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Mundie Responds
HaiLHaiL writes: "Microsoft's Mundie has a commentary running on ZDNet responding to the responses to his speech. " No real surprises, but it's getting submitted a lot so I figured I'd post it for you. Lots of good points, but I'm sure you can guess the gist of it.
The commercial software industry is a significant driver of our global economy. It employs 1.35 million people and produces $175 billion in worldwide revenues annually (sources: BSA, IDC).
In other words, if we could replace the commercial software industry with free software, we would save businesses $175 billion annually.
that the word 'gnu' doesn't seem to be on the page, at least at this link: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2 761605,00.html
And, it would seem that what Mundie says is:
"I did call out what I believe is a real problem
in the licensing model that many open-source
software products employ: the _General_ Public
License."
(my emphasis)
So, am I tripping, is this old news, is this
a typo, or did someone print that/Mundie say that
deliberately?
I have been using computers since the mid 70's and on the desktop not much has changed since WordStar, VisaCalc and networked mail, Ok you have added a dancing paper clip. Just what did M$ invent anyway? Where is the innovation? These basic tools are too common and have been around too long to keep having to pay for the same software year after year. No I will not buy another word processor or spread sheet program again. Why should I. And you can forget about renting one to me either.
Oh yea, free software is bad. Then IE must also be bad, is that not free, what? It was free only to hurt Netscape, the company that actually innovated the graphical web browser. And Freedom and the American Way is one thing when Superman says it and something entirely different coming from M$ who has succeeded in putting people behind bars for copying their software, my GPL if free for all to use, just don't try to tell someone you invented it.
Mr. Muddie I think you need to do some more research and find examples of successful companies that based themselves on watching the innovators and coming up with "me too" solutions years after the hard work has been done. There must be some grave robbers, tyrants or plunders you could use as early inspirations for MicroSoft, what? you already have Bill Gates.
not just be available for anyone. If everyone can steal as many ideas as M$ has, they wouldn't be billionaires.
From the FAQ
Why did Microsoft decide to highlight the Shared Source Philosophy at this time?
We have reflected on this issue over a number of years and received requests from customers and partners to clearly state our position. It is important to have a framework to examine the debate from the business or technical perspective. The Commercial Software Model is based on the following classification: Community, Standards, Business Models, Investment (R&D) and Licensing. This is a debate about the importance of intellectual property in business and about the models being employed in the market today. Ultimately, it is individuals, businesses, the market and policy makers who together will decide the role of intellectual property in the economy.
Translation: people were thinking of going with open source, so we pulled this out of our asses to convince people we were the nice guys.
Bah.
There is one other point that is most likely the most difficult for Microsoft to deal with:
- GPL'ed software can not be ported to operating systems where the underlining libraries the application must link to are not under a GPL compatible license.
For instance, you could not port a GPL'ed game to Windows and use DirectX because the DirectX icense is not GPL compatible.
This is of course not the case for LGPL'ed software, but since the standard appears to be to GPL applications and LGPL libraries, Microsoft is out of luck unless they agree to make all the libraries which link against the typical Windows application available in a GPL compatible license.
Of course, the big loophole with GPL software is IPC interfaces such as COM and CORBA which allow external applications to use it without actually linking to it, but at a speed hit.
Sidenote: Actually I'm a little curious about the Doom source that ID released under GPL. Technically, the OpenGL libraries for Windows are not under a GPL compatible license, so you should not see any mods for the original Doom source appearing on Windows unless they use something like Mesa.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Section 3 of the GPL states that all components of an executable that normally accompany it in a distribution must be available in source code form under the terms of Section 1 and 2 of the GPL. There are certain components that are explicitly exempt, but any component that normally ships with an executable is not.
The GPL basically infects any object code that it links with. This includes dynamically linked libraries as well as statically linked libraries.
The LGPL on the other hand does not infect object code that it links with. This appears to be the major difference between the GPL and
LGPL.
Of course, this is just my interpretation, I could be wrong.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Worked great for Apple... ;P
It looks pretty indisputable that Microsoft doesn't have an answer for how they're being undersold by 'cheap-n-cheerful' Linux installations. It doesn't matter much that this is not overwhelming yet- they are shrewd enough to anticipate, and what they are expecting is to be steadily marginalised by Linux dists that have dubious support, decent interoperability, pretty but klugey eyecandy... and CHEAPNESS.
He who lives by the 'good enough, and cheaper' dies by the 'good enough, and cheaper'. I really, really, REALLY don't think they will be able to reposition as a high-end expensive luxury item like MacOSX... so all that remains is for them to slooooowly whine off into the distance while trying to make everyone feel guilty for, eventually, deserting them...
In that context the question becomes "Do you want to spend your money on software or get it for nothing?". And it is a similarly 'duh!' level question, but for almost everyone in the world it points the _other_ way...
What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products.
What is he trying to say?
Let me try a wack at it.
"In a nutshell" I think he is saying that using the GPL for your software. Will not allow your software ideas and time spent coding to be as much of a money maker as it could be.
Using this paraphrase ( according to my understanding ). The slippery slop he is drawing for the reader is that the GPL will make your creativity and time worth nothing. Okay.... Maybe if you company depends on shrink wrapped sales.
But whats been brought up in other posts is that shrink wrap software accounts for a very small amount of all the code that is written. Most of the code written is developed in house by companys that have a specific task they need automated. Like writing code to use a Check scanner to automate a billing/collections system. These are hard problems faced by company IS workers that just want to give the company value in the form of quicker bussiness process times. This has nothing to do with Mundies argument. It would seem to me that the first time he insulted GPL he was trying to scare companys from the idea of using GPL software with some sick anology that if you use QMail all your e-mails sent with it are now open sourced. Of coarse he would deny that position or view. But non-the-less.... Thats the impression i got.
What are the facts?
Microsoft is seeing a possible future where WinNT (what ever version) will be squeezed out of the server market. This will stop there plans to lock in Windows as the client OS.
Microsoft is worried that programmers may continue to jump the VB, VC++, and C# bandwagon for programming languages and Operating systems that rely on non-microsoft standards. In a sense killing their control to generate revenue when the next version of Office comes out.
Speaking of office. The more developers that jump to the GLP side will want features like the groupware features of BackOffice and write them their self. Leaving Microsoft to play second string in inovations. ( anyone remember Bob? I still think this is the only original idea to come out of MS).
The GPL will stop Microsoft dead in thier embrace and extend policy. Let's look at this one. I write a great program. That allows me to say..... Start my car from my PC in the morning. They buy my company. Take my software and put a field in a structure that is for.... O' say... the Cig_lighter. Well. My original customers can no longer use their car clients because the Microsoft version will not work unless that Cig_lighter field is not there. So they are forced to upgrade their clients or they wont be able to start the car from outlook. you get the point. If i GPL'd it... then Microsoft would have to make the Cig_lighter logic public. And in the process take any incentive microsoft might have to buy my company.
Last thing I'll touch is the Desktop client OS. Microsoft loses this space and they lose the farm. No way to pimp Office. No way to push their own protocals. And more importantly.... They become a secondary player in a world that won't pay for thier stuff.
From a company point of view it is very confusing.
However. Companys should know that their developers can use apache with out open sourcing their websites. They can use Sendmail with out having to having e-mail GPL'd.
But the biggest thing is that they will be able to avoid alot of the mistakes that others have made. Developement time will in the long run be cut down. Code reuse may even be more pronounced. And the Programmer equivalent of a "Ball Hog" may fade away.
It is import to understand that what Microsoft is loosing that is more valuable is the Hearts and Minds of it's developer base. They can't blame GPL, Open Source, Free Software foundation, or even Linus. Have you ever tried to tell microsoft that you found a bug in there stuff only to have 3 service packs come out before it's fixed? How about getting help with a VB componet that does not work the way it's documented? These are some or the reasons microsoft is loosing it's position in the programming community. If windows software was the best then all this would be a mute point. But that is not the case. People are finding GPL software to be just as good and sometimes better then anything they could pay for. This is what should be keeping Bill Gates up at night. Not how to squeeze more money out of it's user base with subscriptions. Or attack people just trying to help out others with similar problems and needs.
Does anyone really believe that the United States would fall into chaos if Microsoft closed thier doors? I for one do not buy it for a moment. As far as im concerned I was warned about this type of argument in my college logic class.
Last one in jail is a fascist.
If you run the article through Babelfish, it turns out that IS what he said.
Sun's release of all the StarOffice source they could release should give them about as much credit as IBM in the open source game. And I think Oracle is the only company on your list that makes most of its money from software. You would be better off listing companies like Adobe, although even as the number 2 PC software company they're still tiny compared to Microsoft.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Boil it down, Mundie is making three points:
-If Microsoft software were GPL'd, Microsoft couldn't make money. Therefore, the GPL is bad.
-If free software writers use the GPL, then Microsoft can't steal their software to make money. Therefore, the GPL is bad.
-If users select GPL'd software, they can acquire it at no cost and therefore deny Microsoft the revenue from selling them competing software. Therefore, the GPL is bad.
The problem is, Microsoft really doesn't have a leg to stand on. Microsoft can certainly make a case that GPL'd software is bad for Microsoft. But they have provided no evidence whatsoever that GPL'd software is bad for users. And at a time when MS is changing their licencing terms and ramping up a revenue model based on software rentals, their efforts to discredit open source may serve more to show Microsoft's real intentions than to boost their market share.
Microsoft is not unique in their success, only in the level of their success. There are many successful close source software companies out there. They just aren't raking in the monopoly profits like Microsoft is.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Why did Linus name a UNIX ripoff after himself?
He wasn't originally going to call it Linux - someone else picked that name (Linux being assumed to be short for "Linus's Unix" or similar), and it just kind of stuck. He had some (rather odd) name that he was going to call it, but since the name Linux stuck, he just went with that.
Why do some people think all Free Software/Open Source people have a self-fetish or something?
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Try preparing a budget without a spreadsheet, or writing any kind of document on a typewriter instead of a word processor
You're making the same exact point - the software in and of itself isn't providing you with any value, but the value is in what you do with it. The results of the work you're doing - it being faster, simpler, more efficient, whatever. But just having the program, even running the program, does nothing for you if you have no purpose for it, right?
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Yeah, if RedHat and VALinux went under we'd be left with obscure little companies with nowhere near the same resources.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
The fact that Microsoft has managed to make a successful thriving business out of software products totally caught everyone off guard. Software in itself is fundamentally worthless, their competitors said. It was such a silly idea, that most big iron vendors didn't even try it. Businesses need custom solutions, not shrink-wrapped packages. So what about the masses with a PC at home? Realistically, that makes up a small percentage of Microsoft's revenue. Most of their killer apps were sold to businesses-- the very same businesses that IBM said wouldn't need them.
Software products are sold to a generic mass market, and as such, they cannot possibly do what every user wants it to do. A single software package will never do what you want, and you will always need to support it, and you will always need to change it to do what you precisely want.
Software products are proprietary by definition. They try to be black boxes. Buy it once and it solves the problem. The business model never takes into account support, for when the product fails, or further development, when the product almost does what you want, but isn't quite there. Your best bet is to hope that the next version, which will cost you to upgrade to, will do what you want, based on your feedback to the vendor.
Amazingly, Microsoft has made billions on a flawed software model. They went out and convinced everyone, (through no monopolistic means of course. Judge Jackson was clearly uninformed), that their bits on a disc are valuable and worth every penny. Since the only value of Microsoft software is the bits printed on a CD, obviously IP rights are extremely important to their livelihood.
The open source way, specifically GPL'd software, suggests a totally different business model. It means that someone can come in, choose from a wealth of open source software utilities, provide you with a custom solution, and you maintain all of the control you need. If anything, it means that a consultant you hire who builds you a point of sale system with open source components can't hide the source from you. You aren't stuck with the mercy of your original vendor. How could this be bad? Sure, maybe you can't resell your custom system, but realistcally, how many people can resell their closed source ones? If anything, you have a much higher chance of reselling a custom open source system.
When I think of system development with Linux, I think 2% custom code, and 98% software integration. When I imagine it with Windows, I imagine the exact opposite. Take a bunch of black boxes and try to glue them together with lots and lots of code. Oh, also, don't forget the software licensing costs!
There are always exceptions here, of course. Closed source works for a lot of business models. But really, people that care about retaining IP rights to their source code as a solutions provider are just looking to keep their clients at their mercy. Typically Microsoft.
And for those of you saying "Software service? Big deal. That's a totally insignificant market", here's a way to prove it to yourself. Look in the want ads for programming positions. I'd wager that 95% of the jobs being offered to programmers are to work on custom systems, rather than working at a company that provides a shrink-wrapped product. There's a reason that COBOL programmers are still in demand, despite almost no new commercial software being written in COBOL in the past 10 years.
Mundie says that Linux can never be used to make one company billions of monopoly dollars. You mean that we don't have to deal with another Microsoft if the world switches to open source? What's the fucking problem?
You're a hypocrite.
RMS and friends don't want their work and sweat to become tools for exclusion. It's their code, so they get to licence it just like Microsoft does.
Their goal is to empower the end user, not enable the Robber Baron.
Also, focusing merely on RMS is quite dishonest. RMS is just the tip of the iceberg with most peretrators of Free Software having a more pragmatic viewpoint.
Consequently, much software is written that is less virulent than RMS might want. This actually allows the world to remain safe for proprietary software.
The FSF doesn't keep Oracle or Electronic Arts from making a tidy profit. They can even build on Free Software and still continue to profit.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Welcome to industrialized society.
Captialism seeks to make production more efficient. A necessary side effect of this is that some jobs will become non-productive and obsolete.
If things worked your way, all the people you mentioned would be saddled with hopelessly outdated technology. Their jobs would be harder, harsher and in the end more people would die.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Sun, HP and IBM all primarily sell HARDWARE. This is especially true fro Sun and IBM. Both could stop selling software tomorrow and still have a business model.
This is in stark contrast to Microsoft or Oracle.
Even Oracle is not merely a licence selling business. They're primarily a consulting business selling support and contracting services.
Sun and IBM are also distinguished not by the software they sell but the fact that they provide serious, comprehensive support services.
Then there is Sun's old ties to BSD. BSD was the original "open source". Sun still opens much of it's technology.
java vs. win32.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The feds could just release under the LGPL.
However, then Microsoft couldn't just assimilate it like they did Sockets. If they took something, they would have to make it obvious that they had and provide source to their changes.
Microsoft wants the sharing to only go one way.
They want free sourcecode to be corporate welfare that will allow them to embrace & extend without costing them anything.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Lotus was bought out.
Novel is hanging on by a thread.
Oracle has a different model from Microsoft. They aren't exactly comparable. Oracle more resembles the "open source" business model of support and consulting.
Your own examples actually validate the "open source business" model rather than the "microsoft plan".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Put an L in front, or separate the GPL part into separate processes and the two can actually cohabitate quite well.
Oracle does it.
Electronic Arts does it.
Free Software, even by RMS, isn't limited to the GPV. Mundie is recycling a common BSDer tactic: conveniently ignore the LGPL.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No. Instead of wasting their time recreating ircd, or WP5, or Doom they would actually move on to better and more interesting things.
If your product has reached the point where volunteer collaborative programming can put you out of business, it's time for you to move on and perhaps "innovate".
Really interesting software will always have buyers and be ahead of the gratis competition.
Copyright is not meant to be forever anyways.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I can bet that Ford would be succesfull(as it certainly was, just take
a look at any so-called freeway) even if there were no patents at all.
Ford's process succesfuly was copied all over world, and it didn't mean anything but cars for averyone... he had a good cheap product, as opposite to MS.
You have choices when buying cars, from Geos to Ferraris, all made with very similar processes.
MS (future) business model is based on renting. Can you imagine if all cars around the world were rented instad of ownend?
Can you imagine a world where al cars were unsafe at any speed because you could only buy Fords?
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Why are we wasting yet more time on this guy and his company? I mean, why bother debate MS when they aren't going to win in the end? Yes, I understand the marketing value of such a debate, but really, Linux and open source will benefit more from poeple coding and not responding to petulant children like mundie et al.
Chris DiBona
Grant Chair, Linux International
OSDN
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Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Didn't you read the article? He makes a highly fallacious argument that free software is bad for the economy, because proprietary software is good for the economy. I made a top-level response to this nonsense elsewhere in this discussion.
So, if free software is bad for the economy, not only is it bad for the users of that software, but for everyone else! So this implies that the writers, and primarily the users of free software can be blamed for contributing to economic problems. Not only are the users parasites and freeloaders, but they contribute negatively!
Hey Mundie, why not just go right out and blame free software users for recent downturns in some sectors of IT?
I suspect that redneck patriotism is at the heart of Mundie's cloudy reasoning, in addition to greed and all that. Free software is un-American because pesky outsiders can connect to American FTP sites and download free software, instead of buying proprietary software. And of course, any worthwhile software, free or otherwise, is American; none of those foreign idjits know what they are doing. So therefore those who give software away are traitors who are robbing the number one country in the world from some of its software taxation income!
The value of an Apache binary is its ability to execute. Yes, it certainly is no more difficult to make copies of that apache binary than to make copies of a string of all-zero bits. The actual bits of the binary do not have any value. The program source of course has a lot of value, undoubtedly. It's valuable that there is a single idea called Apache embodied in copies of source code.
When you produce something tangible, the structure of that thing dictates the difficulty of producing more copies of it. For example, a Rolex watch is arguably more demanding to produce than a $5 dollar plastic digital watch, due to the materials, demand for precision, more use of custom parts, and so on. So we say that the Rolex has a greater value.
I also disagree with your naive claim that clothing is easily replicated. If so, why isn't everyone you doing it? I would certainly replicate my clothing if it were possible. Why don't all clothing consumers put in the equipment investment and labor to ``replicate'' their own clothing?
Perhaps you are confusing the ability to crank out a lot of clothing with replication. Mass production is achieved by having a lot of people sweat out each piece of clothing in parallel. If you trace the development of an individual clothing article through the production line, it will be obvious that what is going on is not replication, but construction. The method by which the clothing is assembled has to do with its structure: the procedure for making a shirt differs from the procedure for making a glove. Whereas replicating information is completely blind to the nature or complexity of its structure. The method for replicating information is a function of the source and target representation media, not of what is being copied.
So you see writing this kind of program or that is vaguely similar to sewing this kind of clothing article or that: compiler or editor, glove or shirt. Designing the program is somewhat similar to designing the clothing. But replicating the program, once it is finished---that has no analogy in clothing production! The program is an idea, not a thing. Two copies of the program are really just aliases for the same program, you do not really have two programs! If I state a true sentence twice, do I have two truths?
Mart, I don't disagree that software can cause economic growth. However, I'm saying that *sales* of *copies of software* are not themselves economic growth.
It's clear to me that the execution of software on a computer can contribute to economic growth whether or not that software is freely redistributable and maintainable by its users.
Now Mundie makes the argument that it's the direct sales of software with a proprietary license which contributes to economic growth, and then he quotes some revenue numbers to back that up. I'm saying that those revenue numbers are simply evidence of a kind of transfer payment, effectively a tax, and not of economic growth.
The people using that software could have made their own copies of it, and could be just as productive by having their computers execute those copies, and so whatever economic benefit there is exists regardless of the transfer payment.
Of course, the common argument is that the software wouldn't exist in the first place if it weren't for the venture capitalists who undertook risks to fund its development, and need to keep the software proprietary to recover their costs.
That's like arguing that housework won't get done if we can't keep slaves.
If you want to feed one million people, you have to produce one million meals. If you want to clothe one million people, you have to make one million outfits.
If you want to get one million people to each run a web server, they obviosuly need up to a million computers to run them on and a network. But you only have to give them *ONE* web server program!
Whereas the software-duplication industry claims that no, you have give these people one million programs (which happen to be identical), that each copy is in effectively a new program, a new product of the software industry. Moreover each new such product contributes to the economy. At least this is what apologists like Mundie claim when it suits their anti-free-software agenda. When it comes to the anti-piracy agenda, the spin is different. Then it is readily admitted that there is in fact only one program which is the sole property of the vendor, and the users are merely granted a license to execute one copy of that program at a time. So the users do not in fact own any product, only some limited permission.
Software doesn't actually have any value in and of itself. The companies which mass produce software and charge for it are not driving the economy in any way, they are simply taxing it!
When you sell software within your own country, you are simply redistributing wealth, not generating any. Money flows from the software users into the pockets of the software tycoons (who probably spend and invest a great lot of it abroad). There is no net economic gain in the transaction. Whenever this software-copying industry (let's call it what it is) makes a new CD, they are effectively printing their own money.
What drives the economy is real production of goods: think food, clothing, energy, transportation etc. Software can make the management of production more efficient in many direct and indirect ways, so it contributes to the value production indirectly. Individuals and organizations can be more efficient in certain ways if they have the right software. But it's the surplus created by the real industry which allows the technological priesthood to engage in pleasant intellectual diversions, such as the production of software, and then pretend they are doing some sort of all-important economic activity.
The value provided by software is related to *executing* the software. There is no intrinsic value in the actual ones and zeros which are replicated trivially and at low cost. Executing the software does not cause those ones and zeros to be consumed (unless they are specially contrived ones and zeros, comprising some kind of bullshit license, which can be circumvented, unlike the law of conservation of energy). On the contrary, those ones and zeros can be replicated with a cost that is not only small, but is invariant with the complexity of the software. All that is consumed when software is copied or executed is energy. The fallacious argument that Mundie is making rests on the premise that the ones and zeros in fact have the same kind of intrinsic value as grains of wheat or barrels of oil. The truth is that they only have a value to the ``intellectual property holder'', and they only have that value because some artificial law which entitles only them to make copies for others. Take away that law, and people will continue to write software---that much is clear! Only, according to Mundie, that software will no longer have value, even if its execution continues to provide the same value as ever. What he means is that it will no longer have taxation value to him.
Didn't Edison simply steal the lightbulb idea from someone else? He also used gruesome public electrocutions of animals to scare people from adopting alternating current. This guy had the sowing of fear, uncertainty and doubt down to an art! No wonder Mundie invokes his name in awe. :)
This is not the first time the editors of slashdot have admitted to posting stories with no redeeming value beyond the fact that they've been submitted repeatedly and they can no longer be bothered to send off rejections.
Send off rejections? I haven't had a message stating why any of my rejected stores have been rejected at all! How do I get to someone who tells me why instead of just "rejected"?
I think the fact that the submission queue is totally hidden just aggravates this "everyone posting the same story" crap. K5's system is pretty decent in this regard.
long distance power transmission as dc sucks. that is the main advantage of ac.
This sounds familliar. I encourage you to take a look at my comment to sig11 on K5. He said the exact same thing and it's dead wrong.
Aw hell I'll just copy and paste the whole thing here. It's my comment, anyway. :-)
Here is a link to an HVDC chapter in a power electronics course at the University of Missouri. In short: HVDC economically cheaper than HVAC when it comes to long distance transmission and, as a direct quote from that introductory page claims: With an HVDC system, the power flow can be controlled rapidly and accurately as to both the power level and the direction. This possibility is often usedin order to improve the performance and efficiency of the connected AC networks.
Now as I'd said in my first post and is backed up by the tutorial in the link above: DC transmission does not suffer reactive losses. Over large distances these losses can and do build up to become a large factor in your loss calculations. Also, unlike alternating current, DC will flow through the entire conductor instead of along the outer surface.
Now while I have not investigated the actual depth that 60Hz AC penetrates aluminum wire I do know that it is small enough that the high tension lines are specially made to take advantage of this. High tension cable has a steel core and then an aluminum outer layer to minimize the transmission losses and maximize cable strength. I'm not sure what they use for DC links but I imagine they will use solid aluminum wire and space the towers closer together. I'm not sure on this.
Furthermore, your claim that Tesla proved DC to be inferior at long distance transmission in the 19th century is only partially true. AC is more efficient for conversion and short-haul transmission: it's ability to be almost perfectly stepped up and down is wonderful and the AC motor is almost a 100% (98% efficient motors are sold every day) efficient electrical to rotating mechanical convertor. However as this link shows, Tesla also did recognize that DC was more efficient for long distance power transmission.
Lastly I refer you to this document from Siemens. (the txt version from google which also includes my search terms for this whole post is here.) It talks about the advances being made to move towards medium voltage (1200V-13kV) DC transmission since the advantages of DC power transmission for high voltage systems are so well proven.
Now that that's out of the way: you've emailled me on more than one occasion asking about information on electronics and electricity in general and where to learn more. I find it mildly amusing that you jump up claiming to have enough knowledge to scream at the top of your lungs that what you know is 100% true and proven and that what I had suggested was totally and wholly false. I didn't reply to bitchslap you but I do wonder why you did try to do it to me?
It is what makes Microsoft a formidable enemy. They are evil, but they have smart people working for the evil cause. Their double talk can pursade.
Their business model is very successful. Unfortunately they did not mention all the dead corpses in the proprietary software business left on the road by Bill Gates' world conquest. Today, as the story of Software Wars show, the only vialbe alternative to Microsoft, is Free Software/Open Source. That's why the proprietary software business model is a bad model, for everyone, except for Microsoft.
The only force that can counter Bill Gates today is the philosophy of Richard Stallman, and the GPL. It is the Free Software/Open Source social model, which is not a business model.
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"Most of you steal your software... What hobbyist can put years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"----An Open Letter to Hobbyists, Bill Gates, Micro-soft, 1976
"GNU... is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free... Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air."----The GNU Manifesto, Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation, 1985
Microsoft Windows vs. GNU/Linux, Today
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
The folks at Caldera are just upset because they had the opportunity to be where RedHat is now (market leader), but instead they tried to tie their customers to their release with proprietary software. Now they have got a second (or third) tier Linux distribution, and the aging and decrepit bones of SCO's proprietary Unix, and they are starting to wish they had never gotten into the Linux business.
