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Open Source And The Obligation To Recycle
Lisa writes "Tim O'Reilly has a piece called "Open Source and the Obligation to Recycle" in his weblog, where he urges every company whose products are "obsolete" to consider making them available under an open source license, or putting them in the public domain, thereby enriching the soil of our collective commons. (Interestingly, the first posting on the weblog disagrees, saying "...Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else.)""
This makes perfect sense, especially for companies going under. Why leave some closed-source relic behind as a worthless chapter 11 asset when you can give it to people who can continue to develop it?
This is exactly the problem for all the people who loved BeOS, and it's a shame that they haven't open sourced it for all the devoted supporters to use.
It's good to see that O'Reilly still has his head screwed on.
Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else.
I'm probably taking this out of context, but this is a silly thing to say:
1. Corporate failures are not directly tied to bad software.
2. You can still learn something from the source code of bad software, even if it's only what not to do.
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charlton heston is more of a man than yo
...Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else.
And copyleft the texts to books that are out of print or didn't sell many copies?
Jordan Bettis
Although I agree that on the surface it would be great to open source, and free up all products that are no longer supported. But wouldn't this cause a trend of people not buying commercial software, and just waiting for them to go out of business so they could get it for free?
If I could have all the Old Sierra 3d adventure games from sierra open source I will be a happy man. Ever sience Sierra stoped making its 3d Adventure games I havent been getting any games. Hosenstly if they were still selling there set of 3d adventure games with the now primative graphics Ill still buy them sience they are fun games.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This sounds Cool, Can't wait to get my hands on a copy of 1981 Xenix ;)
Also on the topic of recycling....
Why do companies throw out perfectly serviceable (but older)
equipment, instead of donating it to OSS projects? (Linux,*bsd, etc...)
Resulting in a tax break (charity donation), and better hardware support for the rarer machines. (since in most cases lack of support is because the maintainer doesn't have a machine to develop on...)
I was half expecting him to mention Eazel and Nautilus as a perfect example of what he's talking about, but I guess he missed that. Heh.
I feel his pain, there are some really old programs that I would love to play around with now. Anyone remember Geos? I used to run it on my 286 and was years ahead of its time....
I remember reading up the other day on a game called Star Command.
/MIGHT/ be upgraded to something modern and ported all over heck and such, but shoot, reality is that it would cost them MONEY when they are already a struggeling small company.
/ALL/.
/REDUCE/ the copyright limit. ~7years for computer programs and ~25 years for books and other documents sounds nice. (Some books stay in print and keep on selling for longer then that though)
When asked why they didn't release the game for free or open source it, a person in the company (CEO/Lead developer or some such high up person, small company anyways) said that it would take too much of their time and money.
First they would have to try and FIND the source code (doubtful if it still existed), then if they managed to do that, reassign some people from another money making project to taking an old (in this case DOS game) and removing the protections and security checks they put in there and scanning in the documentation, bundeling it up, setting up a server for distribution (or maintaining a sourceforge account, granted they could pass it on to somebody, but then that entales the legal issues involved), all just to make a few people happy that they could now freely get an old DOS game.
Sure it
Not to mention cases where the rights to a program are split across a few gazzilion people and numerious corporations. This is especialy true when one company has the rights to the game and another company has the rights to distribution. Icky situation there. And if by some chance somebody sold off merchandising rights. . . . oh man, no hope at
A good first step though would be to
At least it would take care of the legal hassles somewhat, but it still wouldn't help with finding the sourcecode.
"umm, lets see now, where did I shove that 5.25' disk. . . . . "
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I think the correct wording is (bold words mine):
Interestingly, the first posting on the weblog appears to disagree, saying "...Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else."
While the software of failed companies seems at first blush like a bad idea, in actuality a lot of the code is quite good and useable. Having a huge base of code, good or not, to work from can be quite a boon; the trick is to be choosy with what you actually end up using.
So, while having the software available may be a good idea, actually using it may not be.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
My first candidate for free source to a discontinued product would be the DOS version of word perfect. The reason why is that I would like a console only (no X) version of WP for linux.
What others ?
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Most companies fail due to inept management and/or marketing. Thier products are not alway to blame...
Unless we're talking about Cuecat. :)
Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else
Perhaps, if you are an idiot. If you apply the knowledge you learn from even failures projects correctly, it can only benefit you. If you just blindly use someone else's code without understanding it, then disaster is expected.
A good programmer can always learn from a bad program.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
At the very least, opening the source of dead software allows these former employees to consult for the former customers without the intermediary corporate leaders and their marketing department.
Even if a product as a whole was not viable, there may be components that could be packaged up as valuable contributions to the OSS community. And there are definitely engineers (like me) with enough time on their hands and the strong desire to see something of value come from the ashes of old dead projects.
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
The debate over abadonware has been going on for awhile now (though it usually centers around the gaming arena).
