation funds out there). I own Microsoft shares, if they did not do their best to make money (and pay me a dividend) I'd put my money somewhere else.

Companies that try and work in the same economic model as Microsoft/IBM/Sun et-al and say they are giving away their primary product for free under the GPL aren't asking for an investment, they're asking for a donation. When I donate money it goes to cancer or AID's research rather than software development - that's more important in my eyes.

Don't focus on individual companies here - what needs to change is the economic model. And think carefully about the side effects before you decide. Are you willing to give up currency, capitalism etc just for the sake of having every piece of software released under the GPL? Do you think that's going to happen tomorrow, next year, next century?

This may sound like the Open Source == Communism argument but it's not. People should be free to reap the rewards of their efforts (by charging for their software or other works) and should still be free to give them away if they choose to do so. I, and I think most other developers who read /., do both. I write proprietray (sp?) code that will probably never be seen outside the company I work for and I contribute to open source projects (and manage at least 3). The former I do to earn money to buy the latest Athalon or P IV based systems (and beer, which is never free <G>), the later I do for my own personal enjoyment and gratification. There is room for both.

Re:quote

[Phillip2]

"you would have found that everyone was anti-Semetic."

To some extent maybe. Newton seemed to take hatrid to an extreme even for the time.

"Even in 1939 at the beginning of the second world war there were still many, many anti-Semites"

There still are now I would imagine.

"Look at Ireland: Protestants and Catholics are fighting each other. Why (well, originally)? "

Because the two sections thought that they came from different class backgrounds. The protestants moved to Ireland many years ago (before the US was founded certainly), and at the time considered themselves somewhat above the Catholic population.

"After all, isn't that why it split in the first place?"

Not really. Henry VIII needed a divorce because his wife appeared to be barren. As the catholic church did not allow divorce the easiest solution was to invent a new religion. He certainly had no ideological reason for doing so. Indeed as far as we can tell he was a "devout" catholic, which was why he was awarded the "FD" title by the pope (It translates as Defender of the Faith and is still in use today).

"They differ on fundamental Christian doctrines."

The Christian doctrine is really a minor issue in Northern Ireland. Its more about tribalism. Its for this reason that you can't be an atheist in NI. You have to be either a protestant atheist, or a catholic atheist.

I am sure you are aware of similar examples. As a much milder example for instance, I am sure that you know many people who are either a democrat or a republican for reasons which appear totally divorced from politics.

"so really have no bearing on whether or not he is "a stink" in the room or not. "

Well I did give other examples. The "dwarf" crack was not terribly nice either.

My key point is that even at this distance in time, I would rather Newton not be turned from a person into an icon. In Newtons case he rather benefits from this treatment to be honest. In the case of some other great scientists, such as for instance Jacques Monod, it hides the great people behind the great science.

Phil

Re:Be fair...

[Paladin128]

I'll agree that MS contributed, but saying thier contributions were even on par with Newton would be bordering on heresy in my book.

Re:The nature of the GPL virus

[Paladin128]

(Please see the parent to this... It's currently modded 0 as was posted by an AC)

Why is that a problem? The GPL is a Good Thing(TM). Every piece of code that I've written for the past four years I have GPL'd... including programs I've done for school. My university claims ownership of anything I write while attending, so I make sure they can't profit off my hard work without granting others' freedom.

You make it sound like the viral nature of the GPL is accidental... it's not! It's 100% intentional. Every developer knows what the GPL means when they start a GPL'd product. They want to make sure that NO fork of thier code can be used in non-free (as in speech) software.

If you don't like the concept of GPL'd software, then don't develop for it. Period. There are plenty of other open-source liscence alternatives. Or you can ask MS for the source code to *thier* products and see how they will feel about you commercially distributing a patch to thier code.

Re:It's too bad . . .

[micromoog]

Linus was obviously trying to make some kind of a point by responding to the Mundie speech. But because of his childish, sarcastic manner, the point was lost on all but those who are already blind in the light of Linus.

As for all of your blathering about Linux, Linux was never mentioned in the Mundie speech, Linus' response, or my post. But while we're on the subject, maybe this article will relieve your hallucinations about how Linus Torvalds doesn't care about the success of Linux in the business world. Wake up.

Re:quote

[sabine]

Agreed! Interesting that Linus quotes Newton and cites Da Vinci and Einstein while Mundie quotes Gates and cites the NASDAQ. ;) Hmm...which of these views sounds more interesting and balanced? I know who I'd rather listen to and it's not Mundie...~sabine

Isnt the X box just like a .com??

[Inconnux]

hmmm arent they selling the Xbox at a loss and making up the lost revenues with software licenses?

Yet microsoft slams opensource and other forms of business models because it isn't a traditional method of 'cost + profit'. How is selling an X box at a loss any different than a .com company depending on add revenues?

Yet Microsoft slams this as an unworkable business strategy... hmmm seems to have worked for Sony Playstation.

This is just another F.U.D. campaign by microsoft. Theyve actually found something they just can't buy up. Makes it tough to sell expensive, restrictive bloated bugware vs Free, reliable software... and thats the bottom line.

Inconnux

FreeBSD is to Linux, as Linux is to Windows

Re:This got me thinking ....

[einhverfr]

If the last 100 - 200 years of technological development hadn't been driven by IP such as patents / copyright ... If all the things discovered by companies were free for other people to learn and use -- where COULD we be on the technology timeline ?

Could it be that information monopolies retard technological advancement by sequestering knowledge?

I think you have to differentiate different industries by the comparative costs of R&D and production. For example, an automobile has far more production overhead than a CD of software.

In the biotech industry, for example, the cost of actually producing GMO's, pharmaceuticals, etc. go well beyond the R&D costs themselves creating a cost-based barrier to entry. Just because I can find molecular diagrams of some designer antibiotic does not mean that I can easily and safely synthesize it in my kitchen.

Here companies hope to recoup not only R&D but also production costs with patents. This industry is fundamentally different than the software industry in this regard. I am not saying that I agree with many trends in the Biotech industry (I particularly disagree with the proprietization of commodities that GMO-related crops bring up).

However, even there, most of the theoretical work that has been done has been done at universities, etc. This information is free (as in BSD). However some tangents then are proprietary.

However, regarding Mundie, I seriously can't understand what Microsoft is thinking here. The industry is moving towards software as a commodity and/or service. If Microsoft is serious about moving toward software as a service, then why not embrace OSS? I think that they are simply afraid.