They realize that as long as the Linux community stands by the GPL that RedHat has the most to gain (as market leader), but if they can trick us into using their proprietary add-ons (volution, NDS, etc.) then Caldera will be in control. Unfortunately for them it isn't going to work. Linux users aren't interested in basing their businesses on someone else's proprietary code, and are more inclined to hack a piece of free software to do what they need than to purchase a piece of proprietary software. Caldera's proprietary offerings have generally been pretty nice, but they haven't been so amazing as to be irreplaceable.
What I see as the appropriate major role of companies in open source development is in the development of products the company wants to use but is not interested in selling.
For instance, a company that wants to have backups could sensibly contribute to a GPLed backup program, not pay for it, and improve it to handle their needs. They pay the community in improvements instead of paying a commercial company in money, thus causing increased value in a public space instead of in another private company.
Of course, Microsoft is a very large private company based on having people pay them for products instead of contributing time or money to the creation of products which would then be freely available.
Bear in mind that OSS and GNU projects are perfect for academia and research centers. In the U.S. alone, an astonishing amount of cash is poured into research universities and so on...it's called tuition. Just ask any parents of college students if they're paying a little or a lot. Anyway, all this money will see to it that in a world where there was only GPL software, in academia alone there will be more than enough paid engineers and scientists innovating new stuff. The pace of innovation will increase due to the worldwide nature of the effort, and the coders will live well to boot.
Let me give this a crack. It's been a long time since I had a logic class and I've forgotten the syntax of my P's and Q's... but ohwell:
Set A defines all software
Set B defines all software which is Open Source
Set C defines all software which is licensed under the GPL
Set D defines all software which is Open Source which is not licensed under the GPL
Set C is a subset of Set B which is a subset of Set A. Set D is a subset of Set B, but contains no members of Set C.
Mundie is pointing out the inadequacies of Set C.
You are using examples of Set D to claim that Mundie's attacks on Set C are wrong.
What you claim to be doing is what is called a counterexample, unfortunately you have instead resorted to what is called a strawman argument.
You unfortunately have proved nothing except how to troll for moderation points and argue ineffectively.
That's one of the more insightful pieces of commentary I've seen come out of Microsoft in a long time.
:)
Microsoft always tends to get it right in version 3!
Umm, your initial point is correct. Edison did invent the electric chair.
Not sure how Bell relates to this, and your conclusions are somewhat wrong, but...
There was no need to setup an electric company to supply power to the current. The electric chair Edison delivered had it's very own power generator.
In fact it sat just behind the chair with a big logo on the front that said... WESTINGHOUSE.
Edison created the electric chair to link AC current with death, and to link death with Westinghouse.
It did backfire. The electric chair didn't work all that well.
"Whitney's gin brought the South prosperity, but the unwillingness of the planters to pay for its use and the ease with which the gin could be pirated put Whitney's company out of business by 1797. "
http://www.invent.org/book/book-text/108.html
Sounds like another good example for Mundie to use.
History is really quite interesting, you missed a piece of it which links Bell and Edison.
Bell invented the telephone, and tried to market it. It was something of a flop because their equipment was of horrible quality, didn't work well, etc.
Along came another company at the time called Western Union who wanted to expand from telegraph into telephone. I don't know if they approached Bell's AT&T initially, but they decided to instead roll their own telephone system.
Western Union went to Thomas Edison to help them. Edison rolled out a telephone system which worked better than the Bell system. These were primarily improvements to the handset design, transmission mechanisms, etc.
This controversy sparked off a series of lawsuits and a giant battle royale between the companies.
In the end it was resolved by deciding to work together and sharing their technology. As a result Western Union got a piece of the telephone market, and AT&T got a better built telephone.
This is why up until the AT&T breakup in the early 1980's all telephones you rented for them were manufactured by a company called Western Electric. This was the spinoff of Western Union which manufactured Edison's telephone designs.
Uhh, the GPL has nothing to do with standards, it only licenses code.
Microsoft can just as easily reverse engineer a piece of GPL'ed code, as you can reverse engineer commercial software. Easier in fact, because the source is freely available.
You're right. Nobody is forcing anything.
Microsoft isn't forcing you to not use the GPL either.
However they are warning of the inherent dangers of it, and lobbying our government to insure they don't make the mistake of allowing government funding projects using it as a license.
That and producing higher quality software than their competitors.
*cough*
Netscape
*cough*
Uhh, could you please quote from the Mundie article where he makes that claim?
/. just seem to accept it without any thinking whatsoever. Microsoft is simply pointing out why the alternatives are much better, not just for them, but for the industry as a whole.
I have yet to see that, and am puzzled why so many people keep reading things into the article.
The GPL has some incredible mindshare. Most people on
Go ask Richard Stallman some time about his opinion of the LGPL.
He regards it solely as a necessary evil to extend and embrace the software market. Eventually if he has his way, the license will go away and there will be only the GPL.
"And for all those people GPL software is a good thing, because it makes their software cheaper and more reliable. "
There is no question the GPL makes software cheaper because it's given away for free.
But can you please justify the "more reliable" statement?
thank you
Whose freedom are you concerned with?
That of the consumer, or that of the software developer?
The GPL only concerns itself with the consumer. The BSD license concerns itself with both.
The problem with the business model of spending $1 Million on a product, giving it away for free and then depending on charging for support to make money...
Is it encourages building crap products.
You appear confused.
DEC VAX/VMS wasn't a completely open source operating system.
It was a shared source OS, exactly the same concept as Microsoft is proposing.
My point was that what Microsoft is proposing to do is really no different than most other examples in history.
.Net and C# and the CLR the source is readily available for everything by simply looking at the IL.
.Net you really can't hide the source.
As has been pointed out VAX/VMS, Mainframes, RTOS, most commercial Unices, etc. have all had 'shared source' meaning the vendor shared the source with the consumer.
But this has never given them the right to redistribute the OS source. Although in many cases they were certainly allowed to make modifications and redistribute that binary.
Honestly, I just don't see it as that big of a deal. Microsoft already releases the source code for their C++ runtime libraries in Visual Studio.
Furthermore with
That's the reason why Microsoft is moving this direction, because using a psuedo-code compiled JIT intermediate language like is in
When you go to buy a Black & Decker drill, do you pay the $10 million that it cost to design the one drill? Or do you buy it for $50?
:(
Personally I prefer buying the drill for $50. The nice thing is, my neighbor and his buddy can also buy a drill for $50.
Nobody I know can afford $10 million to buy a drill. Well except for the government, and guess where they get their money?
It's amazing to me how incredibly naive software people are with regards to economics. I suppose it's becaus Econ 101 isn't a required course in ComSci.
Oh god no, I'm horrible at drawing ASCII graphics.
But Mundie already addresses your point very early in his response.
I quote:
"As the U.S. Department of Commerce stated in a report titled "International Science and Technology": "Innovation relies on a partnership between the public and private sectors in which the government invests in long-range science and technology and in mechanisms to promote private-sector risk-taking and investment."
The innovations you gave examples of are just that, government investments. The Internet was all part of DARPA, etc.
What Mundie is addressing is the R&D and innovation which is required to take technology A and make it into a marketable product.
I'm a fan of cars, as well as Venn diagrams. So let me use another example.
Honda is a huge proponent of Variable Valve Timing in engines. They call it VTEC. Honda didn't invent this technology, actually I believe it dates back at least 30 some years.
But what Honda has done is transcend it from an interesting idea that can be used to squeeze some power out of high priced racing cars, into a technology which can squeeze some power and fuel economy out of low priced consumer automobiles.
That is, their innovation was making it cheap and efficient to sell.
Honda most certainly has patents on the improvements they made that relate to VTEC which prevents others in the industry from doing the same thing.
But that hasn't stopped other auto manufacturers from also having forms of variable valve timing. Toyota calls theirs VVT, Nissan VVL(variable valve lift), etc.
But they aren't quite like Honda's solution, and that is what makes cars like the S2000 unique. By pulling 240 hp out of a normally aspirated 2.0 liter engine.
So I guess instead of attacking a strawman argument, why don't you contemplate Microsoft's true position.
Instead why don't you envision a world in which all government funded research projects are licensed with something akin to the GPL. Imagine this world and how it will impact our economy?
Would it be a good thing?
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft has only one measure of success. How much money will something make for Microsoft. This leads to a rather self centered world view. The fact of the matter is that freedom is much more important.
It is ironic that he talks about how valuble software is and then says that the GNU Public License is a bad thing. The only difference is that code is being exchanged without money first changing hands. Items of equivalent value are still being exchanged. Like any other transaction I can choose not to participate by making other arrangements.
This arrangement appeals to the libertarian in me since my freedom to use my computer and code as I see fit is preserved. As far as RMS is concerned that is the only goal for the GNU Public License. The GNU Public License is designed to serve its users not any particular business.
There are people who complain about RMS not being willing to compromise on this. I am grateful that he won't. I get good software and freedom in exchange for giving any modifications I may make to a program back to the community. Sounds like a good deal to me.
One thing I find interesting about this response is that it bears out what I've maintained for awhile about Microsoft's spin on 'Innovation'. Talk to most people about 'Innovation' and they'll think of the process of creating new technologies and ideas. How can you be against the 'Right to Innovate' - we want people to create new stuff!
But when Microsoft talks about their 'Right to Innovate', they're talking about the process of incorporating new technologies and ideas into product, which is something different. As some have noted, Microsoft isn't necessarily that innovative in the first sense - their 'innovations' are largely derivative of other people's work. But when you get down to it, Microsoft is more of a marketing company than it is a technology company, and to a marketer, technology doesn't matter until it's a product he can sell. Hence the focus is more on getting technology into product then it is on the actual creation of the technology
Note that Mundie shows exactly this viewpoint - new development doesn't really matter until it's made into product. They've got enough awareness of the other viewpoint to use it to spin with; one reason they harp on 'Innovation' is likely that they know people will take it in the first sense, and who can oppose that? But the marketer's viewpoint is entrenched (and to some degree explains the long-noted tendency to act as if no technology is real until it's been incorporated into a Microsoft product).
Actually, I don't think Redhat is actually profitable yet. They're getting there. I would propose, instead, that Cygnus is an example of a company that had a successful business model based on the GPL and that they did it long before the GPL became fashionable.
Actually, this is a very interesting tidbit. Apparently the RSA algorithm was patented long after it has been discovered and published. The patent was an afterthought. This was an academic research project at MIT. So in this case too IP played no role.
___
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
long distance power transmission as dc sucks. that is the main advantage of ac.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
it means an artificially generated "grassroots effort"
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
"We believe that one of these mechanisms is intellectual property rights. Without intellectual property protection, neither innovation nor a healthy commercial software industry is sustainable. "
I think he meant to substitute the word "profitable" for "sustainable" in the last sentence.
Actually, the interesting thing is that Oracle is the only one of those who relies on their software. IBM switched to open-source because they found that their current software model wasn't sustainable. Sun has always been pretty open with software, and even more so recently. They make almost all of their money off hardware. HP is basically a hardware company. Oracle is basically a consulting company (I imagine sales of the database doesn't _nearly_ compare to sales of their consulting).
So, it still seems to stand that Microsoft is the only pure-play closed-source company that's really big. Everyone else seems to be focusing either on (a) hardware or (b) total solutions.
In fact, my contention is that there _shouldn't_ be any pure software companies at all. Everything should stem from consulting or total solutions.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Cygnus. ReadySetNet. CollabNet. Ada Core Technologies.
The difference between free software and proprietary software, is that free software gets developed as part of a total system. The bits that are interesting for the community at large get shared. In such a model, consulting firms are the big players, as well they should be. There's no reason for a company to produce Free OSs as their bread-and-butter. The ones that knew that are doing well (RedHat, for example). RedHat produces its version of Linux as a base technology for other services (no, I'm not talking about tech support). They can say, "look at our RedHat 7.1 - don't you think you should hire us to do your missile guidance systems?"
Engineering and the Ultimate
Which is true. The question is about ethics. It doesn't matter if doing the right thing is good or bad for business, you do it because it's the right thing. Very strange coming from an atheist, but oh well.
Engineering and the Ultimate
JFS. Postfix. Linux for the S/390. Kernel work. Linux for the AS/400. The POP board. And the stuff mentioned in the other post.
Engineering and the Ultimate
You're missing the point of free software. It's about freedom. As long as the people who bought the product have full freedom to use it how they wish, that's the whole point. And, free software is _not_ a resume builder. The part of their work that is useful to everyone is packaged up for the community (compiler, debugger, etc). That's stuff they _use_. They didn't just make it saying "now we'll get more business". That's stuff they use in their consulting.
What about Cygnus? They get paid millions of dollars to port gcc to new hardware platforms. It's about _solutions_. Free software is only about software. Giving away software doesn't hurt if you are a solutions provider. The software is necessary, but not what people are after. So why not be moral and give it freedom?
If you are a consulting company, you don't even need to publish your code to be a free software company. All you have to do is give the companies you consult for full access to the code under the GPL. You don't have to publish it to a web site or make it available to anyone else. But you are still being moral. To quote RMS - it's not about price, it's about freedom. There are many packages which are available at no cost, but the emphasis is on the freedom.
Engineering and the Ultimate
But that's the thing. Linux is all about grassroots. _Small_ companies are the ones benefitting most from Linux, as it should be. Small consulting firms. Individual contractors. IT staffs doing free software development to benefit their company. It's misguided to think that the software industry _needs_ a big company producing all of its software. All it needs are individual developers and small consulting firms each helping their clients, and publishing the generally useful stuff to the internet.
RedHat has stated that they don't want to become a billion-dollar corporation like Microsoft, but instead they would rather make the OS a commodity, bringing MS down to a 100-million dollar company. There _won't_ be any Microsofts under Linux. That's the point.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Yay! Someone gets it! Yay!
Engineering and the Ultimate
It could be that MS is just scared of the US government turning away from MS products, and instead using open source products. The US gov't spends an awful lot of money on software licences, and MS wouldn't like to see that revenue drop off. My guess is that they weren't trying to get open source software made illegal, they were just trying to make sure that federal agencies don't start using open source products.
Repeat after me:
Open Source is a Software Development Model
Open Source is not a Business Model
Open Source is a Software Development Model
Open Source is not a Business Model
Open Source is a Software Development Model
Open Source is not a Business Model
.
.
.
No, no company is going to produce Open Source SW as it's principle product, but many are going to support and produce it because it supports their business objective of making money IN OTHER WAYS.
Example: IBM - Open Source is great because they can sell complete HW solutions with little SW cost. Thus, they can sell cheaper / better than their competitors. Thus, they make money.
Example: My company, Mission Critical Linux, is a service & support company in the Linux space. We help companies that want to USE linux. Why purchase our support when they can get it free from the internet? Because we can provide guaranteed timelines, single point of contact, direct support, etc. Why not hire their own? Because we can do it cheaper than that, because our costs are spread across multiple companies.
Result: They make money on THEIR product, we make money helping THEM make money.
Note that our business model is NOT Open Source, it's service and support, which just happens to be service and support of Open Source.
Actually, it's false. GPL is intended to build a strong software community. PERIOD. FSF for years survived by selling tapes of GNU software.
Remember - there are two axis (?can't remember the plural) here:
Open Closed/Proprietary
Commercial Non-commercial
Nothing (repeat NOTHING) in the GPL says you can't sell the SW, it just says you can't prevent the person you distribute to from also redistributing.
Does anyone think that Nicholas Wirth, Edsger Dijkstra, Grace Hopper, Steve Wozniak, Don Knuth, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, Kenneth Thompson, Linus, etc, etc, were doing it all for the money?
:)
Well, there is that really nice box at Shoreline Amphetheater labeled "Woz"
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
What this response points out is, IMO, simple: Bruce is right, it's time to stop talking about "Open Source" and call things by it's name: Free Software. Why? Mundie, and by extension Microsoft, is trying to get a message into the minds of decision makers: with "Open Source" you can't put patents on your software, which in turn means you can't make money out of it, which leads to your company not being able to survive.
It's necessary for the community to emphasize that this is not about money, this is about equal collaboration. By naming their scheme shared Microsoft is trying to give the impression of having all the benefits of Free Software, without the drawbacks, with the drawback obviously being the fact that you can't take the work of other people, put your name on it and make a profit, without giving anything back. Needless to say, Microsoft's scheme doesn't work like this: Microsoft gets their code reviewed, they don't pay for the consulting work and they get to sell the improved product. I don't have a problem with reviewing and improving other people's code, but I want to get paid for it, I won't do it for free. The payment can be money or the right to use the final product in my own projects freely. This "shared source" game is not new for people coming from academic institutions. Almost every UNIX vendor has a deal like this: "you pay us a license and you get the source to the OS. Your students and staff can read the source and you are allowed to 'quote' portions of it in your own work, as long as it's not complete functionalily. Besides the license, you agree to report bug and improvement back to us."
Where I am people call Linux and the GNU tools "Open Source" and they feel awkward when I insist on calling it "Free Software". "Free Software" is a strong and nasty word. "Open Source" is ok, because it's bland. It doesn't carry any meaning in itself beyound the fact that of "I have the source and I don't have to pay for it". Qt is good, either when it was under the QPL or now. The license doesn't matter, what matters is that someone else already did the necessary modifications to get it to compile with the PITA that is the HPUX C++ compiler and I can use the time to work on my closed source program. Don't get me wrong: I recognize non-free software has its time and place. What I'm saying is that people has to be made aware of facts like this, that they have more time because this is a collaborative effort, because everyone has the freedom to help others.
Emphasize on free. Emphasize on freedom. Emphasize on the fact that it's only fair to ask other people to play by the rules if they want to benefit from your work. Remember this the next time you have to spend an afternoon devising a workarround for a bug on your non-free compiler and god knows when the fix is going to be out and how much it's going to cost you, and when you can't use a free compiler because it can't use your vendor's libraries. Remember this the next time your X server crashes because the company that makes the chip on your video card won't release specifications in other to protect their rights as a company and bulldoze over your own ones as a paying customer.
But they can! They just have to play by the rules and give the source to the products that incorporate GPLed source to their customers. It's what the GPL says and it's the fair thing to do.
Oh yes they are -- in the belief that they will eventually get rich(er) and be able to afford software, M$ has a major campaign of donating computers (exclusively running Windows) to libraries (where poor people get 'net access), and has been more agressively targetting "exclusivity" licenses with schools than Pepsi. If a school agrees to the terms and ONLY runs M$ for its education programs (including CS departments) and only sells M$ products in its bookstores (this means no MACs as well as no Linux), then M$ gives a rather large grant to the school. These actions were praised by the press as "Bill Gates finally starts donating some of that cash of his" -- but the reality is that its to hook people on M$ software as soon as possible.
Get 'em hooked on M$ early and they'll stay with M$ when they can afford to buy it themselves...
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I couldn't agree more. But does this mean that Microsoft is opposed to software patents?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
My argument addresses a specific section of Mundie's argument, which I have quoted. It says that innovators are rewarded when their intellectual property is protected. My examples are of people who innovated but were open with their intellectual property.
Where has all the great intellectual rhetoric of the past gone?
But actually, that isn't what the last 50 years have shown us. In exact opposition, the last 50 years have shown us that open systems are the one s that exhibit massive, uncontrolled growth and contribute the most surprising things to society. The "PC era" that Mundie invokes in this article was possible not because of IBM's lightning wit, but because Compaq and the rest pried IBMs intellectual property away to make PC clones. The Internet was the result of public sector research. HTTP, SMTP, DNS, POP, IMAP, SSL, ICP, HTML/SGML/XML, and every other enabling technology of the Internet was given away freely by its creator. The web was created, and given away. BIND, Sendmail, NCSA httpd, Apache, and free operating systems are examples of key technologies that enjoy wide, free distribution unconstrained by their licenses.
There is only one example of an underlying enabling technology that fell under strong intellectual property protection. RSA encryption was patented and required licensing until last year. This "protection" literally crippled encryption innovation for some time. People were forced to either invent their own encryption schemes that weren't covered by RSA's patents, license RSA's patents for large sums of money, or ignore their patents. If you have set up an Apache HTTPS server before this year, you know what a pain in the ass it was to do so legally in the United States. The intellectual property protection afforded to RSA was a huge blow that slowed the growth of encryption for years.
There are so many more examples of technology that was freely distributed to the benefit of society. The C and C++ languages upon which Windows is built are an example. Think of where Microsoft would be if they had to pay a recurring licensing fee for every C++ object they compiled. Consider also how damn hard it would be to debug a C++ program if the format of the object file were protected under intellectual property laws. Think of what Windows would be if the inventors of TCP/IP had refused to license the protocols to Microsoft. Windows would of course be worthless with TCP/IP networking. What would Windows 2000 be if LDAP and Kerberos had not been available to the developers? Microsoft is standing on the shoulders of a giant so big, that they don't even realize it.
Mundie is flat wrong in his argument: almost all of the software technology that we take for granted today was the direct result of research and development performed in the open and given away.
Why is this funny?
After all, it is called the "GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE". There is a "GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" as well. Is that also funny?
Actually, I believe you'll find that it is written with the idea that Intellectual Property isn't property at all.
Have you seen the prices the FSF charges for CDs of software?
Who knows? But you seemed (to me, at least) to be suggesting that the GPL is in active opposition to selling software.
This is true, and I think it's am important point. Microsoft (and any other software company for that matter) has the write to craft their licenses in any way they see fit, as long as the consumer has a choice to accept or reject that model Of course, monopolies run into other problems, since people are no longer free to make decisions in their own best interest... but that's another topic.
What bugs the heck out of me though is the continual insunation that Mundie and others are making now that the GPL is threatening to take away their IP out from under them! That's why they keep repeating this "choice" thing. The lie is: "If everyone starts using GPL software, then we will be forced to give up our own investments in IP." It makes no sense, as anyone who has ever bothered to read the GPL knows, but it falls into the old saying:
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Why does it seem so hard for some people (Mr. Mundie, for instance) to see where the money will be made with Open Source software, GPL or otherwise?
It's called Systems Integration. You know... consulting, professional services. That whole jazz. We're talking Gemini, Anderson, EDS. They don't care where the software they use comes from. They just want to put it all together in a way that makes things work for their clients. If anything, Open Source software would be a boon for this crew, as having ready access to the innards of the software makes the integration task that much easier. (Not to mention kick-ass integration tools and languages like Perl.)
Sure, these companies are all currently pretty tightly in bed with Microsoft, as a) being so means that they get "special treatment" from M$; better prices on licenses, quicker and better access to beta products, M$'s own tech support and knowledge base... and b) M$'s stuff turns over so quickly and is so broken that the Integrators have endless opportunities to resell services that should only have been sold once in the first place.
But it's an unstable relationship. Some day, somehow, there will be a schism, and at least one integrator will go its own way. And the clients will be so delighted with the results that the integration industry will all eventually end up in that direction.
And noone will give a flying fig what licenses the underlying commodity components were released under.
Should this worry Microsoft? Hell yes! Not only does it show that one day they'll lose control of their integrator-lapdogs, but M$ is the only big software company that makes the majority of its money providing "products" rather than services.
Cheers,
Richard
I think this boils down to Mundie stating that you can't get rich selling GPL'ed Software. That might be true but the flip side is that you can save a lot of money using it. Isn't that what RH's Bob Young has been saying all along. He has staed that Redhat will reduce the OS market by 80% in dollar terms.
Help fight continental drift.
The issue at hand is choice; companies and individuals should be able to choose either model, and we support this right.
Allowed to choose, as long as they are still forced to use Microsoft's model?
Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high level of legal uncertainty around the GPL--uncertainty that translates into business risk.
What is uncertain about GPL'ed software? Use it, it works. Fine. How is a well documented legal license creating uncertainty in business any more than the uncertainty of being able to purchase MS products or being forced to lease them?
Nope, you are correct. The biggest "benefit" of DC would be generating plants in every location, requiring obviously more expense, but providing more cost and jobs, etc. That would have cost more money, but made the developers of the technology more money. Who really wants the best solution, rather than the solution which will make the most money? (More on topic than when I started this post. :)
Everyone who reads slashdot should read these three lines over and over until they get it:
Bill Gates wants to make money
Richard Stallman, Linus, Miguel, and others want to make software.
Both groups are a success in that respect.
Remember MS is in the business of making money by selling software, just like Ford and GM are in the business of making money by manufacturing cars.
Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (who held thousands of patents between them) succeeded precisely because they were able to use funding, management and market insight to deliver their innovations as unique, practical and useful products.
Actually wasn't Bell successful because he got to the patent office first, and beat some other guy to the punch?
IBM granted Microsoft life by releasing the specifications for the PC.
I would like Mr. Mundie to explain where Microsoft would be today without the open consumer market in PC's.
Because of the open spec's for PC's
a) PC's are cheap
b) PC's are plentiful
c) IBM was not able to cutoff Microsoft's air by placing OS/2 on every PC and making Windows a costly optional upgrade.
Mundie owes his $$$ to open source
Microsoft has crafted the term 'shared source' very carefully, using the connotations of sharing to good effect. In fact, there is precious little sharing going on - only selected large customers get the source, and they are not allowed to redistribute it.
Let's call this model 'source available' - in other words, it is proprietary software that has source available, just like most RTOSs, VAX/VMS, many early mainframe OSs, and so on.
Much as angst_ridden_hipster said above, what is really threatening MS is that Open Source is not another competitor. We are not out to take down Microsoft, we are out to take down the current software model. Optimistically, I could even see Microsoft's recent actions from the light that they are scared of losing monopoly, but moreover hope to retain at least some of the market by being our enemy (if we recognize MS, that makes MS an option). There will be a time when noone cares what Microsoft says, but they are far to powerful for that now.
The key point is that Open Source is a lot of good things, but best of all it is a community. We love to code, but that doesn't mean that is all we do or want to do. If we want to have a villian and play the hero, what's the real harm?
How this guy Mundie's proclamations are a new threat to people creating software under the GPL license. Take for example this statement:
> What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the ideas and labor that
> transform great ideas into great products.
