Slashdot Mirror
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.
Large corporations, national gov'ts, what's the difference?
:-) 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?
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.
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."
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
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.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
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.""
Best Slashdot Co
But that's what Linus basically did, when comparing Mundie's body odor to that of a 300 year old cadaver...
Could it be that information monopolies retard technological advancement by sequestering knowledge?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
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
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
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).
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.
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
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?
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
"If I have been able to see further, it was only because I was surrounded by dwarves."
--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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 ??
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.
"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.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-
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.
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.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
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
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.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
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.
Steve Wozniak - Apple 1 and ][
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
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
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.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
[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.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.
"Secrecy is the Beginning of Tyranny" "No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law" -Robert Heinlein
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.
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.
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
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.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Open Intellectual Property ("open source", "free software", whatever)
- The Internet
- The World Wide Web, including HTML
- Linux
Microsoft:Wow, I'm so impressed with MS's contribution.
--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
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?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
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,
In Murphy We Turst
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.
Salocin.com
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.
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.
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.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
I mean, where would we all be without minesweeper. lost...
"God is dead." - Nietszche
If you can't see this, click here to enable sigs.
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.