I also think that this may be further evidence that the various lawsuits may be having an effect on the management... I don't think that now is a good time to invest in MSFT.

Re:The nature of the GPL virus

[mikethegeek]

How then can a university be exempt from labor laws, and claim ownership of any potentially valueble code written by a student without paying for it?

In private enterprise, your employer owns your code because it's a WORK FOR HIRE, they are paying you. You pay to go to a college. And how is it that a college can allow a professor to use college PC's, recourses, etc, to write papers, books, et all and not claim ownership of THAT IP?

The answer, of course, is that any college that treated faculty like that would find themselves without their most talented faculty members. Thye can get away with doing this to students because students can't afford to fight them. Same reasoning behind the MPAA/RIAA jack boots harassing college students trading MP3's...

Apparently, in 2001 America, might makes right...

Re:Leonardo

[ocbwilg]

Gates controls a company named Corbis (sp?) that charges a fee to access digital versions of a range of Da Vinci works. But before Gates bought out Corbis (what, 5 years ago now?) they were public domain.

This is not correct. Corbis was a company that Gates founded specifically to acquire the rights to digitally reproduce a wide range of artwork, photographs, paintings, etc. I am not sure if those deals were for exclusive rights or not. The reason (at least the one stated at the time) was because he didn't have digital rights to the artwork that he wanted to display in his house.

For those who don't recall, Bill's house is supposed to have LCD screens on certain internal walls that would randomly cycle through various works of art, etc.

Re:Leonardo

[ocbwilg]

Exactly right. Check the Corbis web site for all the art you thought was in the public domain, but you now have to pay for. And although the site says that Corbis is a privately owned comapny, nowhere does it say that Gates owns it. Dennis Miller was right, "Bill Gates is a monocle and a persian cat away from being a Bond villian."

That's OK. Wanna hear something really scary? Gates is also heavily invested in Biotechnology. I'm not aware of any firms that he owns outright, but he owns large chunks of several of them. He's slowly but surely acquiring ownership of the future of mankind.

quote

[IanA]

"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants".

Linus never ceases to amaze.
Perfect quote from Isaac Newton to counter all that Microsoft has been saying.
Great reply

Re:quote

[TomV]

"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants".

Linus never ceases to amaze.
Perfect quote from Isaac Newton to counter all that Microsoft has been saying.
Great reply

Except...

This quote is often used to illustrate the humility of Newton. In these cases, it's a misquote.

Newton claimed to have discovered that white light was made up of mixed colours. Robert Hooke claimed that Newton had stolen the idea from his own Micrographia. Hooke is generally described as 'crooked and low of stature' and Newton and Hooke were long-standing rivals for primacy at The Royal Society (we're talking big money prizes here). The quote is from Newton's rebuttal of this accusation.

So basically the standard Newton quote was a typically nasty, snide put-down to Hooke, saying "even if I did steal these ideas, I certainly didn't steal them from a dwarf like you"

Maybe Linus is saying if he wants commercial ideas he'd rather get them from Bell Labs than from M$?

The man was a genius, certainly. But an angel he was not.

Newton was also an alchemist, who learned his stuff from one Thomas Vaughan (alias 'Eugenius Philalethes')

TomV

Re:quote

[Phillip2]

"Perfect quote from Isaac Newton to counter all that Microsoft has been saying. "

Its sad actually that this quote is frequently produced to show what a nice guy Newton was. Newton was actually refering to another quote when he made this, which was "we are but dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants". The "dwarfs" bit is the relevant point, because he was actually being extremely rude to Robert Boyle (him of the gas law), who actually rather on the short side.

Newton was actually a very nasty piece of work. He was massively anti-semitic. Although he hated catholics ever more. He only took a seat in parliament because someone came up with the nasty idea of admitting catholics to the Cambridge college that Newton was a member of.

His only recorded contribution to debate in parliament was on a motion to open the window. It is believed that his speech was "Mr Speaker, it is rather hot in here."

The thing with the apples was good though.

Phil

Re:A Point Missed...

[CrackElf]

I think that you have missed the point ... A lot of things that were done in the early (pre - 90's) computer era were free, and microsft used them to get where it is today. So to attack the very culture and community that it climbed on top of to get where it is today is insane. Where would they be if not for the GUI, the command prompt, ASCII, machine language, the mouse interface, animated web sites, email, the tree file structure, and all of the other 'concepts', and 'intellectual property' that others freely shared, or at least did not sue ms for. Ms believes that they are now invincible, and can attack that which brought them into existence. Imagine if someone had patented the command prompt. Heh.
-CrackElf

Re:Be fair...

[Hilary Rosen]

The inclusion of web-browsers and a tcp-ip stack as "standard equipment" in an OS

How about rewriting that as:

preventing the inclusion of web-browsers and a tcp-ip stack as "standard equipment" on a computer

In my mind, one of the more evil things Microsoft has ever done is to use their OS monopoly to deny the OEM sales channel to Netscape.
--

Re:This got me thinking ....

[Tech187]

I thought Star Trek was about the USS Enterprise always managing to break the 'Prime Directive' by the end of each program, Captain Kirk getting laid, and the people in the red shirts in the landing party always getting killed.

Silly me.

personal rant...posted for my own benefit :)

[Snodgrass]

I'll admit that Microsoft has brought the personal computer to where it's at today. Because of them the PC is now a "standard" household item. But let's remember that they did it for money. They're not heroes, they did it for cold hard cash. Yes, it was a "good" thing in the end, but they squashed and trampled others all the way up the ladder.

I'd like to make a (silly) analogy. Have you seen BattleField Earth? (can't blame you if you haven't...it was one of those 'renters' that I had to see at least once! :) ) Anyway, here are all these uneducated humans and Travolta's just walking all over them (don't remember the character's name). He decides to educate one, and eventually that one person knows enough to think for himself. Soon that person is searching for a better life and he is smart enough to find a way to escape Travolta's control. (this is the abridged version)

In the same way Microsoft has 'educated' the masses...brought even the computer illiterate to the table and showed us the wonders of computing. But there are those of us who don't like being controlled by Microsoft anymore. I'll be danged if I'm going to ask MS for permission to reinstall my OS (a la WinXP). Those of us who are tired of it are looking for alternatives.

I don't blame MS for trying to tell people that everything that doesn't come from Redmond is evil...or stupid. They're just trying to stay in business. But I don't owe MS anything. Now that I know enough to understand what's happening (I'm no expert, mind you) I am free to choose my own path.