Yeah, it's an eloquent statement, precisely states Microsoft's take on GPL, yet it fails to explain just how the GPL ``debases" creativity. Is this because the programmer does not get paid for his work? Mundie never says this; we have to read between the lines, & look back to Bill Gates' own adolescent 70's rant about software ``piracy". Otherwise, we are free to assume this is due to any cause -- for example, Mundie holds this true because programmers who release code under GPL are under the mind control of SMERSH, unlike Microsoft programmers, all of whom dutifully wear tinfoil hats.
Mundie is a third-string player in this continuing struggle between Microsoft & GPL'd software. The first string was Gates & Ballmer, neither of whom made much of a serious impression. Next were a series of VPs, of whom the only one who sticks in my mind was Allchin, & that was mostly for his brain dead McCarthy-like statement about GPL'd software. All of them had their shot, found themselves in a no-win situation, & delegated the problem to someone lower in the MS food chain.
Now comes Mundie, a guy with a couple of failed computer companies under his belt, & the protegee of former Microsoft VP Nathan Myhrvold -- who was responsible for Microsoft almost missing the importance of the Internet & left Microsoft shortly afterwards. Mundie repeats the same arguments Microsoft has already stated, perhaps hoping that if you repeat something enough times, people will start to beleive it.
So when Mundie realises that his 15 minutes are up & he failed to sway opinion, who will he delegate this problem to? A junior programmer? Any direct employees left in the cafeteria or on the janitorial staff? Someone from HR?
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Everyone has to put food on the table. Most of these guys were getting paid for their work, either by a university (from your taxpayers dollars) or by their employers.
In other words, if we could replace the commercial software industry with free software, we would save businesses $175 billion annually.
So true! In fact who do those programmers think they are getting paid for their work anyways? They don't deserve anything!
In fact while we're at it I think we should "save" society the cost of teachers, doctors, dentists, plumbers, construction workers, engineers, electricians, etc. Let's "save" then all this money by making it all free! What a great idea! Of course society will collapse, but who cares? Let's "save" them money!
Whether this is a bad thing or not is open to debate.
Yes but most OSS fanatics try to pretend it goes both ways (just look at the collective writings of the OS gurus where they again ridiculously claim that there's no reason commercial software and the GPL are incompatible).
The unavoidable conclusion is that we should allow people to stand at streetcorners and charge you a fee before they let you pass. By failing to do so, we have put millions of people out of work and kept trillions of dollars out of the economy. Surely we owe it to ourselves to implement such a system immediately?
This is a gross perversion of the thought process. Software development is a valuable skill, and it's so ironic seeing reams of misled software developers leading the rampage for devaluing what we do. Damn funny.
Sometimes I seriously wonder whether this whole OSS thing isn't a big joke by a couple of guys are Large Corporation Co.: Laughing away while hoardes of prostituting amateur developers slave their "free" time away filling their needs.
GET TO WORK BEEATCHES!
Read ESR.
Classic. Yes ESR sure has made a name for himself on the back of the OSS movement. I'm going to bet he has profited quite a lot more than your average Linux hacker busy plugging away at code.
Yes, there was a window in history where you could become a zillionaire by starting a software company. That window is rapidly being closed by the same technicological trends that made it possible to begin with. This is hardly the first business or trade that was once lucrative and now isn't (or at least is quickly headed that way).
Being lucrative and being a part of the capitalist world (i.e. a career) are two vastly different things. Software development is a valuable skill, and indeed the vast majority of software development has occurred because of the "carrot at the end of the stick" in terms of monetary reward (though I'm sure the reinvention of UNIX over and over again in various flavours each less capable that the last will be a claimed revolution of the OSS movement). Even in the case of corporate development for internal systems (this is something that so few OSS fanatics fail to see), the impetus for development is the idea that it will make the corporation leaner and meaner than the next guy, allowing them to excel where other corporations fail.
What Mundie and most others don't understand is that open source is going to win no matter what anyone says or does, because its ultimate basis is neither a fad nor a social movement, but the simple march of progress. Microsoft might be able to buy enough legislators to postpone the inevitable, but inevitable it is. Where are the monopolies from the Age of Merchantilism, and what good are their Patents Royal doing them now?
This is absolutely proposterous and is the sense of grandeur that the open source movement applauds itself over. The OSS system is in actuality a front for extreme socialism (though the OSS talking heads will speak out of one side about the compatibility of OSS and capitalism, the reality is that they are paradoxes), and I think history has shown the "benefits" of extreme socialism time and time again.
OSS lives in a vacuum. In that vacuum they believe that the philosophies and fundamentals are something that they invented (guess what: They didn't. See Marx for prior art). In that vacuum they superimpose the benefits of a capitalist society with their unproven claims of OSS superiority. In that vacuum OSS fanatics talk about the great strides that OSS is making, all the while OSS ventures are collapsing at a staggering rate. In that vacuum they can talk about the failure of the commercial software industry at the same time that it keeps exploding (all the while open source sites such as sourceforge are packed to the brim full of dream projects that never made it off the ground because there is no carrot at the end of the stick [and the religion is losing its luster]). Open source is spitting up some blood and it's heading for the grave. Well in reality it's not heading for the grave, but rather it's returning to the normal position it occupies in our society. There will always be college kids willing to do some free development to sharpen their skills, and there'll always be armchair developers who flip burgers in the daytime but at night they're willing to pour over a SCSI driver to be a hero to their Linux friends. No one is saying that will disappear (and it's great that it exists), though it's amazing how once a project becomes "real" (i.e. a software system), like Linux, the progress of development slows to a crawl (or in fact regresses). Yet still most OSS fanatics have the classic fallacy that they can look at the early development and draw a straight line as far as progress goes.
Welcome to industrialized society.
Captialism seeks to make production more efficient. A necessary side effect of this is that some jobs will become non-productive and obsolete.
This is absolutely ridiculous on so many levels. The whole point of all of this is that the world needs software development, and that software helps industry and the world run more effectively (so your "more efficient" nonsense is pure bullshit : Yeah sure it's more "efficient" if it's free. I'd like EVERYTHING to be free, thank you). The OSS zealots insist that despite the intrinsic value of that software, it should be free. Sure software developers are responsible for helping grow more crops, build more cars, and mine more metals, but who cares? Software should be free for all and software developers apparently should live off the crumbs of charity thrown their way. This is, and I apologize for sounding a little harsh, FUCKING RETARDED. These assholes and their bizarre take on what "economics" is (see the inane and incredibly unbalanced "money is wasted on software" bullshit in another thread) is so laughable to most people, yet it doesn't fail to line up more and more cult members. Then again the Nazi movement lined up supporters too.
The only people who fail to see the value of software, and the IP protection required to ensure it isn't stolen from them (because most people, when given the choice between doing the right thing and looking out for only themselves, will look out for only themselves), are fanatics who aren't benefitting and they despise those who are benefitting. In a garage band that can't get gigs? GO NAPSTER! DOWN WITH BIG MUSIC! Don't get respect for your 31337 Linux skills? DOWN WITH MCSEs! Work flipping burgers and just can't break into the software development field (despite mastering FORTRAN)? DOWN WITH COMMERCIAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT! DOWN WITH IP!
I think the ultimate irony, which is brought up again and again, is that Linus happily takes paycheques from a company that is developing a chip that would be ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS without IP protection. The silicon is worth about $0.02, but put the design they created on it and suddenly it's worth hundreds. I respect that Linus works for Transmeta, and personally I think he's very respectable (and not nearly the zealot as most of those clowns), but this hypocrisy is just so glaring, and it's amazing how no one bothers following up. Should chip designs be free of IP protection, and should the designs be "open source"? How about drugs? Should all drug compounds be public domain and free for generics from day one? It's questions like these that separates the idealist idiots from the true extreme socialists who don't want to reveal the colours under that OSS banner.
While Linux and the fanaticism around it has the makings of a cult minus the castration (then again who knows...), what I was moreso saying was the name brand recognition that these folks are building for themselves in lieu of cash (and it is convertable to cash. I'll bet you Transmeta paid big $ to have Linus on the staff). Why did Linus name a UNIX ripoff after himself? Why does ESR put out paper after paper saying the same thing (BTW: It's funny how people read different things into these things. I read TC&TB from ESR and I see a paper about a guy talking about how he did this and he did that, but somehow others use this as some sort of proof of the benefits of OSS....)? Why do these "gurus" run to publish anti-MS papers emblazoned with their name? Because it's barely about giving at all or selflessness at all.
As I've said before I do respect the BSD people a lot more, because most of them seem to have real lives and they actually selflessly contribute. Who cares if MS uses the sockets (though it's amazing how many idiots don't understand the difference between Berkley sockets the programming API and the TCP/IP stack of BSD): That's giving. You won't find that sort of giving with Stallman and friends though. For them it's their way or the highway, and non-free software is evil (uhhh, no wait now they're pretending that the GPL and for-a-fee software is somehow compatible...if you believe that I have a Statue of Liberty I can sell you), and they make sure you know their names.
Microsoft hasn't put out great code since (probably) the 4k BASIC interpreter (and I hear it *was* good code).
Microsoft has put out lots of great code. Microsoft has a lot of the best programmers in the industry working for them (and I'll bet you >25% of professional OSS advocates have one or more MS Press book on code quality, project leadership, GUI design, etc. Amazing how given the supposed poor quality of MS code these fly off the shelves), and these people have put out a lot of extraordinary software (not all of it, but a lot of it). Fanatics won't see it that way though because nothing MS puts out could be worthy of the great standards of ESR or Stallman.
Nah the software industry isn't going anywhere, and that is evident in the fact that the adoption rate of Linux is regressing on the desktop space.
The simple fact that you fail to understand that software, or the flow and execution of instrucitons has ___ZERO___ difference from the design of a microprocessor proves that your opinion is valueless. The design of a microprocessor _IS_ software. How absolutely hilarious.
Do you people have Linus tatooed on your foreheads? This absolute IRONY (and it is ironic hearing you idiots defending the IP of the design of a microprocessor, but on the other side of your mouth saying that the same IP is valueless in software) is astounding. The sad thing is that I respect Linus, and I will wager that he is absolutely ashamed by the people who hold him up as their prophet.
slashdot at +1 is *nothing* compared to the whiners, idiots, zealots and misinformed numbskulls on zdnet.
*thanks* mr. Taco for letting me get half the crap out of slashdot!
We're not talking about running Windows, we're talking about seeing the source code. As far as I know, somebody who is unemployed and perhaps hasn't taken a bath in 2 weeks can probably figure out a way to get ahold of the Linux source code. That same person would have a very tough time seeing the source code to Windows.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Summarized and dissected:
1) Helping customers and partners to be successful through source access programs.
Their philosophy is exclusive, and therefore limited in how effective it can be. Students and other poor people are NOT allowed to participate in their philosophy.
2)Building the development community and offering the tools to produce great software.
A community is a spiderweb network arrangement of people, with free associations. Shared Source is a star topology network, with Microsoft strictly arbitrating all associations between clients. They don't fit my definition of "community" very well.
3) Improving feedback processes in order to create better products for Microsoft's customers and partners.
This is an unequal flow of information, which makes me wonder how Microsoft thinks of their partners. Imagine what would happen if our relationships with wives and girlfriends (ideally a partnership) worked like this. The Man (Microsoft) would do what he wanted. The woman would give everything she earned to the Man. The Man would provide everything that the Woman needed. Occaisionally, he would sit down and listen to the various ways he could improve the quality of what he provided to her, to make her happy. If he decided not to implement suggestions, that would be touch luck for the Woman. How long would it take for the Woman to tell the Man to screw himself and his "partnership"?
4) Maintaining the integrity of our customers' environments.
Integrity simply means that words and actions are aligned. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand what partnership and community actually mean, so how can we expect them to have integrity? Integrity is easy if you are the author of the dictionary.
5)Increasing educational access to get technology into the hands of universities worldwide, and to seed the future of a strong technology industry.
This is called indoctrination. It's not a philosophy, it's a strategy.
6)Protecting software intellectual property rights based on the firm belief that software offers value as the basis of a successful business.
Software is the basis of Microsoft's business, but other businesses base themselves on things like financial services, building houses, making industrial machinery, etc. Reminds me of a guy at American Express that I used to work with. He actually told me "if Amex were to adopt open source, how could we make money if we gave all our software away?" I had to remind him that Amex made money off charge cards (not software), and they weren't required to distribute source if they didn't distribute the binary.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Microsoft realizes that most corporations for whom intellectual property is the most important asset are not software publishers. That means that, for a lot of organizations, using and releasing software under the GPL makes a lot of sense. I want to use today's Dreamworks animation studio story as an example of how contributing to the development of software licensed under the GPL can be in the interest of a corporation wishing to protect its intellectual property.
The Dreamworks animation studio did not choose to use Linux because of imaginary benefits or because of philosophical bias; they most certainly were not jumping on a bandwagon. I want to state, for the record, that when Lans Carstensen (the network admin guy at Dreamworks and a friend of mine) started deploying Linux, he talked about specific, present business needs addressed by the deployment. Amongst them, the story of the network filesystem issue is especially interesting because it shows how the decision to deploy Linux stems directly from the need to protect intellectual property related corporate assets.
The workstations at the Dreamworks animation studio have two or three network cards in them, one of which is a Gigabit Ethernet adapter. Network usage is high enough to warrant this sort of configuration because, amongst other things, the animators' work (which consists of mind-numbingly large graphics files) is stored on the network filesystem. This situation is, to say the least, unusual. In fact, the needs of the Dreamworks animation studio are so special that, at one point, they were even considering developing their own network filesystem! This seems crazy -- until you learn that the Dreamworks animation studio rightly considers its computer files to be a primary business asset; in the case of animation frames, computer files are the direct precursor of their final product! With that in mind, try to put yourself in their shoes: if you had to develop your own alternative implementation of important network services, what target platform would you choose? The developers at the Dreamworks animation studio chose an open source, free software product (Linux) as the starting point for their efforts. [If you did not arrive at a similar solution, please read the rest of the article and then try again. :)] Now,
the story of Linux deployment at the Dreamworks animation
studio was not one of unmitigated success, as many bugs were
discovered that had to be overcome, but this just underscores
why a group of talented IT professionals would choose an open
source product over a closed source product, whether "shared" or not: the latter would leave them at the mercy of the vendor,
whereas the former allows them to help themselves.
Let me summarize. The decision to deploy Linux at the Dreamworks animation studio was not made on the basis of the product's technical merit alone. Responsible IT professionals choose Linux because, beyond providing a solid foundation on which to build a custom solution, it empowers its users and developers in ways that closed source and so-called shared source products never could. The Dreamworks animation studio staff can better protect the company's intellectual assets (which are created in the form of animation frames) by using, modifying, and sharing GPL'd software. Interestingly, the GPL, by virtue of its perpetuity, further protects their assets by guaranteeing that the software they helped create will remain available to them.
Let me now spew some tenets of pop-psychology empowerment theory with which even Microsoft's PR flunkies could not disagree:
I propose for your consideration, that the Dreamworks animation studio story is, undeniably, one of empowerment. Moreover, I propose for your consideration that, if you believe that the above tenets are true, then you should find that Craig Mundie's statements of the past few days are an egregious example of FUD.
I realize that I may be preaching to the choir by posting this here, but it is my hope that the above will give somebody powerful arguments for the next water cooler debate. :)
Then they laugh at you...
:)
Then they fight you...
Then you win.
Mundie is just trying to buy time. He's giving the anthill another stir because it's the only action he has left that can really seriously annoy us. Microsoft's other forms of leverage are evaporating like dry ice in a microwave.
Maybe he'll convince a few CIO's to hold off on the switch to Open Source for another eight to twelve months. Ooh. Maybe he'll even convince a few to go back to old Cobol mainframes.
But he wouldn't be bothering to directly address us unless we were now officially a threat.
I'm just wondering how this is going to look on his resume at his next job, once MS is driven out of the OS business. Then again they've got $20 billion in the bank, plenty to start a new business from scratch if necessary. Maybe they'll open a chain of restaurants or something...
(Remember, we're not TRYING to make MS go away. We're trying to make Windows go away.)
Rob
I believe this is quite literally the best response that Microsoft has to the threat of the GPL: if you can't beat it on technical merits, strangle the money supply instead.
Microsoft knows what would happen if Red Hat and VA Linux Systems went under: whole segments of the open source community, including Slashdot and Sourceforge, would suddenly find themselves quite strapped for cash. Linux and OSS development would be permanently crippled, at least relative to today's heady pace. Eventually, Microsoft would once again beat Linux on technical merits.
The best solution to this problem is for companies like Red Hat and VA Linux to turn a profit, and soon. This is realistic for Red Hat; I'm really really hoping that it will also be realistic for VA soon.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
first, they ignore you :o)
/. but I think it
second, they laugh at you
third, they fight you -- (we're here!)
then you win -- next round ?
Mahatma Gandhi
(said before on
sooooooooo appropriate)
The purpose of copyright is not to benefit authors. The purpose of copyright is to benefit the general public by encouraging authors to publish works, which, at the time the Constitution was written, meant open publication. The idea of a "closed source copyrighted work" is something that would have appalled the founding fathers. The entire purpose of creating a copyright clause was to eliminate proprietary licensing of writings, specifically the restrictive licensing of navigational maps.
... To promote the progress of science and useful arts,"
... to secure for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Map makers didn't want to sell maps, because they could be easily copied. Therefore, mapmakers resorted to individually licensing maps to ship captains, as trade secrets, and the result was that no one could study, compare, and correct maps, and inaccurate maps proliferated, often resulting in loss of life.
This situation is very similar to the situation with commercial closed-source software, where the "state of the art" swirls around in a fog of secrecy. Only the authors of closed-source software are in a position to study, compare, and correct source code, and their publishers all spend inordinate amounts of effort in mutually preventing themselves, and the rest of the world, from doing so.
Certainly, rewarding authors is not incompatable with benefiting the public, but it is important to remember that copyright has a purpose, and a permissible means.
The purpose of copyright is stated in the constitution:
The Congress shall have power
The means of promoting progress is:
"by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
Note that the constitution does NOT say:
The Congress shall have power
because the promotion of progress, not the rewarding of authors, is the sole legitimate purpose of copyright.
Think of the GPL as an effort to repair our failed copyright system.
Of all the comments and replies to his original FUD piece, Ransom Love was the only one that I know of that supported Mundie. In Mundie's followup, the only response to his original that he quoted was Love's.
He ignored the fact that several pointed to companies like Cygnus who make money and release under the GPL. He ignored Linus' "shoulders of giants" quote from Newton. And he just plain old repeated the same stuff all over.
Proof by repitition, I guess. If he really wants "an active debate," shouldn't he respond to some of this stuff?
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
* Subways and whatnot, which are legacy DC systems.
I don't know if calling BART in San Francisco or the Washington DC system "legacy" makes sense. They were built from the ground up to be "modern" systems using lots of custom parts, and if there wasn't an engineering reason to use DC, they probably wouldn't have used it.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Very good point. This wouldn't be so ridiculous if the software industry operated like any other engineer concern and actually had a process in place to licence patents.
.25/copy shipped), I could see a good chunk of the open source community going along with it.
I can't even imagine calling Microsoft up and asking how much it would cost me to use an XOR cursor. If they had a reasonable policy in place (such as
Instead, the current situation has pretty much enforced Stallman's anti-patent view as the only reasonable one. Hence open source projects tend to thumb their noses at patent rights (here's code which implements RSA or MP3 - don't use it!)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
When Mundie talks about money-making business models based on Open Source, what he really means is software businesses.
For the vast majority of businesses, the intellectual property on software created by them doesn't create any direct revenue, but rather the information that that software manages does.
These types of companies can benefit from and contribute to Free Software, and many do this already. The major advantage, of course, being that they're made dependant on highly priced but closely guarded Intellectual Property.
When Mundie says
... he shows his true colors. Free Software is competition - and when competition thrives, prices drop; and Microsoft is worried that users will realise the real value of Microsofts intellectual property.
-- Buddy
Aladdin software had a policy regarding ghostscript: given the current version was N.x.x., then version (N-1).0.0 was released under a "free" license ("free" in quotes, because I'm not sure that OSI would agree that it's that kind of license.)
Given the typical commercial software release schedule (2-3 years to release version N+1), this type of arrangement seems to ensure that the software company can make money off of those who want and/or need the latest version. When the N+1 version comes out, release version N.0.0 under a GPL-like license that allowed anyone to (a) modify the source, (b) redistribute the modified source or binaries, but (c) forbid them from reselling the source or binaries.
The company can make money and recoup their investment off the latest release, phase out support for the previous release, or make a few more bucks by selling "officially supported" versions of the older software.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Golly, didncha all read Julius Caesar???
This whole public debate is the part after JC is killed, and Brutus and Marcus Antonius are trying to sway the crowd.
Perens's response is Brutus. Mundie's is Marcus Antonius. If we want to win this battle (if indeed we care...they could be picking a fight so we exhaust our arguments...or to make us look like a bad idea so they can get UCITA passed) we're going to have to go after people's hearts. A person is smart, but the public is mindless. The intellectual route is a dead end.
Anyway. Brush up on your Shakespear. We're going about this entirely the wrong way. You don't win the confidence of Joe Sixpack with prose that reads like PERL.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
- Without intellectual property protection, neither innovation nor a healthy commercial software industry is sustainable
I didn't know he could see alternate time lines, I'm really glad he can otherwise we'd make a huge mistake if we abolished IP protection.Intellectual Property I believe is more of a hindrance upon innovation. Why is it I cannot improve upon a technology in existence for my own benefit? I have a philosophy that there are two types of success in business.
Beat everyone to the punch, and maintain leadership that way.
Take an existing technology, and make it better and evolve.
I see the same problem with IP that I see with harboring people who violate natural selection. The Darwin Awards should be applicable to companies too if you ask me. Through the latest economic shift (I refuse to call it a crash) a lot of companies had good products but didnt know how to make money off of them. Look at Eazel for a great example.
Innovation comes from individuals, not from laws.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
IIRC, that's by design. Rather than have a small chunk of a large software market, RedHat has stated they'd rather maintain their absolute market share and decrease the size of the entire market by commoditizing the OS. This is what Microsoft is really afraid of - you can't charge monopoly profits on something people come to think of as free and common.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I think there might be more of a gain than a loss - since no one's making any profit off of free software, businesses can implement only the features they need, or use them as implemented by other businesses. The money saved could be used either to improve the free software more, to expand business operations, or to do research and development. The developers would still be employed, but rather than reimplementing stuff that's already been done before (Oracle DB versus Microsoft DB, IBM web stuff versus Sun web stuff) they could be building on each other's work and creating more value for their employers and the community as a whole.
Overall, with free software you can either spend less than $175 billion worldwide to get the same results that commercial software has provided, or you can spend the whole $175 billion and get more value than commercial software would have provided you. The only caveat is that you have to have critical mass of businesses for this to start working. That ball has only just started rolling; but it's picking up speed...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
...as long as they're all painted black.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Grey (Chris Lusena)
No real surprises, but its getting submitted a lot so I figured I'd post it for you. Lots of good points, but I'm sure you can guess the gist of it
This is not the first time the editors of slashdot have admitted to posting stories with no redeeming value beyond the fact that they've been submitted repeatedly and they can no longer be bothered to send off rejections.
In short, it has been announced to astroturfers everywhere that, in order to get your stories published, no matter how inane (as this one certainly is), all you have to do is make a concerted series of submissions to the story queue, until CmdrTaco or someone else gets sufficiently tired of it and do exactly what said astroturfers desire: publish their story and lend an air of legitemacy to their view.
And we wonder why the quality of slashdot's content, in both story and commentary, is so rapidly declining..
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
There are several reasons I can think of:
There are probably other good reasons too, but that's what I can think of at the moment.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
He says "produces $175 billion in worldwide revenues" forgetting that, for software customers, it generates $175 BILLION is worldwide additional operating cost, increasing prices for all non-software products by a total of ...
plus taxes.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
The money, yes he talks about so much revenue being generated by 'companies'.
But really, the world exist of more companies than just software companies.
All that revenue that those software companies are generating is adding to the bottom line of all other companies (read: the grocery store on the corner, the sub shop, the movie theater, your telephone company, the producer of your bedlinnen, etc etc etc). So, commercial commodity software make all other things more expensive.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
This story, and the reaction, was sufficient to get notice from the San Jose Mercury (San Jose, California, USA):
http://www.siliconvalley.com/opinion/gmsv/
Since this link changes quickly, here's the part I mean (look for "lynch mob"):
Microsoft unveils long awaited sequel to Halloween documents: Microsoft senior software strategist Craig Mundie on Thursday addressed the withering criticism recently thrown his way by Open Source advocates over his condemnation of the GNU Public License. In an opinion piece published by ZDNet, Mundie further articulated Microsoft's vision of Shared Source. Noting that he had never meant to question the right of the open-source software model to compete in the marketplace -- only to explain how it differs from open source -- Mundie said the GPL turns existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads. "What is at issue with the GPL?" he asked. "In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products." Mundie then went on to suggest that the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at the expense of a strong commercial software business model. To wit: "When comparing the commercial software model to the open-source software model, look carefully at the business plans and licensing structures that form their foundations. This comparison leads to the conclusion that the commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic growth. Intellectual capital has always been, and will remain, the core asset of the software industry, and of almost every other industry. Preserving that capital--and investing in its constant renewal--benefits everyone." One can almost hear the lynch mobs slowing gathering in the far reaches of the Open Source community...
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
On May 17, 2001 7:34 AM PST, Craig Mundie wrote:
... Microsoft's shared-source philosophy, a carefully crafted approach
> COMMENTARY--On May 3 I spoke at the New York University Stern School of
> Business about Microsoft's position regarding source-code licensing. I wanted
> to articulate some of the benefits and drawbacks of the various ways
> commercial software companies could share their source code. I described
> Microsoft's shared-source philosophy, a balanced approach that enables
> commercial companies to share source code with their customers and partners
> while preserving the intellectual property rights that support a strong
> software business. I also articulated some ways in which shared source
> differs from open source.
Read:
that enables commercial companies to recieve free software development labor
from their customers and partners while preventing those customers and partners
from gaining any reciprocal benefit.