It's good to see someone with ranking stature taking on such a muddled but oddly important issue. The reason most companies would be against giving away outright their copyright on "abandonded" products is the fear of repackaging and their loss on what could be someone else's gain. However, if legislation (or a license) could be produced to qualm these kinds of fears while still allowing legitimate uses of abandonded products to take place, I think a happy medium between both sides would be found.
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
I presume what the poster means is that by giving away the software, the company destroys the market for the competitors.
Well, that isn't quite true, as we have seen again and again. In fact, in real life, the source code and executable are only a small part of the value of a software product. Most of the value is in the ongoing maintenance, business relationships, trademarks, the user base, the books that have been written about it, in short, the "network" that surrounds it.
To the degree that it is true, well, software companies simply have to get used to the fact that, once created, it costs nothing to give software to additional people--that ultimately has a lot of influence over how software can be priced and licensed. There is no use whining about basic economic realities.
Just like with real life recycling!
One person throws their trash away, hoping never to see it again...
...and some damn hippie picks it up and "recycles" the festering, fetid garbage!
When you think about it, this viewpoint sure explains why most open source programs suck!
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Yea, that's all we need... a bunch of Windows 3.1 clones! Maybe Attack of the Clones isn't so far-fetched anyhow?
this is a stupid idea.
"...Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else.)"
I have to emphatically disagree. The rise and fall of a software product's success has far more to do with market dynamics, marketing itself, business decisions, and any variety of other dynamics than it does software quality or the usefulness of source code to the community.
C//
All this really does is to express evidence of a need to change the IP so to better support what they were intended to support.
See my journal for more.
...as they were really meant in the first place.
I've often wondered why more companies don't release the source code once the product is no longer viable. When I was younger and less experienced in the corporate world, I'd always thought it was because corporations were made up of evil bastards who want to control everything. As it turns out, most corporations are just made up of people who want to keep their jobs.
:)
Anyway, a really good reason for not releasing the source code is that no matter how hard you try, you ALWAYS end up supporting it. I'm sure in most cases it would be a hassle and an unnecessary expenditure. Not to mention any legal issues that might arise if it becomes evident that a company has *ahem* borrowed code from someone else's product. I bet we'd be amazed to see the amount of IT espionage that happens between major competitors.
You know, there are quite a lot of game companies that I wish did this though. Besides id.
My sigs always suck.
Does he mean GPL or public domain? I would much rather prefer the latter, since it would probably be the fairest way to do it.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
I've leaned the tricks by looking at other examples. I've also learned from mistakes. copy-paste-analyse-learn.
;)
Even if the examples are 'bad' there is stuff to learn. Please, more open source!
And who said it was the software that caused a company to fail? Even with 'bad' software you can run a good^H^H^H^H strong company
Privacy is terrorism.
as any of us who have written code for a living know that as deadlines approach, and as features are heaped on you the week before code is frozen, quality of code begins to decline.
If you do not know this, consider yourself fortunate to work for such a company, or go get a job in the consulting industry and you will quickly find out.
I would venture to say most companies would not release their code for obsolete software out of possible embaressment rather than financial or confidentiality reasons.
As always, I may be wrong though.
I Heart Sorting Networks
You may want to look around on the Web for 'abandonware' sites, which make such programs available (sometimes without the proper permissions). Simply searching google for the keyword 'abandonware' with the title of the game in question should get you somewhere. The line is pretty blurry between abandonware and warez sometimes though, beware.
You can learn a lot from failed software. My experience has been that software fails when requirements are vauge and the developers spend time architecting kewl stuff and polishing it rather than letting the marketing dept make sure it gives the users a few key features, and push it out the door when it's barely good enough (this is what makes MS what they are today).
Anyways the sad truth is that failed software often has really neat code. Beos, anyone?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Yup, I totally took it out of context. Although I don't agree with the scenario the guy put forward, he wasn't saying what I thought he was saying.
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charlton heston is more of a man than yo
This comment would actually make sense if the recent storm of software company failures had anything to do with the software. While in many cases I'm sure it did, in many more cases it had to do with reliance on leveraged financing or a management team that hadn't yet successfully wrapped up puberty. Also, a lot of companies turned out software that should have been Open Source in the first place - cool and occassionally useful stuff that nobody was willing to pay for, but that could have raised the writers' profile in the community.
Just my US$2e-02.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
(IANAL)
With regards to solvent companies opening "obsolete" software...
It occurs to me that part of the problem may also be in terms of companies and protecting their existing intelectual property. If a company decides that a particular software product is too old, or not selling well enough, and they release it to the public (either as source or binary) then might it be argued that they are no longer actively protecting their IP and leave themselves more open to their competitors?
For example, you can no longer (I think) buy a copy of Doom or Quake, and while the *engine* code has been released under the GPL, the rest of the games (graphics, levels, sounds, etc) remain copyrighted to id.