They'll tell you that OSS is a product of hell and is the opposite of innovation...but it's up to us to create our opinions. Just because some guy from MS who's making 7 digits a year tells you something, doesn't mean you have to believe it.

My personal opinion is that you've got to pay the bills, so you need to charge for your work...but like it's been said before - if you make a good product, people will buy it. Case in point: I like Mandrake Linux. I want to buy it. I want to support the company so that they can come up with cool new versions that I will like. Sure, I can (and did) download it (or a bijillion other Linux distros) for free, but I choose to pay for it. I don't see any moral issues with charging for something that you've created that's worth buying. Even if the source is free.

I just get irritated when someone's opinion (especially one that's as commercially biased as this one) gets so much attention.

In closing (hehe) I'll say that while the business theory presented has placed Microsoft in the position they are at now, that doesn't mean that it's the right way forever. It worked to bring computers into nearly every home, but the population wants more now. More freedom and more choices, and we're being fed this "alternatives are evil" crap to lull us into believing that big corporations have all the answers. Thank you, and good day.

The power of the status quo

[factor-C]

Mundie is basically putting a new spin on Microsoft's effort to preserve the status quo (sorry for the redundancy, but bear with me for a min)

What most people don't realize is the true power that the status quo holds over our society (and esp our legislators). I've read a lot of posts re: the 30 yr lightbulb and everlasting car. These and many similar things are already invented, and can often be produced at lower cost than what is currently in the market. Some people have posted that strong IPP laws are necessary in industries where development costs are high. Strong IPP laws, however, often work to preserve the status quo against change. In many industries, the incumbent businesses are able to (legally) massively raise financial entrance barriers to start-ups. This often makes selling the IPR's to an idea many times more profitable than bringing a product based on that idea to market. The automotive industry is a good example. there have been many advancements in using ceramic materials for engines (they are guaranteed to last for life, run cleaner and more efficient than metal, and are not prone to warping/cracking due to heat). So why doesn't anybody manufacture those tomorrow? Because the inventors that actually got patents on the engines sold them out to the big auto manufacturers, who, utilizing the strong IPP laws, are able to effectively all but "erase" the technology. Auto manufacturers would LOSE bigtime if they manufactured those engines themselves because even if they had a monopoly on the ceramic engine market, they would make less than they are currently making because they would sell far less engines. From the business model viewpoint, it's stupid for the respective industry leaders to actually sell 30 yr lightbulbs and everlasting cars because they would put themselves out of business. Big businesses, while not necessarily philosophical powerhouses, are not stupid, esp when it comes to making money. Microsoft, I am quite sure, does "get it" (re OSS) but why the hell should they implement a real pseudo OSS system if it will shrink their revenue significantly by virtue of the way OSS works? Their products will be way cooler and may actually work as intended half the time, but they would still make less money than they are making now. What most people here don't get is that Microsoft is out there to make money, not better software. It is in their interest to preserve the status quo, not because they are afraid of a change destroying their company (which it may) or that they don't "get it," but because if they were to go along with it, they would be deliberately destroying a large ammount of their revenue-generating power. Can anyone here seriously expect ANY company out there (let alone a publicly traded one!) to switch to a business model that is GUARANTEED to negatively affect their revenue?

better software does not equal more money, and Microsoft knows it.

In my personal opinion, OSS will eventually beat out Microsoft's business model, but unless Microsoft is taken over by some complete and utter idiot, the company itself will adapt to the change. Before that happens, however, I think the OSS community really needs to consider what they're trying to accomplish. I agree that you all (I'm assuming all /. is pro-OSS) have the ethical highground, but if your true goal is the spread of OSS, being elitist and derisive of those less knowledgeable is only hurting your cause. Consider this, I believe that Gandhi had every right to be pissed off at Britain for occupying India, but would he have accomplished his goals as effectively if he formed a radical terrorist group instead of practicing truly civil disobedience? I don't think so.

Gandhi said:
1. They ignore you
2. They laugh at you
3. They fight you
4. You win

What I find most disturbing is that the above saying applies to both the OSS community and Microsoft. Linux users used to generally dismiss Microsoft, Microsoft never used to give a crap about Linux users. Then Linux users laughed at Microslough and Internet exploder, Microsoft laughed at OSS idiots who were giving away their IPR's. Now the OSS community and Microsoft will, for the first time, engage in serious direct head to head. It remains to be seen who will win.

open source? think "view source"

[zrizer]

Ok, here's the deal with open source. The concept is very simple. If you don't know how to do something, ask someone else. Call them up, or look at the source code. I've been doing web design for about 5 years now (finally in industry) and I must say without the "view source" option, I wouldn't be HALF as successful. Open source is not a controversy, it is a necessity. Is it just me or is Microsoft the kid in kidnergarten that wouldn't let anyone have any toys? Guess what? The pc industry is everyone's. You can't buy everything and most importantly -- and we (linux users) are slowly learning everyday -- you can't buy us and you never will.

Re:This got me thinking ....

[Sloppy]

Could it be that information monopolies retard technological advancement by sequestering knowledge?

Yes and no. Not all research is done for The Benefit of Mankind. Some is done for commercial reasons, and this stuff is sometimes of very high value. The purpose of IP law giving monopolies to creators, is to let them recoup development cost. In the case of software, that cost is usually very small. In the case of Mr. Fusion and CancerBeGone, that cost may be very high.

What is really needed, is for the extra profit given by the legal monopoly (which is likely to be some function of the monopoly's duration) to be equal to the development cost. When the monopoly is too long, technological advancement is retarded. When the monopoly is too short, technological advancement is also retarded.

If you want to optimize the function, then the fixed duration (e.g. 17 years, 70 years, etc) of the monopolies should be abolished. When one submits a patent, an accounting of the development cost (and maybe a marketing study to predict sales?) should be submitted as part of the application. Then the patent duration could be set to whatever appropriate.

The concepts for copyrights are identical.

Sounds like a lot of overhead and a pain in the ass, though. Optimization of advancement would not come without a real cost.

---

Re:Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[SoftwareJanitor]

Here is why Microsoft and/or Mundie won't sue Linus...

If they did, it would be a huge PR disaster for them.

For one, it would be publically acknowledging that such a simple statement, flippant though it might be, could piss them off. It certainly wouldn't make them look like the kind of mature and rational company they want the heads of large businesses to think they are.