You can now give Microsoft bugfixes for their products, and in return for that
hard work, Microsoft will give you... absolutely nothing!
> The reactions to my statements have been many and varied. I wanted an active
> debate about intellectual property and the software industry, and I certainly
> got one.
(My opinion: This is a rather arrogant statement. As if Mundie was the first
person to think of this subject, and subsequently started a debate. More like
he wanted to save face for Microsoft after the Shared Source announcement, so
he decided to join in the (already long-running) debate.)
> But this is more than just an academic debate. The commercial software
> industry is a significant driver of our global economy. It employs 1.35
> million people and produces $175 billion in worldwide revenues annually
> (sources: BSA, IDC).
Indeed. The Free Software industry is an even more significant driver of our
global economy. I have no statistics to quote, but that is because the scale of
this benefit is so exceedingly astronomical as to be entirely inestimable. To
begin to imagine what I am talking about, think of where the world economy
would be today without the World Wide Web.
Or email.
Or the entire Internet.
But this is more than just an economic debate. The point that Mundie ignores
completely in his commentary is that the Free Software development model is
simply more techinically efficient than closed development. It produces better
software, faster.
The benefit to consumers is ultimately the most important factor, and that is
where the closed development model cannot hope to compete.
> The business model for commercial software has a proven track record and is a
> key engine of economic growth for many countries. It has boosted productivity
> and efficiency in almost every sector of the economy, as businesses and
> individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools, information and other
> activities made possible in the PC era.
A proven track record? The commercial software industry is only 20 years old,
and is already beginning to fail. Compare its age and sustainability to other,
truly proven industries, such as Agriculture, Oil, Medicine. In this young
upstart field of software, who knows whether a business will really be around
for the long haul?
But don't worry! With the GPL, you as the consumer (a point of view
consistently ignored by Mundie) don't have to worry about whether your
commercial supplier goes out of business.
So much for the importance of a proven business model.
The development model for Free Software has a proven track record -- it is more
well established than that of closed source software. Also it is a key engine
of technological growth for many countries -- many more than is commercial
software. It has boosted productivity and efficiency in almost every sector of
the economy, as businesses and individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools,
information and other activities made possible in the Internet era. (Gee, that
last sentence didn't even change much, but somehow fits Free Software better
than closed source. Go figure.)
> Companies have the choice of protecting or relinquishing the intellectual
> property resulting from their research and development consistent with their
> particular customer and business needs. As the U.S. Department of Commerce
> stated in a report titled "International Science and Technology": "Innovation
> relies on a partnership between the public and private sectors in which the
> government invests in long-range science and technology and in mechanisms to
> promote private-sector risk-taking and investment."
Of course, this partnership is only necessary for fields of endeavor where
significant monetary or hardware resources are a prerequisite for development.
As this is not true for software -- the only resource required is a brain and a
computer -- the Commerce Department quote is irrelevant.
> We believe that one of these mechanisms is intellectual property rights.
The umbrella term "intellectual property rights" does not refer to a single
mechanism. It is impossible to have intelligent discourse when such vague and
meaningless terminology is used. Nevertheless...
> Without intellectual property protection, neither innovation nor a healthy
> commercial software industry is sustainable.
Half of this assertion is questionable, while the other half is simply false.
It remains to be seen whether profitability can be sustained making Free
Software, but it is obvious that innovation certainly can be! And at a much
greater rate than is seen from closed source development. After all, who
invented the Internet? Certainly not Microsoft. Or any other commercial entity,
for that matter.
> The last 50 years of public- and private-sector collaboration has
> demonstrated that when intellectual property rights are protected, innovators
> are rewarded for their efforts. Furthermore, technology is advanced
> guaranteeing economic growth and a cycle of future collaboration, investment
> and innovation.
Actually, the last 50 years has seen continued innovation *despite* so-called
"intellectual property rights", rather than because of them.
A company's desire to protect its copyrights and patents prevents it from
freely sharing development work with other individuals and copmanies. Its
desire to retain revenue causes it to develop software that is not
interoperable with the rest of the world (creating vendor lock-in and ensuring
future revenue).
The mere presence of such software slows the general progress of technology by
distracting customers from the superior software which has been freely
developed. Free Software is more interoperable because the developers have no
incentive to create lock-in, and more robust and efficient as a result of
shared development and peer review.
> In my speech, I did not question the right of the open-source software model
> to compete in the marketplace. The issue at hand is choice; companies and
> individuals should be able to choose either model, and we support this right.
Likewise, no one has questioned Microsoft's legal right (under generally
accepted interpretation of current copyright and patent legislation in the US)
to compete in the marketplace with a closed source model. We simply question
whether this is a wise thing for Microsoft to do in the long term.
The issue at hand is not choice. No one has said that individuals and companies
should not be able to choose. The real issue is that we believe a real problem
exists with the new licensing model that Microsoft employs: Shared Source.
Essentially, it provides obvious benefit to Microsoft, while providing no real
benefit to any other individual or company. Microsoft now offers "Shared
Source". My question is: Why should we care?
> I did call out what I believe is a real problem in the licensing model that
> many open-source software products employ: the General Public License.
>
> The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their
> heads. Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models
> is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high
> level of legal uncertainty around the GPL--uncertainty that translates into
> business risk.
There is also a high level of legal uncertainty around Microsoft's shrink-wrap
and click-wrap licenses. This is less true now that the DMCA has passed, but
still the enforcability of many clauses in those licenses has yet to be tested
in court. But Microsoft seems to consider that an acceptable risk.
> In my opinion, the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at
> the expense of a strong commercial software business model. That's why Linus
> Torvalds said last week that "Linux is never really going to be a rich sell."
Corollary: commercial licenses are intended to build a strong commercial
software business model at the expense of a strong software community.
A strong software community is necessary for significant innovation. It is
necessary to build truly great software.
The GPL is intended to build a strong software community. Period. If this must
happen at the expense of a strong business model, then so be it, but that is
not part of the design. While the development model for Free Software is well
established, the business model is very new, and nobody's really sure how to
make it work yet. If it does work, then great. If not, then there are plenty of
other ways to make a successful business.
> This isn't to say that some companies won't find a business plan that can
> make money releasing products under the GPL. We have yet to see such
> companies emerge, but perhaps some will.
What a kind concession on the part of Mr. Mundie.
> Recent history tells us, however, that finding a business model that works is
> difficult. According to ZDNet News, "Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera
> Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL
> doesn't make much business sense."
That may or may not be true. Time will tell.
> What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the
> ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products.
"...the currency of the ideas and labor..." I must admit that after several
rereadings, I still have no idea what that is supposed to mean. It certainly
sounds very grave, but really is quite ambiguous. Does this noun phrase refer
to actual monetary currency related to ideas and labor? Perhaps it treats ideas
and labor metaphorically as currency which is then mixed with another metaphor
of transformation? Who knows?
What is certain, is that the GPL requires freer exchange of those exceptionally
important and wonderful transformative ideas and labor. That is the core of the
GPL, and it accomplishes this goal better than any other license.
> Alfred North Whitehead, the renowned British philosopher, logician and
> mathematician, observed: "It is a great mistake to think that the bare
> scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked
> up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One
> element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about bridging
> the gap between the scientific ideas and the ultimate product. It is a
> process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another."
>
> In other words, a critical flow of information and experimental data follows
> every major scientific discovery and results in the verification, refutation
> or refinement of the new idea or theory. To facilitate this process, neither
> copyright nor patent protections are available for abstract ideas or
> theories. This is as it should be.
This is perfectly agreeable as far as it goes. However it is important to be
perfectly clear when determining exactly what constitutes an abstract idea or
theory. Algorithms fall squarely into this domain. Software patents are granted
for specific implementations of algorithms, but have been interpreted to cover
any implementation of the same algorithm. So while patents themselves are not
available, patent *protections* effectively are! This is a serious problem.
> Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry
> Ford (who held thousands of patents between them) succeeded precisely because
> they were able to use funding, management and market insight to deliver their
> innovations as unique, practical and useful products. Arguably, the
> creativity and inventiveness needed to deliver their products was comparable
> to that needed for the underlying theory or discovery that made their
> business possible in the first place.
Of course, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford actually
invented things. Computer Science (along with the important parts of the
software industry) is really just a subdomain of mathematics. The important
discoveries (they are not inventions) in software cannot be owned by anyone. It
is one of the greatest swindles of this century that Microsoft has somehow
managed to fool all of its customers into paying money for a piece of math.
> When comparing the commercial software model to the open-source software
> model, look carefully at the business plans and licensing structures that
> form their foundations. This comparison leads to the conclusion that the
> commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic
> growth.
More importantly, a careful comparison leads to the conclusion that the Free
Software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real technological growth.
A closed source model actively inhibits innovation and general progress by
preventing the free exchange of ideas and development work among the worlds
developers.
> Intellectual capital has always been, and will remain, the core asset of the
> software industry, and of almost every other industry. Preserving that
> capital--and investing in its constant renewal--benefits everyone.
Of course. And the best way to preserve and invest in that capital is to ensure
that it recieves the widest possible dissemination.
> Craig Mundie is a senior vice president at Microsoft Corporation.
Keith Rarick writes code.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? [Who guards the Guardians?]
> But they have provided no evidence
> whatsoever that GPL'd software is
> bad for users.
>
It seems to me that MS have already demonstrated
it, before Microsoft (and a couple of other
closed source companies) computers were
restricted to company back offices,
universities and a few hobbyists, and
ran a hotchpotch of different, incompatible
operating systems and software. After MS
computers are (almost) a standard household
item, have virtually a single user interface
and are almost always compatible with each
other. Twenty-five years of UNIX, twenty
years of the GNU projects and ten years
of Linux have failed to achieve anything
like that benefit for users, in some
cases (the fragmentation of AT&T derived
unixes and of Linux distributions) they
have actually gone backwards.
How is it a troll, because I don't say 'M$ sux'?
In any case, I was trying to provide a
counterpoint to the more usual 'Microsoft stole
our industry' one hears from UNIX users. In
particular Moore's law is as much as social as it
is technical, chips can be faster but stay the
same price only because the market for them is
growing so there are economies of scale. The UNIX
workstation vendors (as well as Apple, Amiga,
BeOS, etc) were based around high markup but low
volume hardware and cheap or bundled software. It
was only the PC with cheap, high volume hardware
and more expensive (and therefore closed)
software that provided a sufficent market for
Intel to make faster chips for which then
expanded the market for PCs further (since as
you say, they could then be more user friendly)
and created a virtuous circle.
Couldn't tell you. I get the impression that it was written by some poor intern who slept through his writing classes back in high school. Or some MS manager who did the same.
Poor attempts at humor aside, I think Micros~1's goal here was to write something so horribly incoherent that it's impossible to effectively refute it, while having a high enough FUD factor that those who don't know better will fear and doubt.
-----
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
> Mundie's comments make much less sense to the end-users of software...does the customer want to pay more or less for a given commodity like a text processor, image editor, or database?
Wasn't it the lame-MS-line-of-the-month a few months ago, that "Using OSS deprives people of the opportunity to pay for their software"?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> I'm one of many people who has concerns about the GPL's ability to stand up to a strong challenge.
If it's the inductive (or "viral") nature of the GPL that concerns you, I suspect that the well established covenant running with the land will serve as a suitable legal analogy for that part of the GPL.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> And also cost software companies $175 billion annually so the total gain for businesses is 0, some gain some lose, it would also put 1.35 million people out of work and with $175 billion less being spent anually you have economic slowdown. Money saved is no good to the economy, but money spending is what makes for a vibrant and thriving economy.
The unavoidable conclusion is that we should allow people to stand at streetcorners and charge you a fee before they let you pass. By failing to do so, we have put millions of people out of work and kept trillions of dollars out of the economy. Surely we owe it to ourselves to implement such a system immediately?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Software development is a valuable skill, and it's so ironic seeing reams of misled software developers leading the rampage for devaluing what we do.
It's the simple march of progress. Fifty years ago there were probably only a handful of programmers in the whole world, and only a handful of machines to run their programs on. Now there are millions, maybe tens of millions of programmers, and a similar proliferation of machines to run their programs on. "Demand, meet Supply; Supply, meet Demand."
Where do you think that trend will put is in another 20 years?
Yes, there was a window in history where you could become a zillionaire by starting a software company. That window is rapidly being closed by the same technicological trends that made it possible to begin with. This is hardly the first business or trade that was once lucrative and now isn't (or at least is quickly headed that way).
What Mundie and most others don't understand is that open source is going to win no matter what anyone says or does, because its ultimate basis is neither a fad nor a social movement, but the simple march of progress. Microsoft might be able to buy enough legislators to postpone the inevitable, but inevitable it is. Where are the monopolies from the Age of Merchantilism, and what good are their Patents Royal doing them now?
Unless someone is powerful to completely shut down technological progress all over the world, they might as well think of progress as a law of nature and start getting used to the idea of its side effects. What Microsoft needs, whether they realize it or not, is a business plan that doesn't rely on a vault full of source code as its crown jewels.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I tried to think my way through M$'s GPL attack... and ended up writing a song about the GPL instead. It's at http://www.ackley.net/~mike/songs Who the hell's ever going to write a song about another EULA?
I like how Mundie casts it solely as a money issue, and how he cites a few notable, successful, capitalist inventors (Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford) to make it seem like all innovation is about wealth.
He left out a lot of inventors who weren't in it for the money, or who got cheated by big capital: Tesla died penniless, as did Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun, Jan Matzeliger, Mandee Daguerre, Walter Shaw, Samuel Morse, William Friese-Greene, Lee de Forest, Johann Gutenberg, Henry Trengrouse, and on and on....
Then there are all the inventors/researchers who did what they did not for money, but for the love of it. Let's look at computer scientists. Does anyone think that Nicholas Wirth, Edsger Dijkstra, Grace Hopper, Steve Wozniak, Don Knuth, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, Kenneth Thompson, Linus, etc, etc, were doing it all for the money?
There's doing it for money, which is the world Mundie understands, and then there's doing it for love, which he finds very threatening.
bukra fil mish mish
-
Monitor the Web, or Track your site!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
This is also safer for them to say. Many people understand the idea of investing in a business that MAY be profitable in the future. Many industries require a long start-up time and large up-front costs.
If they say they'll be profitable soon, their stock will plummet when 'soon' comes and they're still not profitable. If they say that they'll be profitable only when they have developed a market, that's a variable goal, from six months to ten years. As long as their investors picked it as a risky long-term stock, they're set.
Nobody will drop their stock if they become profitable before they indicated, but they would drop the stock if their failed to become profitable when they said they would.
It's a troll because you say something that's obviously false as if it were true. The 'troll' part is that you say something like 'MS rocks' on Slashdot. If you did it elsewhere it wouldn't be a troll, just wrong.
Having cheap software is an obvious benefit in the industry, however you can see from products like Dr Dos that other companies were in the same market space. MS was big because it got the contract from IBM and was the 'official' vendor of OSes for IBM hardware.
This isn't to say that MS didn't do anything note-worthy, or that the industry would be exactly the same without them, but it would certainly be mostly similar.
If you want to blame/thank a company for this situation, it should be either IBM for outsourcing its OS, expanding the market for software-only companies, or compaq, etc, for cloning the PC, expanding the market for cheap hardware. Those were the non-apparent actions, which may not have happened again, unlike MS's simply filling a niche someone else made.
I know it's a troll, but I just have to correct this misconception...
You can't generalize from a sample size of one. You can't claim that anything is the way it is now because of MS because we don't have a comparable yet seperated industry to compare it to.
Moore's law has held constant since he conceived of it, that means computers have gotten more complex over time. At some point they became powerful enough to be easy to use, enabling millions of users to get on the net, etc.
Your hypothesis is that MS made computers easy to use. The more reasonable hypothesis is that companies like MS and Apple made computers as easy to use as was possible with the hardware of the day. Companies like Intel made computers more powerful, enabling MS and Apple (etc) to build powerful GUI OSes.
Computers are right where they would be without MS. Apple made the first consumer GUI, AOL sent out free trial disks for all popular OSes... The only difference without MS would be that BeOS and Amiga might still be fringe players and Apple would be larger.
Um, that's simply not true. If the operating system's essential libraries are proprietary, you can still link a GPL application with them.
Case in point: most GNU software is ported to proprietary Unixes. (The support for Solaris is typically the best of the non-free Unixes.) It's quite kosher.
--
You're a suburbanite.
Companies have the choice of protecting or relinquishing the intellectual property resulting from their research and development consistent with their particular customer and business needs.
We know what choice Microsoft has made. As much as we want to flame Microsoft for making buggy, expensive software, it's their business model, and it's obvious that Mundie is advocating something more than shared-source here. He's rubbing it in the face of the Linux industry when he says it: companies have the choice whether to hang on to their source or not, and the success of the company is often indicative of the choices they make.
Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, you just can't point to any other company and say they've had the same results. It's easy for Mundie to say that shared-source (rather than open source) has played some role in that growth, because there's no way any of us can refute it. But at the same time, he could just as well have been saying that the success of Microsoft is due to Gates having a bad haircut, and that every CEO/founder/President should have a bad haircut.
In their defense, though, Mundie is saying that it's a choice, and it's a choice Microsoft has made. It's not like they aren't aware of the choice: they're making it to satisfy their business needs, like stockholders, and I sincerely doubt the stockholders would jump for joy if Microsoft gave up the source code tomorrow.
What's your damage, Heather?
>>But they aren't quite like Honda's solution, and that is what makes cars like the S2000 unique. By pulling 240 hp out of a normally aspirated 2.0 liter engine.
Ho, hum. Honda CBR600Fi. 600cc's. 94.1 hp. I leave the hp/cc calculation as an excercise for the reader. No VVT. Not exceptional.
But that doesn't mean what you said is wrong. Just that the power per liter of the S2000 isn't that impressive (to get really sick numbers, let's look at some two-strokes.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Sure, this has been mentioned several times, but bears repeating: most software is not sold. Most is developed in house.
I run a doctor's office. I occasionally write a shell script or php script. Maybe we could sell them. But why? That would require more time and effort than it is worth. Similarly, we don't have the resources to support anything other than our own business. So why not open source our stuff and let others do some of the debugging? Why not let them improve it?
Some might say that those scripts and programs are an integral part of our business, and one of our competitive advantages. Not in our case (and in the case of many others). Our advantages are more fundamental: treating employees fairly and expecting hard work in return, keeping abreast of the medical/legal/business environment, and having a good community name. Our nearest 'competitor' (which has been self-imolating for a few years) could have every piece of software we've written, and still self-destruct. Ditto for our next competitor.
We are in the medical business. Not the software business. Banks are in the lending business, Ford is in the auto business (okay, and the suing 2600 business), even AOL/Time Warner is not in the software business.
Microsoft is one of VERY few companies in the software business. It is one of VERY few companies to be threatened by Free and/or Open Source software.
Microsoft, via Mundie, seems to want to claim that support is not a valid business model. Most local car dealerships would differ. They sell the car near cost, and make it up in service. Gilette and Sony almost give away the product to sell ancillary products.
Microsoft could start giving away free (beer) software tomorrow, and still rake in billions in support. The only problem is that their support isn't much better (in fact, worse) than their software.
IOW, Microsoft is a majority of one (hmmm... a monopoly) who has a business model unique to themselves. And now it is being threatened.
And I say fuck 'em (especially after the letter from their license auditing group last week.)
-George
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Ground GIF files into the ground, PNG files came shortly after, and it was open-source.
I always thought that patents and copyrights was to make sure that nobody BUT you could use it. Mundies is using double-speak to try and enforce the idea that MS is right and GPL code is wrong.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Bad for what buisness? Maybe Mundie doesnt realize it, but the other 2.5 billion people working on this planet arent working in the software buisness. And in the IT industry, even there I'd guess maybe about 5 percent are working in companies whose buisness the GPL would be bad for.
And for all those people GPL software is a good thing, because it makes their software cheaper and more reliable.
So maybe Mundie should try explaining exactly why the other 6 billion people somehow affected by software should care about his desires to control any and all of their software and make them pay through the nose at every turn.
Free software is about and for USERS of software. The important thing isnt wether Microsoft can survive or not (because who cares if they whine all the way to irrelevancy), it's wether the freedom and value provided by free software can make it a Good Buisness Choice for everyone else.
The first company has the copyright to their software. If the second company does not accept and conform to the terms in the GPL license they are engaging in copyright violations for profit. That in itself is a federal crime and the first company can just hand it over to the police and prosecutors and watch their competitors getting nice little cells and cute little fines. Then, when they're not going anywhere they can hand over the civil lawsuit for damages, of course.
Do not be confused by the feints against Linux, the GPL and Open Source, the real agenda is the extension of Perpetual Copyright and Worldwide Patents, the restrictions on reverse engineering and other forms of innovating and creative thought.
This is the article to read: http://www.consultingtimes.com/ms_infowar.html
The problem with the business model of spending $1 Million on a product, giving it away for free and then depending on charging for support to make money...
Is it encourages building crap products.
This also applies to commercial software. I mean why else do companies charge for tech support and have paid upgrades?
But this is where competition is supposed to step in, the better products will get used by more people and thus have an advantage over the crappy products (free or otherwise). If M$ gets their way, there will be no competition and hence we get more of their (already) crappy products.
There are simularities between open Source and Napster. Both are a response to a commodity being artificially restricted.
Microsoft doesn't sell custom software, they sell Commodity software. But, they try to avoid the commodity trend, that is, supply causes the price to drop as it increases. So, they keep producing new versions with useless features. They now are stuck trying to figure out how to charge money for something people don't need, new features. (and avoid fixing the problems they create in the process).
The Music industry artificially sets prices high, while the costs associated with mass production are so low they could produce far in exceess of world demand. They shuffle the exceess profits into their advertising/promotion machines which consume money but don't add value to very much.
Both these companies are now dealing with the invisible hand... it is a direct result of them, and their industries trying to maximize profits, when anyone and their dog can now compete with them.
Within 5 years another industry will be hit by the same problem. Which industry? Dimond mining. There are very, very strong indications that man-made dimonds are, or will be a perfect match for natural dominds. And we all know the monopoly in that industry won't be happy...
The real gains in productivity in software comes from things that Microsoft has pretty much nothing to do with. Telephone switching, automobile control, inventory control, Space, etc... Hidden software which performs mundane tasks at great speed relieve humanity from a variety of burdens which would crush us otherwise.
It can be argued that all really important software tasks are done by one or more companies to solve a specific problem that one or more companies have a need to have solved. It's not a mistake that UNIX was invented in Bell Labs, they needed it.
It can also be argued that nothing Microsoft does on a massive scale actually saves anybody time and effort. Sure they produce a lot of neat gimmicks and some pretty cool software, but I've rebooted my Windows 2000 box no less then fifteen times in the last two days. I've had to deal with Visual Studio crashes, Word crashes, IE crashes. I'm not saving any time and effort here folks.
The open source business model is a threat to Microsoft because its entire goal is to provide software that competes directly with Microsoft in their Market. You don't see open source projects designed to replace Ma Bell's telephone switching outlets or even the Space Shuttles control systems. You don't see people hacking into their cars (not too much anyway) in order to make them run better. What you do see are people who are writing software that is designed to put Microsoft out of business.
It's no big surprise that IBM likes open source either. They like to sell hardware, if open source tools help them then great. Microsoft sell politely arranged atoms, essentially nothing, it's difficult to maintain the case that they should exist just because they like to sell a lot of nothing.
Now if Mr. Mundie were to tell us that Microsoft was going to provide software that helps solve world hunger then I agree with him, I may even cheer. If he's trying to tell us that open source is bad because it helps him sell stuff that is mundain and otherwise should be free then I think he should start looking for a new job, before open source puts him out of business.
Beware the wood elf!!!
Know thy enemy: www.microsoft.com/business/licensing/sharedsource/ faq.asp
What is Microsoft's concern with the GNU General Public License?
There is no question that the GPL is a complicated license that has led to a great deal of confusion. For the sake of clarity, we wish to reiterate our basic points in regard to the GPL and other OSS licenses:
* Some open source licenses are viral, that is, they require that all derivative works be licensed on the same terms as the original program. These licenses are described as viral because they "infect" derivative programs. Viral licenses vary in how infectious they are, depending on how they define which programs are derivative works. However, one of the dominant open source license - the GPL - is the most infectious. It attempts to subject any work that includes GPL-licensed code to the GPL. Thus, if a government or business uses even a few lines of GPL-licensed code in a program, and then re-distributes that program to others, it would be required to provide the program under the GPL. And, under the GPL, the recipient must be given access to the source code and the freedom to redistribute the program on a royalty-free basis.
* Open source licenses that are non-viral, on the other hand, permit software developers to integrate the licensed software and its source code into new products, often with much less significant restrictions. A prominent example of this type of license is the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license. The BSD license allows programmers to use, modify and redistribute the source code and binary code of the original software program, with or without modification. Moreover, programs containing code subject to the BSD license are subject to only limited obligations imposed by that license. This type of license gives users freedom to incorporate their own changes and redistribute them, without requiring them to publish the new source code or allow royalty-free redistribution.
Then there are all the inventors/researchers who did what they did not for money, but for the love of it.
I think money is very imporant to most creators.
You can't use the fact that many important inventors failed to exploit their inventions successfully as evidence they didn't want to be paid in proportion to the value and originality of their work.
Historically, the US had no effective patent system until the mid to late 19th century (although the patent office did exist). The early nineteenth century was a period of rapid technological progress as people applied the technology of assembly lines and interchangeable parts to problems like clock and gun making. During this period of rapid innovation, inventors tried by failed to find ways to prevent others from using their work. Clearly they were enticed by the promise of exclusive benefits, but didn't have the means; in the meantime they all enthusiastically innovated on/stole from each others work.
Conclusion: rapid technological innovation requires both private economic incentives and public openness.
For that reason, I think the theoretical form of the patents and copyright solutions are good ones for creative people. Your earning potential as a creative person is maximized when you can benefit exclusively for a while from your work on one hand, and on the other if your creative potential is maximized by access to the work of others. Creative people in the 19th century chafed at a system that was excessively biased towards openness. Now they chafe at the opposite.