Secondly, it would give Linus and Linux a huge amount of free publicity, and while their 'declaration of war' already is doing that, an actual lawsuit in a court of law is more difficult to control than the court of public opinion. Microsoft can afford to spend billions on astroturf campaigns and use advertising dollars to strongarm the media, but judges have this damned independant streak that make them unpredictable. Microsoft has maybe learned a little about that recently, and I think they might not want to go there if they don't have to.

Thirdly, if Microsoft thinks they are too often the target of the ill will of the technical community now, attacking a well respected figure like Linus would certainly worsen that situation.

Re:This got me thinking ....

[MadAhab]

Really? You are making two assumptions that are demonstrably false:

1. A better product is not an advantage if others are also permitted to make a better product.To which i reply; bullshit. Keep a few things as trade secrets, and it's likely you've got a five year lead on anyone trying to copy you. Any invention worth promoting with a monopoly tends to be a hot market in the end, which means that your product is beginning to slide into obsolescence in 5 years.
2. Corporations go head to head and win market share with competetive excellence. This is also bullshit and there's a PhD in economics to the first person to demonstrate this well. Sprint builds a good wireless network in NYC, AT&T sucks there and builds well in LA. They are AVOIDING competition, by dividing markets qualitatively. Companies find specialties and niches, and reign in those niches. Look in most economic markets, and you'll see one dominant player, one minor player, and a host of smaller players who get assimilated or crushed.
3. Companies in strong competition use substantive technological advances to compete with each other Not usually. A really nasty fight involves distribution channels, price wars, threats, advertising, and underhanded tactics that will work QUICKLY enough to matter. On the other end of the scale, look at how much research and how many patents came out of Bell Labs. They weren't competing with anyone. Somewhere in the middle, you have IBM, which isn't really competing with anyone in particular on some of their wilder research stuff. They are just ensuring their seat at the table next hand, not playing a patent trump card.

There are exceptions to these observations; I would say biotech is the only sphere that really shows why we have patents. They invest in ideas and compete for big payoffs that patents make possible. On the other hand, they haven't produced all that much compared to research divisions in old-line companies. So it's early to say that patents are really useful here. Don't even bring up (medical) drugs in general, because it's pretty clear that the biggest cost is advertising, second is the FDA, and research is last. Patents don't prevent - and may even contribute to - the orphan drug phenomenon.

In a world without patents, corporate research would be on a shorter leash, but the longer leash typically benefits basic research, much of which is done at universities anyway. You might argue that corporations would be more profitable, since the distance to a manufacturable product would be less.

From a different angle, if it takes your competitors five minutes to copy what you did, it's clever, but not enough of an invention to be worth a patent. Like those little cardboard things Starbuck uses to insulate your hand against the heat. They have a patent pending mark on them. 100,000 years of humans using tools, and no one ever thought of angling the cut against the grain to make a strong, cone-like shape? Bullshit. If that impresses you, you are feeble minded indeed.

Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

ESR's response

[wiredog]

Actually written before the speech. At Linux Today.

And ,from the Times, this story. Favorite quote, on the "threat" of the GPL:"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.""

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[cyberdonny]

> But please, show each other some respect. Calling RMS a 'total loon' (or, like ESR, making vicious remarks about his personal hygiene) is way out of line, IMHO.

But that's what Linus basically did, when comparing Mundie's body odor to that of a 300 year old cadaver...

This got me thinking ....

[OmegaDan]

If the last 100 - 200 years of technological development hadn't been driven by IP such as patents / copyright ... If all the things discovered by companies were free for other people to learn and use -- where COULD we be on the technology timeline ?

Could it be that information monopolies retard technological advancement by sequestering knowledge?

Bill's actions aren't always completely evil

[tylerh]

Defending Bill Gates on /. does seem foolish, but I have some spare karma. here goes

Bill bought the Codex Leicester from noted ego-maniac and proven liar Armand Hammer. Dr. Hammer had renamed the book "Codex Hammer" and not allowed public viewing.

Since acquisition, Bill has loaned it out for public display and now keeps in a museum in Seattle.

Yes, Bill, through his solely ownded Corbis, did buy the Betteman Archive and Corbis does charge for access.

BUT, the Archive was in private hands, was (literally) falling apart, was in a building the NY Times deems a "fire risk," (on old warehouse), and only a teeny portion of it was digitized.

Corbis has given the archive a proper physical home and moved much of the archive online. No one else was willing and able to invest these kinds of millions

Bill is stil an evil, rotten bastard -- even Nero did some good public works

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[HiQ]

Yep, nowadays science is more and more driven by what there is to gain. Science per se is out of the question; those projects / studies will unlikely get the necessary fundings. All too often people will ask for the direct benefits of some research, thereby disregarding the fact that most great discoveries are mere side effects of some other research (and all too often you don't exactly know where research will lead you).

More evidence of MS lifting code from OSS

[Pinball Wizard]

Look at this page on the MSDN site. They have incorporated regular expressions into their scripting languages.

They have so closely copied the Perl regular expressions, that there is nearly no difference. I've even tried undocumented things like matching underscore characters which, although not documented, work in the MS implementation.

So, it appears to me they have taken the Perl source code to implement regular expressions in their scripting languages. Yet, they haven't even bothered to credit the original author, much less provide source code to their implementation.

Anyone know if they have violated the Perl artistic licence or not?

An innovator in the closed source world

[TeknoHog]

"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I was surrounded by dwarves."

--

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Is Linus a hypocrite ?

[tmark]

One one hand he seems to be eschewing patents and protection of intellectual property. On the other hand, he is collecting a big fat paycheque from, and probably owns a stake in, a company which I assume has oodles of patents on its code-morphing technology and almost certainly plans to defend them vigorously. I am not necessarily taking a stand one side or another, but is it too much to expect some consistency on the part of advocates ??

Standing on the shoulders of giants indeed!

[dcavanaugh]

Where would we be without the Internet? As I recall, this was one of those taxpayer-funded NSF/Pentagon projects that "went public". It is perhaps the most useful military project of all time. Sounds a whole lot like "open source" to me.

What has the "copyright/patent/intellectual property" world contributed to networking? NETBEUI? Appletalk? IPX? Where are they now? Could the Microsofts of the world ever "innovate" anything like TCP/IP without endless copyright/patent litigation and an IRS-like licensing scheme?

If Microsoft's approach was so great, they would simply ignore open source, much as they ignore Corel. Instead, you see them treating open source like it's a five-alarm fire.