Are executives at corporations paying for lobbyists to extend IP rights forever doing it so they can pay their creative people more? Of course not. They hire creative resources based on equalizing near-term marginal costs and benefits. The discount rate means that the future effect of IP expiration on the value current worker's output is practically nil. It's expiration of long ago created properties created by long since departed workers that they are concerned with.
Who benefits the most from a system that allows monopolization of obvious or trivial ideas through financialand legal blackmail? Not creative people, whose productivity is hobbled by this. It's the people who are in the position to be financial exploiters of ideas. The intellecutal property squatters.
Suppose there were a law, that all software source must be opened and publicly licensed at no cost after seven years from release. Windows 95 would just be coming due for expiration next year. Would Microsoft no longer be incented to innovate because of this? Would they slow down? Of course not. They would speed up. They'd be working even harder to improve their products before somebody did it for them. The creative people -- the programmers, software engineers and graphic artists would be even more important, especially since they could jump ship and work for the competition.
This would be a wonderful scenario for the people who actually do the creative work, and for the public at large, but a terrible one for the people who are, in the end, just overhead in the transaction.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They actually pretty good analogies to Gates. They were able to put the right pieces together at the right time to gain enormous personal wealth and influence; but public perception credits them with far more genius than they actually possess(ed) and in the wrong fields.
its uncertain because it creates uncertainity in the software business. if you have a product thats being sold for $0 and you have another which is $10000, the company producing the $10000 product is eventually not going to get any business..stranglehold monopoly or not....better product or not...even the best marketing only goes so far.. it has an uncertain future. free/open source software puts this entire software business model at risk..thats what M$ is really scared of - free/open source software doesnt compete with them directly -- it undermines their business model. competition can be killed -- business models being wiped out cant since a business model is a philisophy not a product. ..something they are reasonably reluctant to do given the cash drain from the XBox product launch and the new XP launch.
personally i prefer the service/consulting model with open source software which IBM is chasing after to the closed software as a uncustomizable product approach that M$ is taking. but thats just me. switching to consulting will require M$ to expend large amounts of money and effort on people and quality of solutions
You forgot to mention that The Empire would not have risen to power in the first place if it weren't for the Clone Wars. (Oops, did I give too much plot away?) The PC clones were ripoffs of IBM's intellectual property, and MS-DOS was the operating system that was able to capitalize on cheap PCs.
Damn... need to start reading the articles all the way through...
I have two points. The first is that, while Mundie says theories and ideas should remain free, source code is one area where the difference between theory and practice becomes fuzzy. Sometimes, there isn't much to differentiate between a model and its implementation.
Second, I would say that most scientists and engineers could care less about the bottom line. Sure, they would want to be well paid, have excellent benefits, etc., but would happily accept a government position comparable to that of industry, and would gladly let all their ideas be released and published. Corporations, viewed as entities, are the ones who care about profits and restrictive intellectual "property."
And since when do the system libraries normally ship with the executable?
--
Will Dyson
Will Dyson
"We can't stop here
Quote from halloween documents, part 1:
Loosely applied to the vernacular of the software industry, a product/process is long-term credible if FUD tactics can not be used to combat it. OSS is Long-Term Credible
Wonder what made them change their position since we have now clearly seen some pure FUD. (and also direct attacks on free development process, as (I believe was) suggested by the halloween memos).
So what has changed? Some new strategy that has not yet leaked or just pure panic? Do they now have som scary strategy unfolding that will be evident when it is too late?
If you read the RH filings with the SEC, Red Hat themselves don't know when or even *IF* they are going to turn a profit. I don't understand how you can assert it is likely they will if they don't believe they will themselves.
From their 10k filing:
"We expect to incur substantial losses on a GAAP basis for the foreseeable future."
"We have incurred operating losses in six of our previous seven fiscal years, including our most recent fiscal year ended February 28, 2001. We expect to incur significant losses for the foreseeable future, as we substantially increase our sales and marketing, research and development and administrative expenses. In addition, we are investing considerable resources in our Red Hat Network initiative and to expand our professional services offerings. As a result, we cannot be certain when or if we will achieve sustained profitability. Failure to become and remain profitable may adversely affect the market price of our common stock and our ability to raise capital and continue operations."
My take on this is that it is rather unrealistic to expect Red Hat to return a profit to its shareholders in the next five years, perhaps if ever!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Me too. Once. I write software as part of my job, but the idea of being paid over and over for it is as alien to me as paying Black & Decker every time I drill a hole. The GPL is completely compatible with a write-once-pay-once model.
cheers,
mike
In my opinion, the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at the expense of a strong commercial software business model.
Whether this is a bad thing or not is open to debate.
The GPL doesn't build a powerful, centralized authority which can influence the government (i.e. "force") to privilege them in certain ways.
A large corporation is a centralized, powerful entity (which is why it finds the government so easy to cozy up to) which can and typically does influence the government so that it receives certain privileges that others don't. (That is why all these big companies try to sic the gov't on each other: get privilege for my company, get some hamstringing restrictions on them.)
And the GPL community is a threat to Large MultiNational Corporations Working Hand-In-Glove with Government. We're decentralized, we're hard to control, and we don't bow the knee to the corporate state. Problem is, when we get really organized, we get power and start becoming one of those large corporations who buddy up to government power.
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
His argument is that hoarding ("protecting") IP is the only way to economic success. And he may be correct. There's no doubt that keeping your code proprietary and out of the eyes of others will make you more money when your product is the code itself. But who cares? Who is arguing against this? This is not an argument. This is a truism.
The discussion is at a more fundamental level - should people be allowed to monopolize ideas indefinately? He casually skirts this larger undercurrent by preemptively Fearing us with some blather about IP resulting in economic growth, IP making us rich and happy. *You* don't want to be the one to ruin the economy, *do you* hippy free code slacker? What's good for Microsoft is good for America.
Seeing as he was talking to a business school, it does make sense that he was saying that Open Source is not the way to make money (so, and helping old ladies accross the street all day isn't either). His arguments seem to stem from the assumption that making money is the ultimate test of human endeavor. Whereas the Free Software community has different values.
yes this is rantish, i don't care
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The point isn't to change software buyers' minds. The point is to reduce commercial support for Linux, which would in turn reduce the appeal to normal people and hackers alike.
--
it would also put 1.35 million people out of work and with $175 billion less being spent anually you have economic slowdown.
You think all those software developers, testers, product managers, etc, would just sit around and do nothing if the entire software marketplace went to open source? Of course not!
First of all, there is plenty of development for specialized software tools that are not created for commercial purposes, thus all those people would be safely employed - and if the idea of open source was a given, these tools might even be made available (or at least parts), and something might be beneficial.
And the rest would find themselves other productive jobs, and contribute to the economy in other ways.
Of course a sudden loss of the commerical software industry would be bad... but if it were a gradual thing, I don't think it would be any harm, and in fact, might even be helpful.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
What do you think Mr. Mundie is?
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
Wait just a minute. Are you saying that S11 doesn't know what the hell he's talking about?
Good lord! You've commited blasphemy.
Signal11 is the most intelligent person on this planet! Just look at what he has to say about every single issue ever posted on any web site in the known universe. He's so dead on every single time! Yay!
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Well, given that I've got the guts to post as myself and not as AC, I think that should count toward something :)
Offtopic is probably the best choice though.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
Every dollar not spent on software is a dollar that is spent on new equipment, that is spent on employee salaries, that's returned to the stockholders as dividends for them to purchase chocolate with.
Every dollar not spent on software is a dollar that can be invested elsewhere..
And this is a good thing, for those businesses, and for society.
If you want to get fabulously wealthy, controlled distribution is the way to go. Spend $1M to develop the program, then sell a million copies at $100. If you "give away" a million copies and then sell support, advice, custom development, etc., you have to bill a million hours at $100 in order to have the same revenue. You (and the army of others billing those hours) may live comfortably, even handsomely, but you're not going to get fabulously wealthy.
Unfortunately, a fabulously wealthy corporation has a lot of "tools" at its disposal for making life difficult for the GPL community (embrace and extend, buy out competitors, advertising campaigns). As long as none of those corporations get too big, they do tend to focus on competing with each other and the community can flourish "under the radar". I view the fact that MS has gotten around to attacking the community as prima facie evidence that they enjoy a monopoly status, that there are no commercial competitors remaining.
I guess I should have added, if the goal is to get fabulously wealthy, making a million users pay you $100 per year to use the program is an even better business model. If you can get away with it.
Some conflicts are bound to arise when producing the work costs $100M (with a cast of thousands) and the "author" is a corporation. The "author" has to make a lot of money in order to undertake another product on that scale. If some products are extremely successful (to offset the ones that are a bust), and the wealth generated by the corporation is concentrated into the hands of a small number of people, fabulous wealth results. Should corporate charters allow that?
Should corporations be entitled to be "persons" in the sense of the Constitution's provisions on IP? Until the late 1800's they weren't, when a judge with (by modern standards) a serious conflict of interest invented the legal theory that corporations had basically all the same rights as people, except they couldn't vote. I believe the case involved a railroad in which he owned stock needing to be a "person" in order to receive government freebies.
As an economic system, free markets and capitalism seem to work when there are lots of small producers for every product. When production becomes limited to a small number of entities, it tends to go to hell. The same would seem to be true for when IP protections work well!
That was very well put. But I have a totally honest question that I've never really been able to answer myself... I'm hoping some of you people can. What exactly keeps M$ from stealing my IP? Say my killer C++/Java/compiled language app is made available on my site... both in source and binary form. What keeps M$ from stealing the source, changing the interface, and claiming it as theirs? They've effectively stolen my IP. Now I can say 'Hey, that's mine you stole it.' But on what grounds would anybody ever listen? There are bunches of original programs that perform the same function, how do I prove that they stole MINE?
Thanks, Mike.
--Ask a silly person, get a silly answer.
At least now he can distinguish between Open Source and the GPL, although I believe the title of the article is mis-leading.
There is nothing in an open source model that can keep someone from competeting against it. If you can build a significantly better mousetrap, then people will buy it anyway. DEC VAX/VMS was a completely open source operating system that was a SIGNIFICANT player in the late 80's and early 90's. Their OS source code was available for a nominal fee (to pay for the Microfiche it came on).
What Mr. Mundie and Microsoft in general still seems to be wresting with is competing against the GPL. The GPL is a software house that produces code that's free, is of good quality, and can't be bought, incorporated, dismantled, or undersold. All their tried and true techniques of competition don't work.
The only way to compete with the GPL is to be more customer focused, have better quality, and respond to changes quickly. MS's customer base is too big and too divserse to do that, and they lack real cross-platform development abilities.
Perhaps Microsoft is starting to feel a similar pain to what Netscape felt when Microsoft released IE and IIS for free? Netscape couldn't buy it, they couldn't dismantled it, and they couldn't undersell it, and it was good quality (Esp. for Windows platforms), and their last resort was to open-source the browser.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
I think what is really questionable is how Microsoft releases basically the same mediocre software every couple of years with new eye candy (directly proportional to the code bloat factor) and then wants $150 to $300 for an "upgrade".
It is quite humorous that you chose science as a analogy to open source software. If it weren't for the open source practices of all the great scientist of the past, you would have to pay a royalty every time you fell down! "Sorry about that, but you used gravity, 0.10 please." Remember the quote Linus stated in his article (if you didn't read it, you should get your head out of the sand) for Sir Isaac Newton "If I have seen farther it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Which is conflicting to Microsoft's own vision "If we have seen farther it is only because we trampled all the little people."
I think Microsoft's biggest issue with open source software is that you can't buy the rights to it because the public owns it, and since there is no main competitor to go after, so you attack the license.
--
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
"The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads." I love that M$ actually considers this an arguement. I think that the real reason that Microsoft doesn't like GPL is clear. In the past, if a technology challenged Microsoft, they always had a back up for getting rid of it: Buy the technology (remember when they tired to buy Palm). But GPL takes way this option. once a technology is GPL'd, they can no longer just throw money at a technology and make it "go away". One good point in all of this, GPL must reaaly be making M$ feel threatened for them to be spending all of this time trashing it. -lowLark
Every quote you referenced is a strong argument for Open Source and not Shared Source, thank you for writing a response that provides quotes for the Open Source movement to use to defend GPL!!!
I like how you spoke in the heartland of the very place where the death knell of Microsoft is taking place - institutions of higher education, particularly those with the very brightest students (Harvard and MIT).
I make my living as a Microsoft consultant, I don't hold any ill will toward any licensing model, but America is about freedom and Open Source is the ultimate expression of freedom, powerful software code that lets you control the most powerful tools in history - and its all available at no cost!!! Microsoft needs to join the Open Source movement and not continue to believe it can actually FUD its way around this obstacle.
Microsoft has always demonstrated amazing flexibility and swift adoption of new technologies. Now is the time to become the world leader in Open Source development and abandon this ridiculous argument that intellectual property is some kind of DEVINE RIGHT. Evangelism for intellectual property rights is not going to win the battle of the hearts and minds of C-level management personnel. Knowing that they don't have to pay big licensing fees just to use software applications is what will win these people over. The future economy is a service economy, you know that as well as I do. Why do you continue to treat software as a commodity rather that a service? Are you just stupid?
I am surprised by the desire to resort to FUD when this obstacle has real roots, a real engine and no one single individual you can debunk and expose as some kind of jerk (i.e., Larry Ellison). Go ahead and tell the world about Linus, the Free Software Foundation and Eric Raymond!!! That is a great strategy. Anyone that now searches GNU and GPL will discover only positive press and you have instigated more searches on this than have ever happened in the last 5 years!!!
The incredible profits MS has made under the current market atmosphere is commendable and the fear that changing the model will take away any measure of predictability - the heart and soul of good business practices - is stupifying. But, intellectual property is not more valuable than a model that treats written code as "air". Your attempt to scare people into choosing the status quo over making a choice to move to the unpredictable world of Open Source will fall on dead ears. If you wish to know the principle weakness of MS in competing againt Open Source and why this attack won't influence anyone to not leap to Open Source. Just ask.
Thank you.
Michael L. Deane
Why isn't Transmeta releasing it's IP under the GPL? Why did it patent all of it's company secrets? Is it because Transmeta is in it for the money? Just like MS? It seems transmeta is following the business model of MS, so it must be a better business model...
I don't post often so I'll attempt to be brief:
Mundie cites revenue generated by the software industry as being positive for economics, but the other side of that is what the businesses need to hear. Businesses only care about profit. Why put that money into software that already exists as GPL/BSD/Any Free for commercial use software?
It is obvious in the article that microsoft is trying to instill FUD in the programmer community as well. The FUD of not ever getting paid or making decent money as a closed source person could make.
Writing a closed source program is easy compared to letting someone see your code and tell you how you can improve it. It takes a person with a lot of confidence in themself and a desire for the best program to let others critique them.
This space intentionally left blank.
How is MS making this choice for us?
Develop software and keep the license: fine.
Open source your software: fine.
Please tell me how MS is choosing how you define the license for your software.
The only thing as prevalent as stupidity in this world is unsubstantiated MS flame, I wonder why.
A speech...
"The business model for commercial software has a proven track record..."
Yeah...a proven track record for making business' money. It doesn't have a proven track record for making better software, protecting the rights of consumers and users, or protecting the rights of the rights of those who choose to create new software.
So Microsoft is trying to equate "making money" with "good software" which just is a logical falicy. There is nothing about a successful business model that promotes better software. Apache, Perl and others seem to be quiet sound without the money grubbing business model Microsoft seems to aspire too.
In my opinion, the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at the expense of a strong commercial software business model.
Whether this is a bad thing or not is open to debate.
But, this is not correct. GPL was written to ensure that software which were originally free could not be copied by unscrupulous (or uninformed) companies and incorporated within their products.
GPL might not be such a good deal for software writers, but it surely is a great deal for software buyers.
There's a unspoken rule of meetings: when you go to a meeting, bring the same number of people, at the same level of leadership, as the group sitting across from you.
So now we have the Fundie fellow, who I'm sure no one ever heard of until recently, being shoved into the limelight to make a bunch of obnoxious statements so that his superiors can enjoy the show without getting egg on their face. And every figurehead in the free software community responds! Why bother? The guy is obviously a stool pigeon. Let the chattering masses chew him up. But please - Richard, Eric, Bruce, et al. - don't stoop. You only led credibility to this loser by participating in this (tired old) discussion.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Not as funny as "General Public License".
Pretty soon, Linux will be a cooperative 16-bit operating system.
Ozwald
Yes, you are wrong. RSA exists because of fundamental research done by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman and is specifically a variation on an algorithm developed and published by Martin Hellman and Stephen Pohlig at Stanford University two years before RSA filed their patent application.
This may seem stupidly obvious... but if people have such problems with the GPL, then what's wrong with the LGPL? There is a reason the LGPL exists and many projects do use the LGPL. Sure, you can't distribute your own version of one of the compiled libraries, but you can use it without releasing the rest of your code. It's no differen than using a DLL developed by some other closed vendor (like Microsoft). At least you get to see the code and fix problems with it this way.
He should be given the title "Man of F.U.D.".
This latest rebut.. is the biggest load of FUD I've ever seen. No facts to support ANY of his ideas.
The GPL relies on copyright to work. Unlike licenses from companies which remove rights of the consumer, the GPL only grants you rights. Should the GPL be tested and fail in court, the more resrictive laws on copyrights should apply. While many point out that the GPL has not yet been tried in court, one might also point out that multi-billion dollar companies have had their lawyers go over it with a fine tooth comb. There's a reason it hasn't been tried in court yet. Stallman also has a legal team and I'm sure they've also gone over the wording of the license.
As to the applicability of the GPL versus the BSD license, I don't think it's a lot to ask that if you use code that I wrote, you return something to the community. It's not like I'm demanding money from you. And if you don't like my license, you can certainly offer to give me some and I might consider licensing it to you under different terms. Did Microsoft pay any of the BSD teams or the University of California for use of the various BSD pieces that you see copyright statements for when you boot Windows? The Microsoft agenda is pretty transparent.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Idea=>Product=>Money
Those who are generally involved with opensource think along this line:
Idea=>Product=>Task Done Properly
Money doesn't enter the equation. To keep the money out of the equation, or rather, to keep it from being the sole rule that define Idea and Product, the GPL was created.
Of course Mundie has a problem with this. His sole duty at work is to make money. The general idea behind OpenSource is to do something properly, efficiently, etc. They are widly different ideas.
Of course, everyone else is going to have a slightly different spin on this. When I create something here at work I take marvel in it's simplicity, creativity, ability to do what it was designed for, etc. Mundie marvels at the number of $$$ made.
Like everyone else, I expect a paycheck at the end of the day. I take more pride it how well I do my work than how much I make.
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.
The purpose of the GPL is to remove that $$$ constraint in relation to code. As I said above, money does not become the guiding rule to producing, using and sharing code. It shifts the guiding rule to FREEDOM not PRICE.
In other words, the GPL discusses FREEDOM, not PRICE. Mundie wants only PRICE discussed, not FREEDOM. Why is this obvious? Because companies are in existence to discuss and build upon PRICE, not FREEDOM. Companies could care less about freedom, and so could Mundie. The GPL however gives you the ability to shift the cares and concerns back to freedom.
...the commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic growth.
Mundie sees Open Source as bad for Microsoft and bad for "The Economy" because he is stuck in the old paradigm that values things based on the amount of money that flows. True value is not so measurable, but the value of Free Software is becoming undenyable.
It is so exciting that there is a meritocracy in our field, and the true heros rise to positions of fame and prestige they themselves create.
There is still the problem of making money, because all those programmers gotta eat, but what we are seeing is that there is so much more than money.
The question is, how do we go from here, where people like Muncie truly believe that if the money stops flowing, there won't be any more movement, to the next level of civilization?
Mundie teaches us why leading inventors as... Thomas Edison succeeded... insight... unique... blabla.
Let me tell you all a story I know about Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla you might find interesting. Both were amazing inventors and it can be argued that we owe to them the way we use electricity today. To them?
In 1882 Thomas Alva Edison had been the manufacturer up until that point in history of the system that carried the current to the households of America: direct current.
Direct current was not practical for traveling long distances to houses, and required transformers to boost the signal several times along the path from the generating plant to a person's house or to a building because of the resistance of the direct signal through the copper wires they used. This required costly and bulky equipment to have to be installed along the path to one's house, and caused electricity to be expensive and therefore rare.
Edison was the leader in the production and maintenance of the equipment that his transmission system required; he designed and was responsible for the building of the system.
Tesla offered the idea of a rotating magnetic to produce AC (altenative current). This meant that the voltage could be changed without serious loss of energy, using transformators, which are not costly, and quite small.
So really, Tesla's method was much more efficient. And Edison knew it. But... Edison was earning nice sums from his direct current power plants, which he had a few patents for (really a monopol), and he didn't want Tesla to fiddle with his money.
So... at West Orange, New Jersey, Edison and his men began paying schoolboys to kidnap small animals off the streets. Edison used them in live demonstrations about the dangers of AC. He would have the small animal tied to a large metal slab, and electrocuted in deliberately crude experiments. There were posters up all around the city that said, "Warning!" at the top and in smaller print went on to warn residents about being "Westinghoused," as electrocution was called by Edison's men.
So really, Edison was not a very nice person.
Tesla was humilated by him, and because of him, Tesla's genious was not recognized by the public. In contrast to Edison he died as a poor man.
Today, thanks to Tesla, we use AC, and it saves the electrical companies milliards of dollars every year.
Mundie teaches us that "the creativity and inventiveness needed to deliver their products was comparable to that needed for the underlying theory or discovery that made their business possible in the first place."
Arguably he is actually talking about how to best electrocute furry animals...
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
The problem with the software industry is to save costs in business you have to standardize. This in and of itself implies a single vendor (or monopoly). When you have a single vendor that owns the market, you are at that companies whims (see the recent article about the forced upgrades by october 1st or you have to pay full retail price to upgrade). The GPL ultimately protects the customers and end users. It keeps one entity from having too much power and being able to abuse whoever they want.
--
Twivel
But they have provided no evidence whatsoever that GPL'd software is bad for users
No, I don't think he is arguing this. He is arguing the GPL is bad for large corporations that are intending to sell software, such as Microsoft. He criticized (with good merit) the Eazel/Red Hat/other GPL software business model -- not the business model of IBM or SGI who support Linux to sell hardware or other non-GPL software. The effect of the GPL on users is not really the point here.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
The commercial software industry is a significant driver of our global economy. It employs 1.35 million people and produces $175 billion in worldwide revenues annually (sources: BSA, IDC).
:)
1.35 million people and $175 billion in revenue, that's a little over $1000 per person.
no wonder so many so many dot-coms are going under
Oops... that's embarassing -- now I wish there was a way to unpost a comment? :(
Just done a search on Microsofts MSDN and I can't find it...
The problem with DC is that a power surge will melt your whole line. It's a fire hazard and it's very costly since you have to replace the whol thing. AC localizes power surges so only the location of the spike will fail and need replacing. But you're right that DC is more efficient in power transmission.
-----
"Goose... Geese... Moose... MOOSE!?!?!"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Kiwaiti
Member of the Legion Of Microsoft Haters
I doubt this has changed.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
On the other hand, I have read some of your recent submissions to k5 and I could hardly call them coherent. Especially I remember your article about your dislike for trolls since it seems you act like one many times :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Yes, thats basicly what I meant :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
And they cannot be really sure that no one will discover it, since some employee has to incorporate the code, some has to review it, and they sometimes lay off people, you know? And still there are these rich companies with access to the code who are not all M$ friendly. I guess some of them could just make an interesting compare of M$ OS with some other licensed OSS operating systems. And so on... they can never be sure, and I guess they would not dare to risk it.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
But the problem that no one really mentioned is that GPL is protecting my intelectual property. Its protecting it in the exact way I want it to be protected and its protecting it so well, that Microsoft cannot steal it! And thats why they cry out loud. They see all the revenues lost, they could gain if they would be able to steal my intelectual property. And thats makes them mad.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Throughout the speech and followup, he goes to great lengths to explain his perceived weaknesses of the GPL, instead of focusing on the strengths of conventional commercial development. Rather he usually just ends up saying that conventional commercial licenses should be used because they're "proven". However, this neglects the fact that few software companies, outside of either specialized vertical markets, or games are doing all that well as Microsoft gobbles up more and more consumer dollars.
There are other parts of the commentary that is nothing but pure fear mongering. For example, this statement: "Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high level of legal uncertainty around the GPL--uncertainty that translates into business risk." While, he certainly is welcome to his opinion, I think this kind of statement is despicable, since it serves only one purpose -- to create fear, uncertianty and doubt. He conveniently forgets that even if the GPL is ruled to be unenforcable, the only result is that you'd be unable to redistribute GPL covered works in any form aside from the normal fair-use exceptions. That is far less uncertainty than most commercial licenses that disclaim all warranties, prohibit rights such as reverse engineering, and sometimes even from disclosing certain details about the software, such as performance, flaws, bugs and capabilities.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
After MS computers are (almost) a standard household item, have virtually a single user interface and are almost always compatible with each other.
Post hoc ergo prompter hoc falicy?
I think we'd have standard desktops / UIs / application platforms even if MS didn't bless us with them. Perhaps they'd be open (Gnome, GNU, Gwhathaveyou) or perhaps not (OS/2, Java, Proprietarywhathaveyou).
----------
no comment
The business model for commercial software has a proven track record and is a key engine of economic growth for many countries. It has boosted productivity and efficiency in almost every sector of the economy, as businesses and individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools, information and other activities made possible in the PC era.
It's not the buisness model that has boosted productivity - Joe Secretary doesn't care where his word processor came from, so long as he can use it well. The software (& hardware) itself is responsible for boosting productivity. Mundie attempts to draw a false analogy between commercial software and economic growth in non-software companies, whereas the relationship is from software in general.