To me, it looks like Microsoft's "respect for intellectual property" begins and ends with THEIR intellectual property, not the intellectual property of others, even though it is the basis for everything Microsoft does.

Re:The nature of the GPL virus

[mikethegeek]

"My university claims ownership of anything I write while attending, so I make sure they can't profit off my hard work without granting others' freedom."

How can they legally do that? Are you on scholarship? Do you PAY them to attend? Does this university "claim" ownership of books and papers the professors are constantly writing and having published? (usually leaving graduate students to actually do their "inconvienient" teaching duties? Professors also use the school's facilities/computers to do these papers/books) Do they also claim "ownership" of anything you write on your own machine?

I have a real problem with most of academia these days. I find it ironic that the Jesuit teaching philosophy at my Catholic High School was FAR more open, particulary in the way they teach you how to THINK for yourself, than any college I attended.

College educations these days are becoming steadily less and less valueable in the real world simply BECAUSE academia refuses to allow the real world in. Colleges are the LEAST likely place these days where you will find freedom of speech or any academic freedom.

If they claim to own all your works irregardless of where and how you create it, but not all works of their professors, I'd think that their blanket claim to own ANYTHING you write isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

But then again, we have a totally fucked up court system that has little to do with justice and more with awarding judgment to those with the deepest pockets.

The point being, if the university's claim to own all your code is valid, then you cannot license it under the GPL without their permission. Otherwise, you could simply release under the BSD license, then download your own source code and, whammo, you own it again, and could then license it as modified under the GPL with you as the owner.

Yet it's the only system that seems to work..

[OSgod]

..so well. Most other systems end up with either a glut of theory and no application or a glut of application and no theory.

Capitalism is the system that actually seems to balance both out over time. Applied science -- production of product (see Microsoft or Edison). Theory -- this is the foundation structure (see Newton or Einstein). Without the theory it is difficult if not impossible to make true advances -- incremental only. Without the application you will never be able to drive theory to any next level -- application refines theory and allows you to start building "products" and refining them over time -- the bedrock that a lot of new theory rests on.

Some theory goes off on a tangent and then you get real breakthroughs. This is rarely it seems the realm of the corporation although many times it is funded by the corporation either directly or indirectly (university and government are both indirectly funded by the tax base of the capitalist country -- which is either the corporation directly or employees of the corporation). Think food chain.

Implication: if a corporation can apply theory and make money they will have either a direct (funded research) or indirect (food chain) effect on making theory better over time. Without application you have less opportunity for more theory. Without application you have no economy. Without application you have stagnation.

MS is relatively good at iterative application. Some other companies excel at it as well. MS also has thinkers (both direct and indirect [ps: Linus is an indirect thinker that MS uses as a resource -- as is the entire industry and if Linus is smart MS is the same for him]) who it strives to use to improve theory. It is not a company so married to it's own interpetation that it will not adopt outside interpetations or models when MS sees the benefit for the application.

Do not understimate a company ready, willing and able to re-interpet itself based on a changing world scene and the concept that over time and releases it will prevail.

Observations

[jgandrews]

What Linus said makes interesting food for thought... he uses Einstein (a German), Rutherford (a New Zealander), Newton (a Englishman) and himself Finnish... Then think about Turing, Church, Hilbert, von Neumann etc etc all pivotal in the creation of the modern computer... all not American yet America has gained so much. What if all that "IP" had been locked up? Would there be a Microsoft? It seems the "American economy" has been profiting from the IP of "other nations" for a long time now itself... Would America be where it is today without the free flow of ideas and information from people like those mentioned above? I dont think so. Add to that America itself (and corporates that are part of the USA) profits the ideas of its people on a grand scale. Hell the internet itself was publicly funded from the begining, even the digital computer was invented pretty much exclusivly using public funds. Now Microsoft tells us that the only way to survive is by covetting knowledge for profit? Sounds awfully anti-democratic to me! There is no one correct "model" but any idea which promotes the free flow of learning and knowledge transfer has my vote any day of the week... I'm all for making a good crust, but monetary profit isnt the only sort of profit in this world...Linus is right... some people just dont "get" it.

Who else is tired of capitalism?

[neo]

Linus brings up an interesting problem with society, although he doesn't go into length about it. That problem is the reliance of capitalism in our society for intellectual advancement.

Attempting to equate success with having capital (and hence property) has created some obvious paradoxes. Take the example of designed obsolescence. Because corporations only live if they can sustain an income, products are created that will fail to function in a timely manner. This creates a revenue stream and keeps the corporation "alive". However, the products that are created are not the best possible products.

Competition is supposed to push better products to the fore. If that worked, we'd have light bulbs that laster for 30 years, cars you bought for a lifetime, and software for life. Ask yourself this question: How much better is Word 2000 from Word 5.1? We upgrade because it is forced upon us by file protocals, not because there's any innovation in word processing.

Until we can divorce the pursuit of capital from advances in science, we are doomed to have any advance kepted restained by the barriers of the a accumulation of that wealth. If at any point, an advancement is deemed to be a money killer, it will be abandoned. [Napster being a slightly trollish example]

I don't have the answers to these problems, but from what I've read on Slashdot, I'm not the only one thinking about them.

Re:Who else is tired of capitalism?

[e-Motion]

If that worked, we'd have light bulbs that laster for 30 years, cars you bought for a lifetime, and software for life.

To paraphrase Chris Rock:

They ain't _never_ curing aids. That'd be like Chrysler making a car that lasts forever. They can make a space shuttle that can withstand temperatures of thousands of degrees; you mean to tell me that they can't make a car where the bumper don't fall off?

Not a direct quote, but you get the point.

Re:I thought it would be Stallman to respond first

[Cardinal Biggles]

I'm very grateful for Stallman's contribution to the software field, but in speaking and writing he often sounds like a total loon. Linus' writings are always so relaxed, eloquent, and poingent, even when he's basically calling someone an idiot.

Torvalds certainly has a very readable writing style. Stallman tends to be more thoughtful, and that may make his writing less accessible to the casual reader, but he never sounds like a "total loon". The fact that you think so says more about you than about RMS.

Many, if not most, people here on Slashdot seem to prefer ESR-style 'Open Source' over RMS-style 'Free Software'. That's fine, I like to think we can "agree to disagree" about the details.

But please, show each other some respect. Calling RMS a 'total loon' (or, like ESR, making vicious remarks about his personal hygiene) is way out of line, IMHO.