We believe that one of these mechanisms is intellectual property rights. Without intellectual property protection, neither innovation nor a healthy commercial software industry is sustainable. The last 50 years of public- and private-sector collaboration has demonstrated that when intellectual property rights are protected, innovators are rewarded for their efforts. Furthermore, technology is advanced guaranteeing economic growth and a cycle of future collaboration, investment and innovation.
The GPL, according to everyone but RMS at his most radical, does not undermine IP by any means - in fact, it relies upon it for enforcement of the licence. What Microsoft's PR doesn't seem to get is that GPL'd code would not be available if it were not for the GPL. It would be binary-only, and no one would be able to use it. Under the GPL, the code is available for use, something completely new.
This isn't to say that some companies won't find a business plan that can make money releasing products under the GPL. We have yet to see such companies emerge, but perhaps some will. Recent history tells us, however, that finding a business model that works is difficult. According to ZDNet News, "Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense."
I'm sure some companies will emerge under a successful buisness model of selling proprietary software, too. GNU/Linux is pretty much the fundamental drive behind adoption of the GPL, and it's only been a few years since it got large enough to actually have companies built around the GPL. Companies that release GPL'd code don't (unless they're entirely stupid) indend to make money from the software - they make money from support, manuals, and everything else that makes it nice to use. The GPL makes great sense if your primary buisness isn't software, and you don't want to or can't afford a huge in-house development team for it. Drivers, for example.
Alfred North Whitehead, the renowned British philosopher, logician and mathematician, observed: "It is a great mistake to think that the bare scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about bridging the gap between the scientific ideas and the ultimate product. It is a process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another."
Thank you for just supporting the argument. Under the GPL, any popular product (or product-in-development) is sure to have many eyes looking upon it, and these many eyes can "attack upon one difficulty after another" far faster than the inherently limited in-house design team. GPL'd code has the potential to get done faster.
When comparing the commercial software model to the open-source software model, look carefully at the business plans and licensing structures that form their foundations. This comparison leads to the conclusion that the commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic growth. Intellectual capital has always been, and will remain, the core asset of the software industry, and of almost every other industry. Preserving that capital--and investing in its constant renewal--benefits everyone. (Emphasis mine)
Firstly, Mundie just confirmed suspicions that Microsoft, from now on, intends to make its monet through simple replacement of old software, not through new innovation & completely new products.
Secondly, commerical software is only a tool of growth to the commercial software industry - given equal-quality products & support, a buisness simply doesn't care what brand name is on its server. To the buisness, it only matters that it works.
Finally, there is a term for "Preserving that capital--and investing in its constant renewal." It's called depreciation, and it's an inefficency. Depreciation is work spent replacing what you have instead of work spent growing, and that's why we have a Net-Domestic-Product (NDP) that accounts for it. Depreciation is a bad thing, and it should be avoided whenever feasible. According to Microsoft, one of their complete Uber-Systems (using their poducts from the boss's PDA on up to the super-servers) is ideally upgraded (in software) every 3 years or so, and their new leased licencing schemes seem to corroberate that. However, it's arguable at best that their new products are any better than their old ones, especially if you discount stability (which really should have been a priority since the beginning). If the software was GNU/Linux/Apache/MySQL/etc. and thus had an almost zero upgrade cost, the money could have been spent doing something else. Something more efficent. Something more productive.
Microsoft makes its money through depreciation costs. If something were to come along and decrease or eliminate the depreciation costs, the economy as a whole would be better off for it, as that money could be spent growing instead of replacing. Microsoft is fundamentally afraid that GNU/Linux & GPL will make those depreciation costs almost zero and thus makes it's buisness obsolete.
All of its arguments about proprietary software helping the economy (as opposed to Free/GPL/Etc.) apply almost exclusively to the Standardized Software Applications subset of the economy (Windows, Office, etc. NOT contracted, built-for-client software), which makes its money through inefficencies. GPL'd Applications, which have a tremendous development team precisely because of its widespread use, goes a long way to eliminating the inefficencies in the upgrade cycle - bugs are fixed, needed features are added, and there is no planned obsolecense all for zero cost to the adoptee.
--
Christopher Subich
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
I don't understand how you can misunderstand this, Craig. Intellectual Property is only valuable in the hands of people. Thus to preserve it, one teaches, transmits and communicates it. One does not hoard it.
Really? URL please!
LOL!
I think it's a funny flamebait that's not on topic.
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
Stallman says use our code and you will belong to us .
Gates says use our code and you will belong to us.
This is not a signature.
However, Mundie is right in that conservative legal departments in many businesses fear the GPL and its risks. I believe the FSF could do a better job of easing the fears of corporate attorneys who may have no experience with the GPL and the FSF.
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
Part of this that kills me is that he mentions the $175 billion in worldwide software sales last year as being a significant contributor to worldwide economic growth. While $175 billion is a lot of money, WalMarts total revenue for last year was $166 billion all by themselves. Perhaps the software that help these companies run comes from Microsoft, but, my guess is that the software that really drives manufacturing and the global economic growth isn't Microsoft s/w. If you look at the top 25 companies on the Fortune 500 list (Microsoft comes in at #79), less than half of them use MS software for anything mission critical. Sure, most of them may be using Windows on their desktops, you can bet their servers and CAD/CAM runs on something else.
Have you been sleeping under a rock?:
http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensou rce/
IBM's a big company, it'll take a while yet to fully steer the company into a different direction.
Basically he is saying that MS supports the right to intellectual property in general. He believes that source code and (though he doesn't expcitly say it) other types of itellectual property is valuable and that the creator of said property is entitled to rents when other people benifit from it.
I think that the reason the GPL is bad is that it is written in the name of freedom of intellectual property and information in general but has nearly as severe restrictions on its use as closed source software. The problem I see is that the entire derivative of a GPL work has to be under the GPL or compatible licence. This means if you want to use GPL source in your product you have to show all of it, including any "trade secrets" in the open source. I think a better licence would require that any code taken from an open source work to be disclosed and open in a derivative but new modules created by the author that are not a derivative of an open work the author should have the choice to release closed. This would allow the wish of each creator to be fulfilled and would preserve the idea of intellectual property. It would allow current business models to continue to work and be expanded while also allowing open source a wider scope to work in. The GPL is a virus but open source does not have to be under the GPL.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
I think it was that awful blue sweater he wore in the DOS->Win16 days. "No Bill! Damnit, ok, we'll bundle your stupid crap with our machines if you'll just stop wearing that fucking sweater to our offices!"
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
this line was funny and painful at the same time:
...
The issue at hand is choice; companies and individuals should be able to choose either model, and we support this right.
yet from the beginning it seem MS has wanted to make this choice for us
_f
It will be really hard to make a living developing software under the GPL. Unless of course you plan on remaining in academia, then this rant doesn't apply to you.
P.S. No, I am not a M$ flunky.
Anyone else notice a trend in his economic growth examples? The trend sites individuals who experienced economic growth through their intellectual property rights. Sure, there were others who profitted off of these inventions, but in order for them to make a profit, someone had to pay for their invention.
Economic growth does not just come from the masses paying a few. Economic growth comes when productivity increases. When inexpensive software allows many to increase their productivity, there is more economic growth. Further, this growth fuels a desire to contribute to the mechanisms behind increased productivity (here: open source software). This further increase productivity and results in greater economic growth.
From the viewpoint of the users, open source is good and commercial software is bad for obvious reason. With open source, a $1500 computer would still be $1500. with commercial softwares, it could easily double up to $3000 with most of the $1500 going into M$ pocket.
For a software developer viewpoint, on the surface, it is not good. How is the software developer going to make his money. That is where M$ is panicing. A lot of medicore software developers will also panic. Who is going to fill their rice bowls. While it is understanding that a dying person (or company) will fight for its survivor, does it really means that software developers can't make money by writing software? I hardly think so. Specialise software is always needed. Mass market commerical software can't applied in all situations. Software developers are able to make a living by writing specialised software. Sorry to microsoft though.
Personally, I would think that in a perfect world, there would be widespread adoptation of free open source software. Businesses are then about to channel their IT budgets into specialise software that would increase the productivity of the company. Software developers does not have to lose out. But sorry to m$.
But that's because OSS fanatics are trying to sell te GPL to business. You can't simultaneously say that it's bad for business but that businesses should do it anyway. OTOH, the Free Software people have never been faced with this particular dilemma. RMS has basically taken the attitude that it doesn't matter whether the GPL is good or bad for business. If you can make money on Free Software, that's great, it's a source of funding for improving the project. If you can't make money, tough.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Obviously you don't understand. Business is the only thing that matters; users are unimportant. What's good for GM^H^HMicrosoft is good for the United States, and vice versa. After all, a bunch of hobbyists could never produce a sophisticated, stable, robust operating system that anyone would actually want to use. Only businesses can do that, so anyone who wants such an operating system will just have to grab their ankles and enjoy some good old fashioned Microsoft loving.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
he uses Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford as examples of successfull uses of a propritary system. All three of those people made a lot of money patenting other peoples ideas.
If I had a team of scientist willing to give me all rights to there ideas in exchange for the "privilage" of working for me, I to would holf hundreds of patents.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Message to the consumer: You should buy closed software for two reasons. First, closed software companies contribute to the economy. When you choose open source software, you are hurting the economy. Second, closed source software is innovative. If you buy closed software, you encourage innovation.
So the first point is that, in effect, I should buy closed software as a way to subsidize an important industry. I don't buy it. Software's most important contribution to the economy is that it helps people do things. If open source software is better than closed software at this, then I may help the economy by going with the open option. At any rate, I can't conclude that closed software is inherently better for the economy than open source.
As for the second point, choosing innovative software is probably the best thing I can do to encourage innovation, regardless of whether it is open or closed. And there is a very good case that open source software is innovative.
Message to the software producer:Stay away from the GPL, it will wreck your business.
If my business is selling closed software, then I suppose Mundie is right. No problem, just don't include GPL'd code in my products. But if my business is not selling closed software, and if GPL'd code helps me at whatever my business is, why not use it?
So, Mr. Mundie, as a consumer I choose not to subsidize your business. I'd prefer to see you compete in an open market. And I'll decide what products are innovative on the basis of their functions and how well they perform them, rather than on the basis of license agreements. But I will look at license agreements to see if they advance, rather than detract from, my interests. And as a software producer whose business is not the selling of closed software, I'll continue to use the GPL. Maybe I am making a mistake, but I've thought about it and I think that GPL'd software offers good value for my clients, and that makes using it a good business decision for me..
That'll be why http://www.cygnus.com/ takes you straight to Redhat's homepage
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
The whole point of all of this is that the world needs software development, and that software helps industry and the world run more effectively
And why does this equate to needing bloated monopolistic mass-market software companies? Are you mentally incompetant enough to believe that only Microsoft and other huge companies can write software?
The OSS zealots insist that despite the intrinsic value of that software, it should be free. Sure software developers are responsible for helping grow more crops, build more cars, and mine more metals, but who cares?
First off, software has zero intrinsic value. Zip. Zilch. Nada. All software is is a bunch of bits on a hard drive. The only value it has is in what it enables its user to do. In addition, the applications you listed are all niche applications, most likely written in-house, which even the FSF does not believe need to be Free. Try again.
Despite the rantings of paranoid fools like you, I have yet to meet the person who believes that every piece of software ever written should be distributed on the internet. What we believe is that no software vendor should be able to *hold us hostage.* I know it's hard for you to understand, but there is a difference.
Software should be free for all and software developers apparently should live off the crumbs of charity thrown their way.
That is not what we believe, and you know it. Stop lying.
We believe sofware developers should be paid by the companies who provide support for software, or for writing the in-house applications that employ the vast majority of programmers today. Microsoft and the other mass-market-only software shops employ a very small percentage of the developers working today.
Then again the Nazi movement lined up supporters too.
So not only are we communists, we're Nazis too. You really don't have any arguments, do you?
This whole arrogant rant of yours also failed to address his point, which was that markets change. We should not be expected to feel sympathy for companies that go out of business because they couldn't keep up with market conditions. Nor are we under any obligation to support a failing business model. It is the company's obligation to make a profit, not ours to give them one. If they cannot do that without obscene invasions of the freedoms of ordinary citizens, then they damn well deserve to go out of business.
The only people who fail to see the value of software, and the IP protection required to ensure it isn't stolen from them (because most people, when given the choice between doing the right thing and looking out for only themselves, will look out for only themselves), are fanatics who aren't benefitting and they despise those who are benefitting.
Another blatant lie. You're forgetting those of us who DO support copyrights, patents, and trademarks. However, we recognize that they are NOT property; there is no *right* to them. They are social compacts only.
What we are opposed to is draconian laws bought by the software manufacturers from corrupt politicians who ignore the responsibility they have to the people who elected them. There is no need for the DMCA, for UCITA, for copyrights that will never expire. They are, in fact, completely unconstitutional, as well as damaging to the free market system. Anyone who supports capitalism and the American way of life should oppose these laws.
I think the ultimate irony, which is brought up again and again, is that Linus happily takes paycheques from a company that is developing a chip that would be ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS without IP protection. The silicon is worth about $0.02, but put the design they created on it and suddenly it's worth hundreds. I respect that Linus works for Transmeta, and personally I think he's very respectable (and not nearly the zealot as most of those clowns), but this hypocrisy is just so glaring, and it's amazing how no one bothers following up.
Yeah, you Microsoft astroturfers keep spouting this, no matter how many times we point out that it's crap. The Open Source movement has no problem whatsoever with hardware patents. The issues are with software patents, and with the laws which have extended copyright *far* beyond what the Founding Fathers intended. The Open Source movement *supports* copyright, patents, and trademarks. No matter how many times you and Mundie repeat the blatant, bald faced lie that we don't, you won't make it true.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
And the fact that you fail to understand that there is a lot more to a microchip that instruction flow makes yours equally valueless. This valuelessness is only increased by the fact that you are unable to comprehend that disagreeing with your simpleminded blather does not constitute fanaticism.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
Here's what churns my stomach: this is an argument that pits incredibly talented people who truly believe in something-- people like RMS-- against a banal Microsoft goon reading lines in random order off a propaganda script.
On the one hand, you see people who are earnestly thinking about how things "should" be and trying to make them more that way. On the other hand, we have a guy who is arguing with all the sincerity of an animatronic. He's just being a flunky, mindlessly spouting his flunky nonsense so he can collect his paycheck and maybe the occasional raise.
What sorry contrast. What a waste of good people's time.
Yeah, sure, the epistemological and ontological questions always are important. But save those for osholywars.com or whatever.
There are only two things that matter to the survial of [Linux] (Insert your favorite open source project in between the brackets):
1. A vibrant development community
2. Belief within the commercial sector that said open source software can replace a vendor expensive proprietary software
This is not to say that there are not possible alternative developmental models, like the academia based one (residing in academia, this one has some personal attachment (but I resent it as well, knowing about the idoicy that occurs within my school sometimes))
BUT, if the [Linux] (Insert favorite open source project between the brackets) community manages to uphold those two beliefs, it will succeed.
Why? Price. Its FREE! Overhead Disappears. Not all of it, of course. A business must pay for support, and for the development of a specific software package to handle a certain task. But a good portion of the cost simply vanishes. And that doesn't even begin to describe the no longer relevant licensing issues, the copyright issues, etc....
Premise one, I think, is pretty firmly entrenched. For whatever reason it happened, it did. A significant number of programmers have embraced open source such that the sum of their works is developing FASTER than anything else. 'Nuff said.
Finally, I also believe that upholding premise two does not require this flamewar. Some of you are arguing (implicitly) that it is necessary, but it is not. By either demonstrating to technology professionals that your open source project works as well or better than anything else (Apache comes to mind) it will catch on. Or, by being that technology professional you can spread the fire the fun way (We are moving to this system. My HOUSE!!!) Either way, simply being in support of open source is enough for it to catch on. And once it has, in any given sector, capital will appear, skyscrapers will be erected, and highways of gold will be laid.
In fact, I think this is happening everywhere as we speak. This microsoft spam is a treatment for it, but I think it will be ineffectual if we ignore it.
The only target that really remains untapped is the home market, me thinks
Saddle up, boys (and girls)
The game's afoot.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Good response
I find it interesting that Mr Mundie suggests that there is yet to be a company with a succesful business model that releases most of their products under GPL or similar licence. There seems to me to be numerous companies that have such a business model, two that jump to mind particularly are RedHat and the Apache group.
You're missing two key points in the phrase "successful business". First, he said "successful", and according to their financial statement, RedHat is not. Second, he said "business", and I don't think he means not-for-profit corporations like The Apache Software Foundation.
Don't confuse having a business with having a good business model.
NO CARRIER
Who? Not renowned by me, my old college philosopy text? And certainly no Descarte, Locke, Hobbes, Douglas Adams, or Thoreau, but maybe it's just me.
Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (who held thousands of patents between them)
How about legendary inventors like Nikoli Tesla who Edison spent most of his career defaming? Edison was the smart guy that thought batteries where better than piping energy through the air for free? How about Ford there, he invented a business process, the assemply line, but other than that and bringing the auto to the masses, was he a scientist or inventor or hacker? (I don't think so) Compare to Allen Turing or (as Linus exampled) Newton. I get the feeling that Mr Mundie only values scientists that prove his point. Scientists, inventors, etc, are each individual's and will have their 'own' views... they are not consumer clones. He doesn't know it, but in Mundies perfect world, much of his speach would be slanderous, violate the IP of the specific scientists he named unless he paid their decendents royalties to make this speach. What is with his name dropping? He doesn't site specific examples of why these 3 specifically agree with him, but he uses their names like they do... and I suspect that Bell may not. Edison and Ford probably would, but these were not great men, these were mean men (pun intended).
---
Well, let's see. If EVERY company producing Linux based products went belly-up tomorrow there would still be Linux. If Microsoft went belly-up, Windows would die.
Actually, it was fun typing that last part... Windows would die. I'm gonna do it again. Windows would die! Yeah, baby! No Microsoft, no Windows!
--I have only read Mundies' stuff and /.'s posts on this topic.
--I think Open Source is a great idea. I don't know too many people making $ off of it but AbriaSoft and NuSphere com to mind.
--If I write some software and it's good and it works and I get paid for it, what precisely is my reason for giving the source code away? Why should I allow anyone to use my source code?
--Sure lots of arguments can be made that I didn't invent C (or Perl, or python, or whatever I wrote it in) so I didn't really invent anything b/c I am just using what is already availble to create some money making thing.
--Should Anti Virus Software be Open Source? Encryption software? SpamBots?
--I am not getting this. I don't see MS saying, "No one should ever show anyone their source code."
---
This
a) Dos was a CP/M clone
b)Windows itself started out as a Mac clone.
c) Excel and Word clones Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect.
The market for M$ software exists today due to Compaq managing to clone the IBM bios.
And the list goes on.
Wonder where in this list Microsoft came to feel that intelectual property was a good idea.
..the problem is, this is the sideline, and the message to the public in the speech itself was about something entirely different.
However, now Mundie writes: "the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at the expense of a strong commercial software business model", and exactly captures the reason why RMS created the GPL in the first place: to create software, business be damned.
Now, why this would be a problem for Microsoft in particular is not explained by Mundie, since nothing forces Microsoft to release their software under the GPL. The point remains that MS is afraid their money-maker (software) is threatened. Not that they wouldn't be able to compete against free software - with their resources, absolutely they can, but because they have no way to crush free software like earlier commercial competition, and not being able to crush the competition forces MS to spend more resources actually competing (ie, spend more money on development and get less revenue from the result) than if free software was not around. That would obviously bother any business executive.
Why it should bother the customer is left unclear.
Fine piece of analysis, too bad the original was flawed.
Ask a silly person, get a silly answer.
Where in the GPL did you get that from?
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Whether this is a bad thing or not is open to debate.
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
--Don't mind me, I just spent the last 2 hours in alt.beer
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
I doubt that Microsoft weeps too many tears over the revenue they lose from not having the intellectual property of someone who appears to be unable to write a coherent paragraph.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Come one, Come all and see the Mundie Microsoft's Monkey-Man shock, offend, and promote M$ all the way to bank.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
--Mohandas Gandhi
Ok, let's play their game an ingnore the bastard.
~~ What's stopping you?
When did IBM switch to open source?
Oh, you mean that they now bolt on Apache instead of an inhouse web server to their expensive middleware products? Or they wrote some drivers so that Linux can be a second tier citizen on some of their hardware? Or what exactly?
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I'm fully aware of the research stuff that IBM is doing using Open Source.
It just amazes me how a big, traditional, closed-source firm can make a couple minor adjustments and spray Linux ads on the sidewalk and you folks just flock to them. Don't think for a second that they wouldn't rather sell you an AS/400.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
My opinion: what MS is pushing is the same old, tried-and-true corporate model of existence in which the money flows upward into the top of the pyramid and a few guys gets rich. What Linux represents is a non-corporate model in which individuals gain in reputation and therefore become more valuable assets to whatever company they choose to work for by virtue of the degree to which they are familiar with the plethora of OS software out there. This is a fundamentally different way for people to make money, and perhaps it should scare corporate America.
But nowhere in our Constitution is the right to profitiability guaranteed, in fact, I don't recall the Constitution Ever being written for Corporations, although you can argue that corps do enjoy the freedoms and rights of individuals in this Machiavellian universe.
BUT the government has certainly guaranteed the rights of people to give away their products under whatever fair agreement they can legally ask for (i.e., GPL, you know, the one in the crosshairs).
MS is arguing for something that if the govt agreed to (outlawing the GPL as an enforceable agreement between two parties, basically allowing MS to steal all OS s/w, use it at their whim, and give nothing back to the community), it would neam the end of Constitutional protection for the individual to engage in an agreement with another. I, for one, would be shocked at the outrageousness of the unConstitutionality of such an act.
We should ask Mr. VP this: "Are you saying that Edison had no right to Not patent his lightbulb? Furthermore, are you saying that if Edison didn't patent it, that lightbulbs would never get invented?"
Sorry, man, you picked an industry that can't be regulated like lightbulbs. IP is not and never will be Real Property, and you must Never Ever use GPL in your software, or, guess what...
...it becomes GPL, too!
And maybe, just maybe, the concept of Software Giants becomes obsolete, and the idea of Software Geniuses predominates, and although one or two of us can't become multi-billionaires, All of us can become comfortably wealthy.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
The implicit argument, though, is that the software industry creates jobs and keeps people employed. But look at it the other way: when you or your company don't have to pay for software, it frees up money that can be used for other things. Will this money just disappear? No, it will probably be spent on something else that will create jobs and keep people employed, incrementally across many industries, making for a better balanced, healthier economy than one that has to constantly pay a software "tax".
Among those incremental things are many which of course involve software. So, much of the money will go towards developing new and better things and solving new problems, rather than paying over and over again for commodity software which has already been invented.
In terms of the variety of software applications that exist, Microsoft's offerings are but a tiny speck. There are many, many other software applications that are quite brilliant and just as necessary, but for which the market is specialized and small.
"The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads. Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high level of legal uncertainty around the GPL--uncertainty that translates into business risk."
Legal uncertainty? But isn't the GPL available for all to see? It's also been around for awhile. What's uncertain about THAT? Business risk? Business is by definition risky.
"In my opinion, the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at the expense of a strong commercial software business model. "
OH! Now I See... You think the GPL is bad because it prevents YOU from making money. Sort of like business competition, but with no one to drive out. I guess I'd be scared, too, if I couldn't figure out how to defend myself. Maybe I'd declare my opponent a threat to everything wholesome and decent and let the government take care of him...
"What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products."
My GOD!!! GPL IS a debaser! I'll bet those GPL people download LOTS of pr0n, too...
"...a critical flow of information and experimental data follows every major scientific discovery and results in the verification, refutation or refinement of the new idea or theory. To facilitate this process, neither copyright nor patent protections are available for abstract ideas or theories. This is as it should be... Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (who held thousands of patents between them) succeeded precisely because they were able to use funding, management and market insight to deliver their innovations as unique, practical and useful products. "
So it's OK to exchange vague ideas and theories, but not concrete ideas and plans you can make money on. Let's look at Thomas Edison. For all his imagination, he couldn't foresee people sitting in theaters watching movies on a big screen. If he had had his way, he would have had us watching factory-made short-clips on the equivalent of kinetoscopes. He couldn't foresee what a great art form (Hollywood notwithstanding) it could become. Likewise, he did everything in his power to kill AC power generation in favor of his DC scheme, calling DC the better power distribution model.
Let's face it. Microsoft is scared of something that they can't fight. GPL is something that threatens (at least in the short term) to turn operating systems and associated server software into mere commodities. This will GUT Microsoft's business structure. Since WHEN does Microsoft show ANY concern of how a competitor conducts his business. If GPL WERE a flawed model, they would just ignore it, or encourage others to waste their time with it. It may NOT make anyone any money, but it isn't a flawed model.
The soul of GPL lies in selfless individuals acting for the common good without regard to profit. Without a profit motivation, you can't be driven from competing with Microsoft in the traditional sense. No amount of marketing or advertising can sway someone who has access to source code and can see for themselves what a GPL program can or cannot do. Something with no box or shrink wrap (generally), negligible distribution expense (through the internet), quality that speaks for itself (through source code) and done by people for "fun" is a formidable force that Microsoft has to reckon with.
Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.
C:\>strings c:\winnt\system32\finger.exe
!This program cannot be run in DOS mode.
eRich5
.text
`.data
.rsrc
WSOCK32.dll
ws2_32.DLL
MSWSOCK.DLL
MSVCRT.dll
KERNEL32.dll
USER32.dll
finger
SVWj@
ueWh
X_^[
WSOCK32.dll
putchar
isspace
isprint
fflush
_iob
strrchr
_write
exit
_exit
_XcptFilter
__p___initenv
__getmainargs
_initterm
__setusermatherr
_adjust_fdiv
__p__commode
__p__fmode
__set_app_type
_except_handler3
MSVCRT.dll
_controlfp
GetLastError
LocalFree
FormatMessageA
Sleep
KERNEL32.dll
CharToOemBuffA
USER32.dll
@(#) Copyright (c) 1980 The Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.
exe\finger.dbg
.exe
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
I don't recall voting for Microsoft nor do I know anyone who did either? So why are they trying to dictate or influence policy and manage whats good for the economy.