Re:Be fair...

[Ian Schmidt]

At the risk of being a bit trollish myself, let me just say from deep personal experience that anyone who thinks Win9X is usable by unassisted non-technical people has never given their parents a computer.

A Point Missed...

[HardCase]

Clearly Microsoft issues forth a lot of rhetoric on the subject of being a technology and innovation leader, and by raising the BS flag, I certainly agree with Linus that something is fundamentally awry with their position.

On the other hand, it's important to note that when Linus points out the great discoveries made by the men that he listed, he's making a list of individuals whose work was done primarily with public institutions...schools, foundations or institutions. Even men like da Vinci, who did work privately, worked with the goal of simply publishing his (scientific) work.

Fast forward a few hundred years...

If a private company dumps a load of money into research and development, they deserve the opportunity to get something back for it. Patents are a way for them to recover their expenses, try to make some money (because in a capitalist society, they have that right) and give us the opportunity to use their ideas.

In fact, I would submit that good old fashioned science is still being done for the public good in those very places that science has always been done: colleges and universities and in national laboratories. The IP patents that we complain so bitterly about are really only incremental improvements in existing technology, rarely breakthrough developments.

It is good for the economy to charge, not only for intellectual property, but for any property. Trade is how the economy grows. The Microsoft comment is flawed in that it assumes that if charging for IP is good then not charging for it is bad. I'd say it's pretty clear that that is an unsupportable position. But the other extreme, that everything should be free isn't much more supportable either.

-h-

Re:Be fair...

[WNight]

Perhaps there would be less people using the web, but you ignore Apple, Amiga, and all the other companies that would have been here had MS not. You assume that MS exists in a vacumm. Computers would be no less than two years behind where they are now. Commodity hardware is nice, but Apple had allowed clones before, stopping only when they were losing money. If their apps sold to more people they'd probably have gotten out of the hardware market, controlling it only through 'Apple Approved' programs, like MS through their 'Made for Windows' program.

Similarly, Apple was the leader in usability and had they had more of a market share, they would doubtlessly have kept improving. If not, some other company could have done it.

How great would the web be if only geeks were on it? That's not just theoretical. Many of us here remember how great it was. No banners, no 'free registration', no spam bots, free information easily arranged to be shared with other academics. I doubt begrude anyone the right to be on the net, but the crass commercialization of it sucks. Mainly thanks to big companies like MS making sure that any idiot could connect. (Though I realize that had MS and AOL not done this, others would have.)

Finally, for your idea that MS should be forgiven all their illegal acts, putting other companies out of business, and forming a monopoly to the detriment of the consumer. What? Are you mad? Should we start forgiving crimes simply because it's been a while and the victim isn't around to complain anymore?

MS and their upgrade-itis (the refusal to patch products, only release a new version) have cost the public *much* more than it has helped them.

I'm all for not bashing big companies just because they're big but MS really is a scum lord, they really did compete only through illegal actions.

what?

[Ender Ryan]

Linus doesn't have anything against intellectual property. If you paid more attention to him you'd know that. He respects people's work and respects copyright. But he also believes that collaboration and sharing knowledge is the best way to promote progress, but that doesn't mean that he thinks patents and such are never appropriate.

Please get a clue before you go calling someone a hypocrite.

Quality is a function of IP rights.

[MongooseCN]

If all intellectual properties were taken away from a company so that anyone could use the product that was previously protected, then the company will go out of business and no one will sell that product. Right? No not really... Someone is still going to create the product that was previously protected. Just because a company can not monopolize the product does not mean they will not make any money off of it. Just look at cars. No one has a monopoly on car engines or bodies or airbags. You can get most features in any car in any other car. Yet when you look at the road, there are 100's of different types of cars from so many different manufactures.

If IP rights were taken away from all companies, I don't see it as the Doom of the information age, I see companies having to compete for quality products. IP rights only cover an idea, companies then have to implement that idea into a product. Companies can then compete on the quality of their product, not just the one little idea the product holds. And for companies that fear people stealing their code if they open source it, you can't cut and paste quality out of a product.

Re:On the issue of security

[sallen]

MS simply shoot itself in the foot.

Mundie shot himself in the foot numerous times in that speech. It can be torn apart. An example:

The OSS development model leads to a strong possibility of unhealthy "forking" of a code base, resulting in the development of multiple incompatible versions of programs, weakened interoperability, product instability, and hindering businesses' ability to strategically plan for the future. Furthermore, it has inherent security risks and can force intellectual property into the public domain.

In a word. kerberos. MS took instead of PUBLIC standard, 'forked' it (so to speak, but modifying it and making the change any but part of the original open standard). This lead to 'incompatible versions of programs', 'product instability' of other products, and 'hindering businesses' ability to strategically plan for the future'...all but their own of course, the public/and therefore the customers/be damned. Did it also not come out that in the trial that there were times code was changed to intentionally 'break' competitor software (applications)? Again, see above. If anything, I feel this actually supports the breakup of MS. They use the proprietary standards to thwart competition in the app area. It's good from the OS/app vertical market, of which they are the monopoly. And that's just one paragraph. What they've done is NOT good for the software market (EXCEPT for MS itself) in the applications area, which is 99.99 percent of the software companies. Hell, and that's only one paragraph. Of course he mentioned the bad business model of 'free expecting to be paid later' hmm...Explorer comes to mind. What his speech does day, if one reads between the lines, is that MS must thing Linux is ready for prime time. That's quite an endorsement. It's a little like announcing vaporware a year before you have a product because someone announces a product you think is a good idea. You keep the competitor at bay while you write it or buy it (never having thought about it in the first place).

My feeling of the positive aspect of the open source model is it means applications will compete on MERIT, not be shoved down your throat. If an app vendor enahnces/corrects an OS under GPL, then every vendor, once that's included, will have the same benefit for their application products. (And applications can remain proprietary, if they like. But they'll have to be good. no BSOD every other keystroke and service/support, knowing a customer DOES have the option of going elsewhere.) It's all about control... MS wants it 100%. OSS give the control back to the customer/consumer/business client... the place it belongs. Even those that are strictly the profit driven software houses, it's sill a BIG plus for them IF they have a product that people want to purchase and IF someone doesn't invent a better mousetrap and put it under GPL, at which point they probably failed on that innovation, research, or service that MS seems to speak of so frequently.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[lamasquerade]

but nobody creats ... a new nicer design of a personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

Steve Wozniak - Apple 1 and ][

I thought it would be Stallman to respond first...