This is the telltale sign that a software company has lost its way... when making quality software for their users takes the back seat to influencing public opinion and policy to solidify their already massively monopolistic position.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Since it's a verbatim rip off from a /. post
and I would never violate the DCMA, UCITA, CIA or any Wisconsin resident the quote is reproduced unaltered.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Why do I get the impression that this gem wasn't at all written by Mr. Mundie himself at all, but by some highly skillfull PR flack ?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Perhaps the best thing to come out of Mundie's original talk and the fallout that followed it is the attention it draws to the GPL. I'm one of many people who has concerns about the GPL's ability to stand up to a strong challenge. And even if it did stand up in court, that wouldn't mean anything if everyone ignored it anyway. The EFF and company can only expend so many resources fighting GPL violaters with legal action.
Now that Mundie has made such a big deal out of the GPL, hopefully people and corporations will respect the GPL instead of ignoring it. If Microsoft takes it seriously, I should, too.
Mr. Spey
Cover your butt. Bernard is watching.
But the lower the post is the less likley it is to be read. So this is just a place holder for those who read in thread format. A response is comming.
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
Ok so you all know by now you have to register (free) to access NYT but according to this Oct. 2000 NYT article there is a flaw in Mundies comments about growth. If anything it'll be the GPL that FINALLY allows the technology to be properly integrated into other industries. Not Some company that wants to own and control EVERYTHING.
3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!
The big difference was the enforcement and terms imposed by RSA. Having been involved (but only slightly) with negotiating licenses for RSA, my opinion is that the RSA patent was leveraged in every possible way.
Some might call that a good business feat (RSA is one of the few businesses to make money directly off a cryptographic patent). I find myself agreeing that it help-up the industry at large (along with governmental interference).
So every issue they have with the GPL and Open Source will be decided by the market. If the GPL and OpenSource are bad a model as they say while their model produces superior customrr value, the market will migrate to the products with the superior value. Therefore if they are not dissembling and truly believe what they say, why the propaganda war? Live by the marekt--die by the market. So why are they threatened? The truth is Open Source scares them. Several Open Source products,Apache, Bind, and SendMail for example, are more successful than their products. M$ knows this could be because they deliver superior value to the market. SO rallying to the attack with propaganda instead o innovation or competition, M$ spin meisters have chosen to redefine their rules of innovation, intellectual property, and market behavior but only for Open Source. They are hoping we don't notice the specious and hypocritical nature their double standard. Linus noticed and pronouonced their logical inconsistencies as "crap". Wish I could be so concise ;-) M$ only supports market choice when the choice can be made by a monopoly--i.e. when there is little threat (to them) by choice.
I thought he meant by "legal uncertainty" the fact that the GPL has not yet been tested in court. So, a company could develop software and release it under the GPL. Then another company incorporates it into their proprietary, closed-source product. What recourse does the first company have? Do they sue the second company? Exactly how do they prove the GPL was violated? These questions have no concrete answers, because such a case has not been argued in court yet.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
One of Micosoft's key buzz-words is innovation, and what effect open source will have. Would someone please tell me what, if anything, Microsoft has ever innovated?
From an American view of history it was the 'American' Bell who invented the telephone. From a British point of view it was the 'Scotsman' Bell who invented the telephone. From a German point of view it was Reis who invented the telephone. From a French point of view it was Bourseul who invented the telephone. It was Bourseul who wrote a paper on the subject describing how to do it in 1854, and Reis later built one BEFORE Bell in 1860, but neither Bourseul nor Reis patented their ideas. It is naive to think that the propoganda you are fed in your history classes is the undistorted truth.
The last 50 years of public- and private-sector collaboration has demonstrated that when intellectual property rights are protected, innovators are rewarded for their efforts.
Let's not how IP rights also help the heirs of long dead creators and artists! (*ahem*) Think of all those people that might have had to get jobs if their parents hadn't done something creative...
-- dR.fuZZo
If the GPL can achieve the same goal as a commercial businessmodel, but draining less financial or human resources from the rest of the community, then the GPL is superior to that model, and so serves the community in a better way.
That's the whole point.
Add to that the fact that the quality with which lots of GPL'd distris hit their target is higher than their commercial equivalent!
End of discussion?
--------
* Sigh *
Why can't he just say "We like the status quo. It makes us money. Why in the world would we ever want to change it?" At least it'd be honest.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Microsoft is finally realizing something that I've known for a long time (and a lot of people have probably realized or thought about): ISVs won't support them if they don't reveal the source code to their OSes.
For a company like Microsoft, Closed Source makes the most sense because they can develop their OS, develop their apps, and because they have the source to both, their apps and their OS will work better than a company developing an app with only the source to the app, not the OS as well.A lot of ISVs are starting to get pissed off with this attitude and will start developing on an Open Source (Free Source, whatever) OS because in that case, it's truly a case of "best app wins", there are no unfair advantages to leverage, such as being the sole company with the source code to the OS.
Game companies and specialized app companies will probably be the first to make the shift to Free/Open OSes if the Shared Source concept doesn't take off and become widely successful. Other ISVs will probably develop on MS and Open platforms concurrently.Cedric Balthazar Rotherwood
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java Platform +
System Admin. for Solaris
Everyone knows MS made boodles of money by using source and limiting developer ability, but why are they bragging about that? THey should do a great PR thing, release the Windows source under some MIcrosoft Copyright, ie you can look at it, make your own personal modifications, but you couldn't distribute the source or repackage it. However, I doubt they would let you redistrbute your modifications anyway, but when has what tyhey will let you you do stop anyone from doing it? (IE warez) Just my .02
WTF? How does the Win98Setup BSoD?
--Me trying to install windows for 15 minutes then going back to mandrake
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
The business model for commercial software has a proven track record and is a key engine of economic growth for many countries.
I'd just like to point out that the RIAA and MPAA both had proven business models until the Internet came into play. Now thier business models are threatened. Business models need to grow and change. The marketplace isn't static, and people who think the same model will work forever are in for a rude awakening. I won't argue the "rightness" or "wrongness" of the Open Source versus Closed Source models, but the consumers will decide and whoever has a business model which is more agreeable to the consumer(and stacking the deck by FUDding the competition or running ad campaigns to sway consumer opinion is perfectly legal) in the long run will come out on top. Period.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I do not get it. I sell my services and develop for company running their database on Linux. They just bought Oracle for Linux. They pay me, they paid Oracle. I am commercial, Oracle is not exactly charity organisation too. How does GPL kills Oracle and mine business if we (yes, Larry and me :-) ) making money. The only difference that it is not on NT and MS is out of the deal. Larry is happy, I enjoy it, MS is taking a hike.
As I say - mentality is the main problem. MS's squad of napoleons think that if it is bad for them, then it is bad for the whole idustry.
Well, I have an announsment to make - industry will survive.
Mundie's clarifications of his previous comments make just as little sense. He implies that technological advancement occurs through intellectual property right protection. Open source development obviously flies in the face of that. He just doesn't get it, or refuses to admit it. He acknowledges that open source is intended to build a strong software community, but self-servingly fails to recognize it as a source of innovation. What an asshole. And then he misinterprets a Whitehead quote. He claims that certain historic figures succeeded at bringing products to market because of intellectual property right protection. The Whitehead quote makes no inference for copyrights or patents. I could just as easily argue that such protections prevent others (who are possibly more capable at bridging that idea-to-product gap) from creating end-products. It's easily shown that the software industry has been a huge drive for the global economy, but Mundie doesn't seem to think open source has had anything to do with it. True, open source contributions to economic growth may be difficult to measure, but to exclude it from the general software industry is ludicrous. I've heard countless stories of how old, cheap hardware has gotten a new lease on life because it's been retooled as some sort of open source server. Doesn't that save companies money? I'd be interested in seeing hard data on our economic contributions. Anyway, there ARE companies with viable business plans that include GPL software. IBM comes to mind. Ever heard of them, Mundie?
I seem to recall the original article (or was it a related one?) being quite clear about the "need to educate legislators" about the dangers of the GPL, Open Source, and Napster (which, of course, are all the same thing). Just what is the goal of spending money on such "education" if not to get "the right of the open-sourse software model to compete in the marketplace" restricted?
"Giving your product away for free makes it harder to show a profit. (doh...) "
of course, but it seems like the perception of product is being mixed with the software deliverable, and the support of that software. where does most of a typical department budget go twords, software development or support? i might guess that 75% of corporate IT workers are involved with support, and not development. opensource companies offer support as their product, not the actual software they support. their philosophy is that we'll give you the code because you should have the right to midify and inspect it if you want to, and by the way, those packages you installed, we built those so we'll support them. by doing this, they're paid for the actual work they do. writing the software has a fixed cost, you write it and hopefully test it. and that's it, support continues until the product is obsolete.
Between 5 flavors of windows.....and that's it...
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Wonder if someone could post Mundie's e-mail address. ;)
karma is for the weak >)
It looks like Mundie backed up a bit, and decided to focus on the GPL instead of open source in general. I summarized the article as "Do you want to make money or not?" I also think that I see a legal challenge to the GPL in the not-so-distant future.
But let's talk IP rights for a minute. My employer certainly likes them. People should be able to get monopoly protection for innovation. The bigger question is, for how long?
Patent protection for 15 to 20 years on anything seems really long. When put in the context of software, it is rediculously long. Is it still fashionable to talk in terms of web years? If so, a reasonable software patent length should be three to five years. (Give or take a few years.)
Anything less doesn't give an entity time to profit from the idea. Anything more stifles innovation.
And as always, if people want to give stuff away for free, then more power to them. Their work may need to be registered for the purpose of prior art searches though.
Though Microsoft can not use GPL software it can look at the code. Can Microsoft look at Sun's program code? No! But Microsoft can get ideas from GPL software. They are free to use those ideas, and benefit from even GPL software.
"In other words, if we could replace the commercial software industry with free software, we would save businesses $175 billion annually."
And also cost software companies $175 billion annually so the total gain for businesses is 0, some gain some lose, it would also put 1.35 million people out of work and with $175 billion less being spent anually you have economic slowdown. Money saved is no good to the economy, but money spending is what makes for a vibrant and thriving economy.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
That is what threatens software companies and where the "uncertainty" lies.
Mundie is correct that this is a significant risk.
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
Correction, UNIX was invented because a sysadmin would not let "SpaceWar" be run on the Honeywell mainframe because it consumed too much resource. There was a PDP-8 lying idle without an operating system (which couldn't be bought because "SpaceWar" didn't officially exist) so what's a hacker to do? Write an operating system for the purpose of playing one game for a single player. That's what. It started as a DRIVER for a game that was being written because AT&T withdrew from the MULTICS project and left a talented man idle.
Need UNIX? They didn't know what to do with it when thry had it. No official project plan or marketing prepared. Hence it got loose in the world's Universities and grew from there. In a funny way, you could say it was the first open source because the source license cost less than the binary license (since there was no support plan or mechanism in place either).
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
You do not claim that RSA was not invented thanks to intellectual property. Was it invented because it could be patented? If it was then MS can say that one of the most significant discoveries for cryptography was made thanks to IP, and without IP maybe we would not have RSA today - and that would be worse than living with the patent for years (I think).
Of course, I agree with everything our wrote, I just wanted to point this out. I GUESS intellectual property had nothing to do with the invention of RSA. Am I wrong?
Just out of curiosity, how do you know this? I was under the impression that Linux was being adopted at a greater rate. BSD and other alternative operating systems are also growing very quickly. It is really hard to tell just how many people use these operating systems. From personal experience, I see quite a few new people start to use them every day.
Of course, each side in this great debate will point to those who were helped by models close to their side. Mundie cites Bell, Edison, and Ford as users of patents. All well and good, but plenty of scientific discovery has also happened in the open, many times in cases where one man or woman could not deign to get it all.
My thinking on this is that sometimes, one person or a small group of individuals can alter the balance of [balance to be altered]. In the interregnum, it's got to be a collective work. The GPL recognizes that, I think.
-- Geof F. Morris
To the people selling shrink-wrapped software. They have made money that way, and want to continue. Mundie's comments make much less sense to the end-users of software...does the customer want to pay more or less for a given commodity like a text processor, image editor, or database?
Now, of course that's absurd. If I create some software and allow it to be freely redistributed, how does that jeopardize Metallica's ownership of "Hit The Lights" or Microsoft's ownership of Excel?
It doesn't, except that over the last few years the attackers of intellectual property have managed to entangle themselves with the "Open Source Movement." We're pro-Napster - we're the Open Source Movement! We're opposed to drug patents - we're the Open Source Movement! We're going to create and distribute desktop themes cloning Apple's industrial design - we're the Open Source Movement!
People like that have used the generosity of others as a justification for their own greed and contempt for creation. And the "Open Source Movement" -- most prominently Rob and the Slashdot editors -- encouraged them. I criticize Bruce Perens with some frequency but he was the one prominent figure to protest.
And now the chickens are coming home to roost...
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
IAN, YOU STUPID HOOKER, QUIT TALKIN SHIT hey.. e-mail me too. haha
What irks me is Trolls like Mundie think there's still innovation. The only innovation Microsoft understands is taking others ideas and bundling them with their own copyrighted/patented standards. Thanks Craig, and the hand of Bill up your back that moves your mouth.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
whew.... Ok, I'm back from the therapist. feeling somewhat better now..)
I see something I want to use in a software project I am working on and it is something which will be available outside the company. What choices do I have?
If it is commercial software I can aquire it somewhere, either with money, force, or a combination of the two.
If it is under the GPL I can not have it. thus this is BAD in microsoft eyes. I do not care how big a gun you have, you can not steal the rain. You can complain if the farmer next door gets more than you do. Fat lot of good it will do you.
In order to incorporate the open source into my product I am only going to have to clean room rewrite of the code.
You can see that the impact of having something under the GPL can not be any worse that if it did not exist. You are always free to create the same functionality by recoding it from scratch. If open source software is junk, then it will go away under the "obviously better" MS stuff.
This is just FUD then. Also, MS does not understand that a lot of the reasoning for free software is because we hate them so much.
Yes, I know You can patent functionallity / copywrite look and feel. Does anyone here belive that anything could stand up to the MS leagal armies if they were the defendant? If I had the idea for the next killer ap in my brain, I would consider releasing it only on Linux anyway.
Amen to that. Just consider that GNU/Linux has advanced more in just 3 years than Windows has in 15 years.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
There have been so many buzzwords and so much corporate jargon thrown in here that all meaning in Mundie's statement has been lost. Guess I'm just a measly computer science student who should have gone into business.
I like how he calmed down now that the damage has been done. Just because his response to the responses is more relaxed doesn't mean we should be. That is its intent - to calm the seas so that they forget. "Oh, we didn't mean *that*." We cannot only fight when somebody pisses us off, we have to keep it up.
What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products.
It takes great minds to evolve great ideas into great products. It also is up to those great minds to decide where and how they would like to implement those ideas. Don't be so condescending.
Murphy's Law of Copiers
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Does the XP in Windows XP stand for XPires???
> Money saved is no good to the economy, but money spending is
> what makes for a vibrant and thriving economy.
Not true. Money saved makes more money available for borrowing (yes, I know there are many factors, but this is one of those factors) which drives down interest rates. Falling interest rates makes investment more attractive, which boosts the economy. Besides, if the $175B isn't being spent on software, why do you assume it's all going in the bank?
Virg
> Bad for what buisness? Maybe Mundie doesnt realize it,
...it's wether the freedom and value provided
by free software
> but the other 2.5 billion people working on this planet arent
> working in the software buisness. And in the IT industry, even
> there I'd guess maybe about 5 percent are working in companies whose
> buisness the GPL would be bad for.
Well, the GPL is a software license, and the GPL is a bad business decision for most commercial software developers, so the point of relevance is that the GPL is most likely a bad business model for the sector of the industry that needs it in the first place.
> So maybe Mundie should try explaining exactly why the other
> 6 billion people somehow affected by software should care about
> his desires to control any and all of their software and make
> them pay through the nose at every turn.
Well, I'll guess it's because his company makes software that some of these people want to use, and it's not very realistic to expect them to give away the software when they had to pay programmers to write it. Nice try at the straw man, though.
> Free software is about and for USERS of software.
You're quite right. So what's your point?
> The important thing isnt wether Microsoft can survive or not
> (because who cares if they whine all the way to irrelevancy)...
It is the important thing to Microsoft stockholders and Microsoft officials.
>
> can make it a Good Buisness Choice for everyone else.
Okay, I'll bite. Which software company that currently charges for software can give it all away for free and expect to stay in business? Nice try, but Utopianism doesn't work as a software model.
I'm definitely one of Micro$oft's big detractors, but the issue I have with Mundie's speech has little to do with Microsoft's business model. It has to do with the way he's constantly stating that the GPL is bad, because any company that touches it immediately pisses away any and all IP rights, which is just bull. Having a GPL OS doesn't preclude any company from writing a closed-source program for it. So, if Microsoft wanted to publish Word for Linux, they would not be required under the GPL to publish anything unless they incorporated GPL'ed code directly into the program. That's where the FUD comes in, and that's the place where we should be calling them to task. Saying that Microsoft should embrace the GPL because it's better for anyone other than Microsoft will just make us look like fools.
Virg
In a resent interview with Linus on CNET. He recalqued that he is not in favor or against the GNU licence and that he is not against Micro$oft. "I only did it because it was fun".
IMHO I think that GNU licence is rely bad for company's is pretty difficult to sell some thing is every one can download it from the net. And support contracts don't realy work because is pretty difficult to find some one willing to pay for it when they got the full program for free.
I know it because, I just to work on a company that failed because we released everything as GNU.
I make cars for a living. I need wreches to make cars. I want to produce better wrenches, so I can make cars more efficently. I know of ten other guys who also need wrenches for various tasks. We all work on creating better wrenches. I get a better wrench, using less effort than if I had built a better wrench on my own. I can now make better cars, and make them faster. I make more money with less effort. THIS IS HOW OPEN SOURCE SHOULD BE USED, i.e. cars = my product or service, and wrenches = tools I use to produce my product. MS is upset because the best use of OSS is to provide tools for use, and those tools happen to replace things microsoft wants us to pay for. OSS isn't in the same market niche as MS. If anyone should be complaining about unfair competition it's MS. The proper (IMHO) use of the OSS model has the side effect of reducing MS's marketability.
Always value the individual over the system. --Bruce Lee "I don't need a Sig - I have a custom 191" - me
But even in the Microsoft era, SOME survived. Microsoft did. Lotus. Novel. Oracle. Right now in the Open Source arena, there's not even a MODERATELY successful company, never mind a profitable one. Redhat is the closest thing to a success and they're still in the red. Again, there are NO open source companies (that I know of. I could be wrong) that are making any profit whatsoever from developing OSS.
Lotus was bought out because they had a successful product. There's no chance on the immediate horizon of RedHat or VA Linux being bought by anybody. Nobody is remotely interested.
Novell was successful and profitable for 20 years. RedHat and VA Linux have made a total of $0 profit.
Oracle is NOT that much different. They most definately SELL their closed, proprietary software. They also sell consulting, as does MS, but they make money primarily from selling software.
There are many other that I could list as closed-source business successes.
Yup. And 1.35 million people would be out of work. You're not an econ major, are you...?
What Mundie and most others don't understand is that open source is going to win no matter what anyone says or does, because its ultimate basis is neither a fad nor a social movement, but the simple march of progress.
It's NOT a social movement? That's funny. I guess I must be misunderstanding every 3rd post here at Slashdot. And, why do you say it's the simple march of progress? In what other industry have things that cost money eventually become free? Any examples? Generally, it's the other way around.
That's faulty logic. You can say that lots of companies have failed with the closed-source model. But how about Oracle? Sun? HP? IBM (until just a few months ago)? Should I go on? And on the flip side, how many multi-billion dollar open-source companies that you know? I can count all of them on the toes on my left hand.
the rebuttal to the rebuttal to the rebuttal to the rebuttal to the rebuttal
/. are we going to keep following this?
So
Just a reminder to all :
Has anyone else noticed just how absent IBM is from this whole "dialog"? I've seen financial analysts say that they made over a billion US dollars in pure patent profits last year. I wonder whether Perens and his merry band of "open source leaders" have actually thought this through - is their idealistic society of share-and-share-alike actually subsidizing Big Blue?
42
The Boys from Redmond have put up an entire section of their web site devoted to this revolutionary "philosophy." ./ students or faculty had access to this? Can they not shed light on things like the Kerberos mod, the _NSAKEY and other topics hotly debated each night here?
What I'd like to know is, if they claim that they have shared the source for Windows with over 100 universities, and if that translates to hundreds or thousands of eyeballs, have not some loyal
Come on folks, give it up already...Or must you remain silent in the face of Draconian NDAs? Will anyone even admit to this?
But, boy oh boy, this would be like getting a tour of Area 51!
Amen, brother!
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
That is patently (forgive the pun) untrue.
There is a semantic ambiguity about what one's right's to intellectual property are, which might include:
1. The right to charge others for the use of your IP. (note: not what MicroSoft generally does)
2. The right to give it away freely. id est , public domain.
3. The right to make up an abitrary set of restrictions about the conditions with which someone can use your IP.
Option 3 is what Microsoft does (think about restrictions on how many copies, which machine it's installed on, etc. [in a word, licensing].
Option 3 is what the GPL does.
The difference is that Microsoft heavily stipulates what can be done to / with their IP and charges money based on those stipulations.
The GPL stipulates that anything can be done with GPL protected IP as long as you share it with the rest of the world.
This is not a loss of IP Right Protections, it is a choice about HOW you allow others to use your IP, not whether you retain the rights to it.
"Perfect numbers like perfect men are rare." -Descartes
That is patently (forgive the pun) untrue.
There is a semantic ambiguity about what one's right's to intellectual property are, which might include:
1. The right to charge others for the use of your IP. (note: not what MicroSoft generally does)
2. The right to give it away freely. id est , public domain.
3. The right to make up an abitrary set of restrictions about the conditions with which someone can use your IP.
Option 3 is what Microsoft does (think about restrictions on how many copies, which machine it's installed on, etc. [in a word, licensing].
Option 3 is what the GPL does.
The difference is that Microsoft heavily stipulates what can be done to / with their IP and charges money based on those stipulations.
The GPL stipulates that anything can be done with GPL protected IP as long as you share it with the rest of the world.
This is not a loss of IP Right Protections, it is a choice about HOW you allow others to use your IP, not whether you retain the rights to it.
"Perfect numbers like perfect men are rare." -Descartes
So, what if Ely Whitney had actually GPL'd the Cotton Gin? What would we be now?
Maskirovka
Mundie states:
In my speech, I did not question the right of the open-source software model to compete in the marketplace. The issue at hand is choice; companies and individuals should be able to choose either model, and we support this right.
How does Microsoft's historical "embrace and extend" approach to dealing with promising/emerging standards fit in with this philosophy? It must be a use of the word support that I was previously unaware of...
He didn't really say anything other than "I wanted to start a debate, and see we're getting one." The rest of his response was mealy-mouthed babbling trying to refute Linus and Open Source's argument that innovation stems from sharing. IMHO, he failed to counter it.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Slashdot really brings out the darkest in me. Didn't mean to be so cruel. But next time, be less sarcastic.
Well, interesting you talk about market cap. All of these companies you cited (with perhaps exception of Oracle) are needing people to take vacations to keep some semblance of market cap.
.001. Do you know how many companies died in the era Microsoft was ascending? For every Microsoft, at least a thousand died. Despite having the same business model.
Now, let's look at Amazon. Amazon was well-funded amid a sea of imitators. Red Hat is in an analogous situation, without quite the level of funding. Now, do you really think you would be right in comparing these two companies to Microsoft, which has been alive for decades? No, anyone who holds that notion also holds himself to ridicule.
What is the point? The point is you're comparing old companies to new. If you look at the ratio of successful companies to dead ones in history, it will likely look similar to about
Mundie tells us about research, inventions, intellectual property, and products, so let's question his words from a scientist's point of view. What, does he think, would a scientist prefer for her ideas? To sell them to $BIG_BUSINESS and risk them being thrown away for irrational reasons by suits who don't even understand them? It is a well-know fact that those who can afford it sometimes buy an idea just to make it vanish. Or would a scientist rather like the results and ideas to be implemented?
All those open source software developers actually implement ideas. No one requires Microsoft to pay them for it. They'll find their individual ways to make a living with or in spite of developing open source software. So what exactly is this guy talking about?
http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/
Seems he thinks if he repeats them often enough, they will some how become true:
He's also added a few sound bytes to punctuate his rhetoric, i.e.
Microsoft might complain that GPL is bad for business, but the truth is, it's not bad for legal business practices at all. Now, the illegal practices that Microsoft follows, such as the abuse of Monopoly Power they were recently found guilty of might suffer, but this is something we should applaud, not condemn,
Response sound byte:
Why are we listening to a convicted monopolist's view of intelectual property anyway?
The software 'industry' is as doomed as the big record companies. When there is no longer any need to buy any needed functionality because it is available for free, there will be no need for software companies. It is inevitable. If you choose to be in a business where the competition is giving away the same product, don't expect to last too long.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
OSS is not a business model, it is a way of developing software that tends to have better results than any other method. Sure, any company can spend billions of dollars trying to match it, but in the end it won't matter at all because they aren't really competing against anything but progress itself.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
OSS provides a great set of absolutely free tools that any software company or service provider can use, even if they eventually choose to produce closed-source software (have you priced the Sun C++ compiler recently?) It's often a whole lot cheaper to use free tools and contribute any changes back to the community, then to do everything with closed-source software.
Look at Tivo for an example-- they used Linux instead of an expensive set-top-box operating system, and were able to get their product out the door a whole lot cheaper. They gave the work they did back to the Open Source community, but can you really argue that it's hurting them?