[Paladin128]

But I'm glad Linus beat him to the punch. I'm very grateful for Stallman's contribution to the software field, but in speaking and writing he often sounds like a total loon. Linus' writings are always so relaxed, eloquent, and poingent, even when he's basically calling someone an idiot.

It's too bad . . .

[micromoog]

. . . that Linus feels the need to respond so childishly.

[As a quick note, this is not a troll or flamebait, though it will likely be modded as such.]

Please, set aside for a moment the fact that Linus is god and M$ is the devil. Linus makes some very astute observations in his message, but for a reader who is not already sold on the gospel of Lin, it comes off as childish, snotty, and rude. A few examples:

• Gee, what a surprise.
• I wonder if Mundie has ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton?
• I'd rather listen to Newton than to Mundie. He may have been dead for almost three hundred years, but despite that he stinks up the room less.

Valid points, yes, but this kind of attitude is not what OSS needs to get respect in the business world. And, yes, ultimately what OSS needs to succeed is respect by the general, non-Slashdot population.

Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[Idylwyld]

Damn he's good. That last line about stinking up the room is one of the harshest direct responses I've seen in a couple of years. I just hope M$ doesn't sick the lawyers on him for libel against Mundie. Illegal we do immediately. Unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Re:Does Linus do bar mitzvah's?

[Zero Sum]

It can't be Libel. It's true. Anybody who has been dead for 300 years is going to be well past the smelly stage. Mundie, however, is still alive and will therefore smell more. Case closed.

Edison

[Jeremy Erwin]

Interesting that you mention Thomas Eedison. Although Edison was a prolific inventer, he (or his companies) was rather ruthless iun defending his patents.
As I recall, he attempted to leverage his invention, patent, and resulting monopoly on the movie projector into a monopoly on film production.
Many (if not all) of his projectors were licensed, not sold, with the stipulation that they only be used to project films distributed by Edison controlled companies.

Leonardo

[clifyt]

The strength of open source is not the source, but the intellectual property that goes with it - exactly the part that Mundie seems to hate so much. The fact that when you get involved in open source, you get equal rights to be involved. You can be another Leonardo da Vinci, you aren't relegated to just paying for viewing his works.

The sad fact of this is that Bill Gates OWNS all the rights to most of Leonardo's works today including the Cotex. This was bought through his digital media / stock photography group last year.

If someone has more info on this please post it...I just remember seeing the announcement in one of the Adobe Photodisc type thingies and don't have much else.

clif

Re:Leonardo

[Gihadrah]

The Betteman Archives was a collection of Photographs (and drawings?) that was availible online for free. Way back when... I used to grab free pic's of famous people off of thier site. A perfect example was Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Teran. A rather famous photograph.

Corbis now owns the rights and these pics can only be had for a price. Corbis is owned by Bill Gates.

THIS is probably the #1 reason I dislike the man.

Alan Cox

[divec]

I thought it would be Stallman to respond first [...] But I'm glad Linus beat him to the punch. [...] Linus' writings are always so relaxed, eloquent, and poingent, even when he's basically calling someone an idiot.

Actually, Alan Cox responded before either of them. I think he does a better job of refuting Mundie in general; Linus focuses on a specific part of what Mundie said and is [IMHO] more inflammatory.

Shame the PHBs won't've heard of Alan Cox cos I think he often has things to say which are worth listening to.

Re:Be fair...

[fanatic]

Scorecard:

Open Intellectual Property ("open source", "free software", whatever)

• The Internet
• The World Wide Web, including HTML
• Linux

Microsoft:

• A paperclip with nasty eyeballs

Wow, I'm so impressed with MS's contribution.

--

Giants

[heikkile]

If Microsoft has not got further, it must be beacuse of all the giants standing on its shoulders: DoJ, Linux, IBM, Gnu, Netscape, Word Perfect, Lotus, Borlans, Apple, Corel,

Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[nlvp]

I agree wholeheartedly with Linus when he says that Newton, Einstein and countless others have done more for mankind and todays level of scientific achievement than any modern company - theirs are the shoulders that modern scientists stand on.

But there are very few examples of scientists creating consumer goods for the love of discovery. One or two perhaps - I'm not sure what the intention behind invention of the lightbulb was.

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

I think that whilst the great discoveries of our time and times gone by will more often be found by scientists and visionaries of the academic kind, it takes a profit incentive to push discovery into the final phases of development, manufacture, distribution and sale.

So I think that governments should be extremely careful when they give patents away, and the more general the patent, the more value it ties up by preventing the development of those ideas by third parties.

But where discoveries require significant investment to bring them to a consumer-ready stage, compensation must be guaranteed for that investment, otherwise there is no incentive other than charity to undertake the work, and the most intelligent minds may not have the funds to obtain the necessary equipment and assistance to leverage their genius - they will need to leverage a future asset to borrow those funds in the present.

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[Chiasmus_]

If the pharmaceuticals weren't over-exploiting this system quite so ruthlessly, they would be a good example, as things stand, I'd be on pretty shaky ground defending their recent actions. But if you took away all protection for any of their discoveries, their business model would fold overnight as people (like myself) bailed out of their shares as fast as the markets would allow us.

Bingo. You've hit it exactly.

If IP reigns supreme, companies will ignore what's best for humanity in favor of the bottom line. If freedom of information reigns supreme, companies will simply not develop products.

What I believe the world discovered during the cold war was that neither pure capitalism or pure communism was a viable system. In retrospect, that seems pretty obvious. The only viable system is to take away between 25% and 75% of every person's income and redistribute it. The U.S., right now, is going with a figure of something like 45%, I believe. Yet we still call ourselves "capitalist". Ha.

What the information age will teach us, I believe is that neither IP nor OSS are viable systems, alone. One leads to the stifling of information and technological progess; the other damages incentive and introduces a fair deal of entropy.

If I believed for a minute that Mundy was serious about adopting a "shared source" vision for Microsoft, I would hop out of my chair and cheer. A system where Windows, like Debian, was reviewed and updated constantly, where feedback from the community was instantaneous, and yet where applications tended to be mature, user-friendly, and compatble with each other (as they're developed by a large team of well-compensated designers) sounds almost too good to be true. Eventually, I believe, we will discover the beauty of the "middle ground". It's my prediction that, at some point in the not-too-distant future, we will finally start seeing a business model that practices what Mundy preaches: incorporating the benefits of open source (review, speed, innovation) with those of IP (incentive, compatibility, coherence).