I notice that this lets one of Mundie's original statements quietly die: something like "We can make better software" [than Linux and other freeware]. To which every geek I know responded "So why don't you?" It's a plausible claim, considering that M$ has more than enough money to hire all the good OS programmers -- if they are willing to work there. But somehow they don't write reliable software. It isn't because the field is so new -- computer OS's are 40 or 50 years old!
Their most bogus claim: that freeware will suck out the money that's needed to develop high-quality commercial software. After all, most corporations are still buying Windows and MS Office because of an illusion (IMO) that it is better quality. Lousy software definitely costs more in support costs than it would take to buy good software if good software was mass-marketed.
Yes, I mean why do they bother about it at all?
:o)
:o))
:o)
If windows would be really such much bether, why even look at the tiny ones? Why do they make public speeches? Beeing simply better there would be nothing to worry about.
But in my mortal opinion one major strategies of ms was not to the classic make good products at reasonable prices, but more concentrate on crushing your competitors. Buying their shares (corel), buying of their people (borland), sue them, betray them in contracts (sun), etc.
Now none of these ways works on crushing the competitor GPL/Opensource, they're trying to munch them through public relations.
I mean in what sense do speeches and responses from mundie make windows better? or cheaper?
I've a theory about software growth, however I bet somebody else has it written down already
I think quality of the product in classic software development (closed source, paying devs, selling copies) grows linear. You've more or less the same size of devteam all the way. (yes it may grow if the product sells good, since you can pay more people, but this effect is not going strong in)
However in the OpenSource way you've exponential growth. In the time you get more and more users, you'll get in the same factor devs to your project. The more devs you have the better gets the product, getting you more users, getting you more devs, letting you improve even more quickly.
The difference between these two is the linear classic way starts of quite a lot steeper, while an OpenSource product goes really quite flat in the beginning. But as mathematics say -every- exponential function will at one point fly by any linear one.
In some points windows might really be better than linux (or other not that public OpenSource OSes) today. But how things are evolving the GPL platform it is right now already growing steeper than microsoft. (even if still at some points beeing at a lower point in the graph) it might change quickly in the coming future.
(btw. GPL platform != linux... linux is "only" the kernel, remember?
I know software improvement is something you can hardly messure, nor do I have any experiements or fundamentals to proove it on, so this theory is everything but scientific. So let's call it a "draft"
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Did anyone else get this ad? It's one of those big, square ads, from IBM, saying that "...nothing runs on Linux better than DB2.".
LOL!
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
Put "in time" there, and you are correct.
Take linux, for example.
It has the advantage of about 30 years of OS research.
It has couple of thousands conrtributers on for kernel alone.
Tens to hundreds of thousands contributers for the rest of it.
How long did it take Linux to become as usable as a commercial software? (Solaris, AIX, etc)?
About 7 - 8 years, isn't it?
How long do you think it would take a bussiness to write something comparable? Much less.
Sure, OSS can do wonderful things, but it does them slowly.
Take Mozilla's case for an example.
Where else, do you think, a browser would include everything except a kitchen sink, *before* first version was on the market?
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
It's a great deal for me, a software writer:
Ryan T. Sammartino
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Can we stop acting like conditioned rats every time Mundie says GPL.
Mundie and MSoft have directed the public discussions pretty effectively, they just keep poking at that fanatical GPL nerve; impressive that they've made the GPL the absolute center of discussion, equating GPL and open source. Controversy of the GPL makes it a weak point for open source, by equating the two Mundie/MSoft have assigned to open source all of the restrictions of GPL.
As long as we're stuck on GPL, at least mention some of its variants -- LGPL, special-case GPLs, whatever.
Somebody help me out here, try to think of a commercial product using maybe RTEMS and Microwindows/Nano-X and the GNU MultiPrecision library? Or some other not-necessarily GPL combination of open source libraries that doesn't require derivative software to be all open-source?
A commercial product can use software libraries like these; the developers of such a product comply with the library licenses by publishing changes to the libraries, etc., so forth, to contribute to open source. But the commercial product remains proprietary.
Could do some effective MundieBashing, saying "RTEMS Nano-X GMP LGPL proprietary derivative software," proving the man wrong and derailing his agenda by focusing on open source strengths.
If you don't believe me, ask yourself this: Why did Microsoft invest $50,000,000 in Andover.net* only the other day? Huh? Huh?
I think the truth speaks for itself. Anyway, enough of this, I have a rebuttal to write...
* Well, ok, I made that up.
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KMSMA (WWBD?)
If, on the other hand, you have desktop operating system software distributed across like a billion computers across all the world, then there's no way any one company (even if you're Microsoft) can respond to all the needs of all its customers. Open source is the only appropriate model in this case.
Even Microsoft knows this - they license the source code to Windows to their largest customers (on very strict terms) for precisely this reason..
Desktop OSes are a commodity - Microsoft should open source windows (for the sake of security if nothing else), file it under the heading "commodity abandonware", and move on...
--Paul Sholtz
I got a mac and a pc, since macosx came out I haven't touched a pc. I know apple would probably be as bad or worse than m$ if they were larger but as it stands at the moment apple doesn't give a toss what os you use on your machine or if it's gpl or not.
mmm... then again they also sell the machines
Huh? You must be joking. M$ and AOL "enlightened companies"???
You're dead right about the pointless evangelising, but you don't seem to be above taking the odd shot at others either.
Actually, Bob, what makes me wonder the most is why you're actually doing all these attacks. I mean you're a senior vice president of a large company coming out of the office(excuse the pun) to play soccer with the boys from the slums on the other side of town so to speak. Insulting them will defintely not get you or them anywhere in a hurry. Maybe they know this and maybe they don't, you're the one with the wallet to lose in a scuffle, not them.
On the desktop M$ has nothing to worry about at the moment, but on the server side it has quite a lot to worry about, mainly due to the terrible trio -Apache-PHP-MySQL I would imagine. I also would imagine that it would be nigh on impossible to get all those who use the above mentioned to switch to a fairly expensive M$ alternative. No one can see any advantage in doing so. I know I can't (I'm also from the slums by the way) and being from the slums, or in the real world -the average user- I don't trust M$. The user who just uses the desktop is not interested in these arguments anyway, but the rest of us who go that step further and try to further our knowledge or get interrested in topics for some or other reason, read something like "marketed and targeted and have it's superiority proven" and basically just think that is "typical marketing hype". Marketing is just that - marketing. And superior software is a relative term, as you well know.
I'll show you what I mean: I use Apache_PHP_MySQL on Linux and Mac osx because it's cheap (I pay in time learning to use and implement it), the support is cheap (there are so many newsgroups and websites where there are very many helpful supportive people, again I pay in time) and to my and many others minds, it is very robust "superior" software.
IF I used MS IIS, ASP and MS SQL on Win2K I would have to pay quite a hefty price for all the software alone. The price in time would be no less learning to use and implement it. The support would also be more expensive as there are not as many ASP_IIS_SQL newsgroups and sites out there and I would be forced to turn to MS for support for which I would have to pay. To a lot of people, these are also robust , "superior" applications.
But as a slum dweller who has to look at each penny I spend I want to know where my pennies are going and with opensource I have the opportunity to see for myslef what I'm getting, and if I don't like it none of the other slum dwellers are going to threaten or insult me because I'm using Perl or TCL or PostgreSql or Tomcat or Java. You on the other hand would and do threaten and insult me for my choice and try to coopt the powers that be force me to use your choice. I don't like that. The other slum dwellers don't like it either. And there're a lot more of us in this world than there are of you. Alone we're not much, but together we're a fine crowd.
Now, about that game....
"The business model for commercial software...has boosted productivity and efficiency in almost every sector of the economy, as businesses and individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools, information and other activities made possible in the PC era." This is simply not true. It's not the business model that has boosted productivity and so forth, but the software. If OS software had gotten in there at the birth of the PC, instead of Bill and his borrowed Quick 'n' Dirty OS, the same would still apply; I have no doubt that OS software could have "boosted productivity and efficiency in almost every sector of the economy", if it had the chance. nb
MS: ALL YOUR
It is hard to find a pattern for micro$oft's behaviour. They really like the BSD license - without that they would not have a functional TCP stack for their OS. And when they were in the process of running Netscape into the ground, they had no problem giving away Internet Exploder. And in the interests of starting a debate over the merits of open source vs closed source, he adds nothing of significance to the discussion. I am reminded of a quote from Shakespeare: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
"Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much business sense."
I am really interested in what Love and Caldera's response to this is/will be. I have always believed it to be in poor taste to insult the license that the majority of your distribution uses, including the heart of it. Yet Love has done so for years, most recently prompting a backpedeling statement that Caldera is committed to the GPL as well as other licenses.
I am not trying to incite a flamewar, but I do think members of our community should grant all of the community respect. Saying that "Mundie was right" when he was attempting cast the GPL against all other licenses, is helping to accomplish Microsoft's tactic of dividing us. Perhaps thats what Caldera wants?
Apparently you're not familiar with HVDC power transmission. Hint, for the same peak voltage you can move more power, and you can even save money on wire by using the earth as the return conductor. You can't do that with AC. The historic problem with DC transmission has been voltage conversion, and modern electronics have made this cheap and reliable.
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Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
- Long-distance power transmission, where elimination of the need to match phase and compensate for reactive drops is an advantage.
- Subways and whatnot, which are legacy DC systems.
- Off-grid energy systems, which typically generate DC (all solar panels, most small wind turbines) and require DC for the storage batteries.
That last is the only home-user group, unless you count people connected to the DC-powered telephone system. If you use that technicality, the user-set rises to almost all households.--
Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
On the other hand, open-source commodity software is a huge deal. Instead of paying $200/desktop/year for commercial software to do word processing, spreadsheets and e-mail, most companies would probably be better off using Linux or *BSD and open-source equivalent applications. The commercial software industry should be solving new problems, not re-inventing the wheel or putting customers on an upgrade treadmill.
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Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
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Having 50 karma is an itchy feeling; I know I'll get
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Arguments about the size and significance of the software industry are also misleading. Oil spills can also contribute significantly to our GNP. That doesn't make them desirable. Or we could start charging for the air we breathe and add a lot of activity to our economy. Microsoft is trying to insert themselves into every possible way in which we communicate, and that should be almost as repulsive an idea as charging for the air we breath.
What is particularly irksome about Mundie's statements is his claims about how the GPL "debases the currency of ideas and labor". The primary "debasing" I have seen in this industry is Microsoft's claim to have invented and innovated in lots of areas where they have mainly copied from competitors and open source software. Ironically, a lot of the ideas that Windows is based on were, in fact, developed by people deeply involved in open source efforts.
What it comes down to is that all this whining by Microsoft about "intellectual property" and "innovation" is merely an expression of their fear: Microsoft has been reaping enormous profits with a faulty product, developed based on the inventions of others. In part, those were disequillibrium wages--artificially high, temporary profits. In part, they have been able to maintain them through questionable business practices. Microsoft is afraid of competing in the real world, where margins are razor thin. Just like IBM, Ford, and other formerly grand companies, Microsoft needs to come back to reality sooner or later. If it weren't open source that brought them back to reality, it would be something else.
The BSD license allows you to use their source and add to and modify it like you want and then release it under some other license if you want.
The thing that I hate is that people think that they have some God give right to use open source software any way they damn well choose. People making closed source programs complain about the inability to use GPL stuff in their closed-source apps. Sorry, but this was exactly the type of situation that the GPL was written for. Go find some other program that's under the BSDL that you can use, or write what you need for yourself. Don't go complaining that the GPL sucks because you can't use it in your closed-source program.
I've read about people saying that the BSDL is a much more "open" liscense, and I would tend to agree. But you have to realize, there are some people out there who want to help others, but also do not want other's making money off of their hard work by using there code in closed-source programs. These people use the GPL. They want to help people who use their programs, or if you just want to help others as well, you can use their code as much as you want, provided your code is also GPL. These people aren't interested in making some career programmer's job easier by allowing them to borrow their code. Again, that's why they released their code under the GPL in the first place. If they didn't care too much, or wanted people to use their code, for interoperability reasons or otherwise, they would have released their program under the BSDL or similiar license.
The idea of 'intellectual property' is so screwed up, it's not even funny. That's a whole article in and of itself. The GPL is very much against the idea of intellectual property. Like it or not, that's the way it is. What it isn't against is copyright and trying to make some money off of software. But it is, of course, against making money the closed source way. ;-)
My personnal opinion on open source is that it is a remarkable source of information. It has enabled me to learn things such as openGL by looking at examples of other people. It has made it possible for my to continue to refine my style of coding because I can surround myself with code written be great coders. Without the open-source software we have today it would be much harder for someone to learn the needed skills to break into the job of their dreams or whatever. I am also not against making a profit off what you do. I mean what is the real harm in designing some really good software and then selling it for others to use. A good example is in the scientific software industry (of which I am apart). Without companies making software for sceintists, there would be very little descent software. I mean very few scientist can program much less write competent software packages. Also there are not enough people (us the open source community) to collaborate on and pull of the quality of software needed for scientific computing. I am not talking about all scientific computing, but a large portion of it. So I se nothing wrong with getting a team of developers together, cranking out some usable software, and then selling it. You are still beniffiing others. But by open sourcing it you gaurantee that you will not have the funds to carry the project forward. However in the areana of OS design and virtually all other software, this isn't true because we all need a good OS, and there for there are plenty of us out there willing to pitch in and make linux, BSD, and others what they are. We all need a good office product like star office, and those of us who have not contributed to it owe those that have a big thanks. good job everyone, keep up the good work. So I guess my point is is that open source will survive where there is enough of a need that enough people will volunteer to collaborate on the project and pull it off. However it would not survive ( at least not now) in the arena of scientific computing. So as my finish up my dissertaion I am torn between releasing my software to the open-source community of which I believe few would be interested in pitching in and helping to make it better, and actually trying to make a buck of what I have done. Serious delima. I mean I have worked hard on this project, and my number one goal is to release something that will be highly useful, and continue to grow with changing needs. I am also a big supporter of open source software. I don't think that one model fits all. is my finall answer. p.s. yes microsoft is scared wouldn't you be.
what?
Here's the emotional breakdown on the attack paragraph:
"The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their heads" FEAR . "Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high level of legal uncertainty around the GPL--uncertainty that translates into business risk"DOUBT,.
Not that this should come as a surprise, it's just so shameless.
The battle of which software license is better is a useless battle for us to be involved in. Why? Because we can't win. In the end, Microsoft will do what they want with their software and distribute it how they want. We cannot influence the current methods of software distribution by debating the merits of their licenses. By getting into a licensing debate you are only playing into the hands of Microsoft by getting off the real issues. That being Microsofts heavy handed efforts to protect and capitalize on their monopoly. Microsoft protects their monopoly by creating proprietary standards. They create a proprietary protocol or api and use their Windows monopoly to make it standard. If you want to hit Microsoft where it hurts don't debate the merits of software licenses, debate the benefits of choice and how the end user could benefit with open standards. Open standards for spreadsheet documents, for word processor documents, for instant messaging protocols, etc. Argue that open standards hurt innovation for everyone other than the Microsofts of the world. Argue that compatibility and competition are good things for the user. Argue that Microsoft (and AOL) are using their monopolies to create proprietary standards to protect and capitalize on their monopoly. Fight for open standards and open markets not open source. With open standards and open markets open source can thrive.
Hmmm... If I understand Mundie's statements, his basic thesis is that the GPL doesn't allow companies (or, in general, programmers) to earn much money and be successful in that sense.
I think he's perfectly right. The GPL, as I understand it, is a way for "code to be free". It wasn't designed to make programmers rich. It was designed for quality software to be used by many, in short to make the world a slightly happier place. The GNU Manifesto is quite clear about it: when free software is the norm, programmers won't be quite as rich as they now are.
I can't find a flaw in Mundie's argument. Now, whether his view of the world (software exists only to make programmers rich) is right or wrong remains to be ascertained.
Sylvain.
Many, many people have 'bought Perl' from O'Reilly. For people of the mindset that software is purchased, that Perl CD-ROM stuck in the back cover of their O'Reilly Perl book was bought and paid for.
Plus the fact that many of us buy books authored by the developers of software (I have LaTeX, TeX, and Perl books by the developers of those programs, for example) in part to pay back the developers.
Are innovators really rewarded? or is it just the corporation the innovator works for rewarded?
This comparison leads to the conclusion that the commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic growth. Intellectual capital has always been, and will remain, the core asset of the software industry, and of almost every other industry
So does M$ feel threatened economically by by software released under the GPL? And who didn't know capital was the only thing M$ was concerned about???
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
I find it interesting that Mr Mundie suggests that there is yet to be a company with a succesful business model that releases most of their products under GPL or similar licence. There seems to me to be numerous companies that have such a business model, two that jump to mind particularly are RedHat and the Apache group. Redhat may not command the same capital as microsoft but this is not really the only way to judge a business model, redhat is a company that have taken an opensource product and used it as the key to their business. The revenue comes from auxiliries such and training and support. Apache also have a similar 'open' approch to business and their webserver is the most tried and tested webserver in exsitence, they also create some of the most widely used development tools around. Also i dont really believe that commercial products and open source product are mutully exclusive, it seems to me that the way the market exists currently that most of the revenue from software sales from commercial companies comes from sales to other commercial companies, open source benefits the computer user community on the whole in general, Microsoft corp are an obvious exception to this rule as are a few others, perhaps Mr Mundie is not considering the overal market and more Microsofts hold on the market!
This guy makes my head hurt! The essential problem here is that the arguments for MS's business model and the arguments for GPL are based on totally different objectives. Let's look at the objectives of the principle people who create the software.
Bill Gates wants to make money
Richard Stallman, Linus, Miguel, and others want to make software.
Both groups are a success in that respect.
Is anyone trying to make money with GPL software? Yes, but those people are not in the business of selling software. They create distributions and sell them in order to drive other parts of their business. Development of GPL'ed software is not core to their business model. The perfect example of this is O'Reilly & Associates. They more or less pay for the development of Perl. Do they make money by selling Perl? Has *anyone* ever bought Perl from them? No. They sell books. they sell lots of books. They have a great selection of books on Perl, and they make money.
Now lets look at Microsoft. For Microsoft software is a tool to make money. They aren't in the business of making software. This is evidenced by the following quote from Mundie him self.
"When comparing the commercial software model to the open-source software model, look carefully at the business plans and licensing structures that form their foundations. This comparison leads to the conclusion that the commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic growth. "
Somehow I don't think that Linus and Richard care about how their software directly affects "real economic growth." This quote does hilight an interesting issue. Microsoft cares about money.
Now, let's look at this from the perspective of the consumer. Do I want to use software developed by people who's primary concern is "real economic growth" or by people who's primary concern is writing good software. As a consumer I want the best software. My only concern for the producer of the software is their ability to continue to producing software. If the producer is a company then I should be somewhat concerned about their profitability, however if the producer of the software is not a company, but a community, then profitability is not the concern. Instead the ability of the community to sustain it's self is the issue. This is demonstrated in the early days of FreeBSD and Linux. Rumor has it that many people may have chosen to use Linux over FreeBSD because of issues with AT&T. The ability of the community to continue to produce was in question.
Let's look at the current state of the open source community. If RedHat, Caldera, SuSE close their doors and stop operating, will development and support for their products stop? No, development will continue by people who want choose to. How else did we get here in the first place. While the existance of these businesses may have accelerated the development of some software if these companies did not exist we would have created the software. The BSD variants have existed through all of this without either the strong revenues of Microsoft, or the hype (much of it deserved) and capital investment in to Linux.
This brings up an interesting point, what about the BSD license.
Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California
Is this from some piece of code in FreeBSD? Is this from the 4.4BSD tree? Nope, this is from the ftp program distributed with Microsoft Windows. In fact, many of their internet utilities include this copyright notice. Microsoft doesn't take issue with this license. One could presume because the BSD license allows them to exploit the software for financial gain. Now, most of the people who use the BSD license for their software really don't care. They are more interested in people using their software then who's profiting from it. The point here is to illustrate Microsoft's two faced talk. Are opensource models bad for business? It seems that their business has benifited from the BSD license. The "new" BSD license is considered compatable with the GNU license and is used by some in the open source community. Microsoft is not being completly honest.
So what is the point of the article, and the original that generated the response this is a response to? Fear. I belive that Microsoft wants to convince the public that GNU software is bad, that it's a bad idea to use it, and that it's bound to fail. They are trying not to loose customers. I hope they are failing
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Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
One thing that irked me in Mundies letter was mentioning how many jobs microsoft provides and the money generated in the economy. I have always said the Mafia generated lots of money in the economy and created jobs (for goons) but we consider that illegal. For some reason MS thinks it's ok to with hold technical knowledge for the highest ransom by companies that don't have the time to write there own software it's ok. But if Bill and Co shook down every restaurant in Redmond, insisting they buy from his cousins food whole salers or he'd need "Fire insurance" it would be rackiteering. More wealth has been generated from servicing open and free standards in software than private. It also means doing a good job or your out of business, unlike the Mafia.
The problem is, they take this for granted, and want to keep these ideas to themselves. And why not, because they created it right?
Copyrights are hinted at in the constitution with these words: (from Article I, section 8)
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; ...
Seems fair enough, until you find out that copyrights last 95 years if the author was a company, or 70 years from death if not. I'm sorry but two lifetimes doesn't seem very limited to me.
This, to me promotes laziness and suppress innovation.
The GPL does have its cons, but it has its pros too. I don't consider the GPL an ideal candidate for a business model, but neither is the greedy practice of having your software copyrighted for eternity.
Model 551, Chambered in 6mm
How about a dedicated FUD topic, the present MiserSoft bashing is all well and good but they ain't the only ones selling FUD. Looking around the internet you can either find original FUD topics from Amdals (we are not worthy) original IBM bashing or the latest Linux led anti Microsoft stuff. OK so MS are asking for it but FUD is not a linux issue just becuase MS choose to use it to attack LINUX. FUD starts at the Intel Inside if we are talking x86 archetecture and goes via the manufacturers into our IS department managers. The problem with FUD is its always quoted out of context by people who should know better. Lets be fair to MS they are actually trying underhand tactics to sell a product, possibly dishonest but really a lot better than an IS manager who knows its crap trying to use it on a finance exec who hasn't got a clue. Thats real dishonesty and probably accompanied by X-Mass pressents to boot. Lets face it SUN are no better with hardware, buy a seagate disk on the open market and SUN will tell you unless you pay double for one they have barcoded and stuck in cheap plastic mounts your whole server will fall over. Lets not forget the origins of FUD with IBM (now linux friendly) using the same arguaments against Amdal. The problem is the manufacturers and suppliers are all to happy to supply endless FUD to the consumer that wants it, het if they wanna pay double for the same thing lets help them get the budget !! By making this a Linux / MS issue simply trivialises the issue, Im a big Linux fan and have 6 linux boxes in my house and only one MiserySoft for playing DVD's. Lets put this in perspective, anyone trying to fight FUD can get a whole load of free literature about how its screwing Linux but in the real world the damage of FUD on the progression of technology is a much wider issue. If you want to fight FUD then fight FUD, not MS it simply trivialises the arguaments!
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I had thought that open source software and the GPL was great for the future of humanity. Well, now that Mr. Mundie has used such important historical figures like Thomas Edison, who electrocuted animals in public to dissuade people from using the competing power standard, I have been finally swayed. Now, I need only disband my Linux Users Group as there is really no need to walk that dangerous path. Wow, I never knew how dangerous GPL software was until reading Mr. Muncie's response.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Mundie seems to have changed his tune a bit. In the original speech, he was advising against businesses using open-source software. Now he's talking about businesses developing OSS. In the latter respect, he's quite right.
Graham
Graham
Of course he is going to say the very things that irritate most everyone here......*drum roll*....it's his JOB. If it was my job to spout this crap, then I would. think about it before giving exactly what he wanted...a knee-jerk reaction..."he said what?!? The bastard! *yawn* *refresh-time*
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Hate to double post but it occurs to me that Shared Source could be a killer for Microsoft too. Imagine the fun if anything approaching a significant fragment of GPLed code shows up in the source that Microsoft "shares." Then the FUD becomes true but only for them.
Ideas are easy - Implementation...
Does anyone remember the concept of "dirty" developers - those that had been exposed to the source code of a competing product - and "clean" developers - those that had been insulated from the source code? So called "clean" developers would work from a set of specifications only, to insure that no intellectual property was inadvertently lifted. With Microsoft "sharing" source code but maintaining all copyright and willing to vigorously defend their intellectual property, what is the risk to open source developers? It seems to me that if an open source developer views any Microsoft source code and then incorporates any similar code or even functionality, he has opened himself up to a Microsoft lawsuit. So is it possible that Shared Source is no more than a strategy to pollute the open source community with proprietary source code? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.
Ideas are easy - Implementation...
Those of us that worked at DEC, Wang, DG remember this kind of talk, "Things are fine the way they are now." But things ARE changing... sorry.
After spending a long time observing Slashdot and the behavior of the typical poster, I have come to the conclusion that you, the Slashdot posters, are just as susceptable to marketing forces as your average MSN user. For example, you fiercely defend all Open Source software when someone makes an ideological attack on it, regardless of whether words would actually have any affect on the quality of your software. You've been swept up in the hype of "Open Source," and have come to the point where you forget that your software doesn't have to be endlessly "marketed" and "targeted" and have its superiority proven.
What the average Slashdot poster fails to realize is that despite all their self-proclaimed intelligence, is that Open Source projects started with the idea of solving a problem, scratching an itch, if you will, rather than competing in the global market. This is the critical mistake that will help enlightened companies such as Microsoft and AOL to compete fairly in an open market where consumers take not just the price of software, but the total cost of ownership, into account.
These are the flaws that will ultimately cause the Free Software community to self destruct, due to too much pointless evangelizing.
Everything happens for a reason. Why does Microsoft attack GPL and open software right now? Everyone has probably forgoten that Microsoft is in a battle to survive. The anti-trust case is due for a decission very soon. So what better way to show that they do not have a monopoly than this. And we are all helping the court to show that they don't have a monopoly.