Re:Discoveries are not the same as consumer goods

[dachshund]

But nobody creates a passenger aircraft, or an automobile, or a new, nicer design of personal computer for pure creative self-actualising joy.

Well, not to point out the obvious... But the open source movement seems to be doing exactly that. I think the problem with your argument is simply that it's not generally possible to design aircraft or cars for the joy of it. It's just too specialized, and when you've completed the design, you don't have access to the specialized tools necessary to make it real. It's a situation we've lived with so long that we simply take it for granted that only a corporation could ever produce a useful product.

I would even go so far as to state that open source has a sort of darwinian marketing advantage over corporate products; only products that the market needs will ever survive. Think how many corporate products have, after millions in R&D and thousands of hours of market research, tanked miserably. Companies can't afford to suffer too many failures like that, so consequently they limit their experimentation. Open source has no such restrictions.

But where discoveries require significant investment to bring them to a consumer-ready stage

You have to be careful how you define the 'significant investment' required to get something from concept to market. Certainly it took millions of man-hours to produce something like Linux. If you accept what MS would have you believe, that's multi-millions of development and marketing dollars that only a large software company could ever afford to spend. In reality, it's nothing of the sort-- open source is just a more efficient way to aggregate programmers' spare cycles. The same might be true of a lot of industries, if manufacturing and distribution were ever to become simple and inexpensive.

Something that interests me is these new 3D printers, that overlay sheets of plastic to build things. If technology like that were ever to become cheap and ubiqutous, and were also capable of printing circuitry and LCD displays, then I bet you'd see something similar to open source, with a lot of consumer electronics companies complaining about unfair competition.

personal attack? bzzzt! wrong

[G Neric]

I can see the cause of your angst, but this wasn't a personal attack. rather, you seem ignorant of the fact that "stinks up the room" is a common idiom meaning "performed badly and disappointed the audience."

"How did do?"
"Jerry, you really stunk up the room," said Kramer.

Linus was using the phrase in a to make a rather mild joke. How it is that Linus, a foreigner, has a better command of English idiom than you, well... it's just one example so there is no conclusion to be drawn.

If Einstein was r&d'ing under a business model...

[glebite]

Doing my best Bob Newhart, I imagine that a conversation over the phone between Einstein and PhysicsX Inc product managers:

Ah, good morning Albert - how are the wife, the kids? Did you catch the game last night?

Oh - you don't watch football - well, that's just swell there. Say, we here in Product Management want to talk to you about that project you've been working on.

Uhuh - yeah - that whole grand unification project and all that. Yeah, we need to know if we can patent any of this stuff?

Oh - it's really prior art then eh? Okay - listen, we've put a lot of money your way and Susan from Marketing would like to know what would people get from moving near the speed of light...

More mass, length shortened? Wow - listen Al, we've got idea down - we'd just like you to downplay the more mass thing. We're kind of looking towards changing some of the text such as shortened length to "slimming".

I can see how you're upset about this one Al, I'd be too, but heck, they're just words, and we are trying to sell this stuff...

Okay I'll talk to Susan about that. Listen, packaging is wondering how we could fit this whole Theory of Relativity thing for home use...

Ah - yes Al, I did get that memo about impossibility of approaching the speed of light. Listen, I've got Frank from Advertising here - he's concerned that your paper has too much math - could you trim it back?

Al? Al? Funny - I seemed to have been disconnected.

Just off the top of my head, I agree - the business model of running r&d has proven itself to be a pain and a dinosaur. What we need to do is present an environment where more people would express what they know and come up with new discoveries. And these discoveries don't really have to come from scientists or researchers.

Have you ever had one of those neighbours who could fix anything? Go spend some time with them and see their workshop - inspiration beyond belief! No corporate sponsership, a true love of whatever it is they are working on.

Be fair...

[Kragg]

To be honest, Microsoft have contributed massively to the modern world.

I mean, where would we all be without minesweeper. lost...
"God is dead." - Nietszche

standing on the shoulders of giants

[47PHA60]

Newton gave particular credit to Kepler, another "open science" advocate. In Max Caspar's bio of Kepler, when told that Galileo was in Italy presenting Kepler's discoveries as his own, Kepler basically said that this was OK, since the truth spread by anyone was still the truth, and that the world would be richer for it. How could he possibly give up his 'property' like that? Becuase he did not think of knowledge as his.

Galileo, on the other hand, was persecuted by the Catholic Church (an intellectual property monopoly), and lost his right to even present his findings in public.

Many of the scientific conclusions Kepler and Galileo reached are incorrect, but science is nearly as much about seeing thought processes at work as it is about finding the truth. According to Mundie's speech, this process has no value to Microsoft, unless it is paid for by the governement and then given to them to use as their own.

I like to think of OS and GPL in terms of the US legal system; when a lawyer does 'pro bono' work, it does not mean "for free," it means "for the public good." Refusing payment is one characteristic of pro bono work, but the term also means that you put yourself on the line for something you believe in, something that will otherwise be ignored or left undone. Can you imagine the trial system if a lawyer says "Your honor, I bring to your attention Brown vs. the Board of Education" and a lawyer in the audience says, "Wait! Part of that decision is my intellectual property! You must pay me before you can use that in your client's defense!" So how does anyone make money if legal work is in the public domain? Lawyers pay for their law books, and they pay for Lexis-Nexis access to legal research. And so, lawyers charge a high hourly or contingency fee for most of their work, and if they do good research and make good arguments, they deserve it.

In the same way, I am permitted under the GPL to sell my improvements in the form of binaries on CD-ROM, but I need to make the source available as well. I can charge $100 to access my online archive of source. If it is a great archive that is kept up-to-date, people, companies, and universities may pay, and there is nothing in the GPL that prevents this. I cannot stop you from redistributing it, though, just as Lexis-Nexis cannot stop a law researcher from teaching his students the public info found in their database. In fact, my reading of the GPL says that I can refuse to release my changes without payment. If anyone wants to pay me, they can. In fact, a lot of my consulting work is based on this, and I get paid well because I do a good job.

Computing began as a government/university venture, including Bill Gates' first major programming project, an implementation of BASIC on a Harvard-owned, government funded machine. The field has been taken over by rich private interests. The GPL is one attempt to restore some balance in favor of research, and based on the progress the Linux kernel has made in just 8 years, it's succeeding.