(/IANAL)
Hmm, might not be such a bad idea after all, I mean, what better way to leave a market than take out all your competitors ? ... )
(If it even works that way
Isin't this what the GPL already accomplishes quite well?
With it, companies force people who want to re-release products based on their code to supply the modified code with it, effectively nulling any potential commercial value.
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
software is an asset, if I company just gave it away, its value would decline.
Right or wrong, That is how it would be seen in the financial and business world. That also happens to be the world you need to look good in to survive.
If a company goes chapter 11, that asset is delegated by the courts.
Plus, what happen if someone releases a crappy product, has no sales, then someone come along, puts in 2 week worth of work, and creats a product thats in demand? The company would look bad, and you don't want to look bad to the market.
Are these reason pretty stupid since that compnay wouldn't be making money from the product anyways? yes, but what dpoes that have to do with business?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else.)
This could be true, but isn't open source everywhere doing this exact same thing? You can not say that there aren't some very reliable and feasable open source alternatives to products out there now.
We cannot use the arguement that making commercial grade closed software open will devistate software companies at the same time as justifying making commercial grade free (beer) open software from scratch.
Well i guess you can make an arguement. I am just saying that that same arguement stated about corperate failures, while may be understandable and logically sound, does not pan out realistically the way things are being done now.
I agree with the recycle concept of obsolete software, there are a few companies that do this, ID Software as mentioned here last week, and a few others,
:) People actually feared for not only their status after peer review but their jobs as well.
:)
Many companies , especially smaller ones have issues releasing their code even after their demise because of Ego issues, yes Ego, they write stuuf and will sell it , and some of it is a lame horrid hack. Even if it isnt people are afraid of rejection of their coding practices,
Dont belive me, ask some people over at sun what it was like when they made their source avaiable, developers panicked, at the thought of open review of their code, I saw so much code bashing BEFORE a single line was released I thought shit, anyone ever get to my code Im in trouble
Granted It may be different when a company dumps into ch11 but not a whole lot, Ive written code I am truly proud of , the stuff that people I think are out of my league have said I dont know how it can work, thats one of the nicest pieces of code Ive ever seen......AND Ive written code I myself looked at 5 years later and yelled who wrote this shit, only to see it was me...
I wouldnt want that code out there....(well some of it is....anyone running Apache on Windows
Ego.....makes the world go round.....
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
This may be useful in the broader perspective of applying OOP to real life. There are plenty of papers up on the IBM site that are worthwhile, even if searching for them could be inconvenient.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Its obvious this guy didn't even read the article. Why bother making informed decisions when its so much easier to post knee-jerk reactions to things.
Please, mod this moron down.
MS (with IE) (and netscape) -destroyed- the browser market. No one, and I mean no one, is ever going to do a superior browser simply because, well, there's no money in it. As for the "free" OSes being superior, so can be argued that they should have "95% of the desktop" is absurd because they are not superior, certainly not on the desktop. KDE is klunky, and Gnome is gnot there (dontcha love aliterationobliteration?) and the apps aren't either. It's not even close. XP is pretty weird, but NT and W2k are fine OSes, and just about all worthwhile apps are on those.
well eventhough i do a fair amount of work in the opensource world and make use of a fair number of opensource products i see some problems with it the question is what will happen in the long run we all know that opensource can create some pretty amazing software the only area where it seems to lack abit if with documentation and interface design (and i think this will always remain this way) but this can be fixed by commercial companies that specialze in just that so what happends then? the only thing that will let you succeed in this world then will be being the best in marketing and winning customers ...
my company was build by 3 programmers .. we create very good software and struggle on the marketing ... right now the superior quality of our software is the only reason we are not broke
if we were to opensource our software a bunch of marketing guys with a bit of technical skill could pick it up and crush us (or atleast prevent us from ever hoping to succeed with out company)
anyways orphaned products should be given a new home somehow ... and i also think that getting a copyright is not just a right but a responsiblity ... society has given me the right to decide what to do with an idea!
I'd love to be able to grab a copy of Windows 95 for my kid's machine. Maybe download it from Microsoft's site as an ISO image (I lost my 95 CD).
this is a good idea. and I agree, except when it comes to forcing the source being released. It's absolutely ludricous to have to force a chef to relinquish his recipes after he retires, and as such it wouldn't be much fairer to force companies to release their source.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Software that gets orphaned by a company that goes out of business most likely is not obsolete and its release to the public could have damaging effects on competitors. However, if that's the case, it's the job of the bankruptcy judge, trustee, or whoever is shutting down the company to recognize that software still has value. If the software is still so competitive it could put someone else out of business, chances are someone will want to buy that software. And that value should be returned to creditors or shareholders of the defunct company that otherwise would receive nothing.
Abandonware on the other hand, is software that its "parent" deems obsolete and of little or no value anymore. There are a lot of other programmers (both hobbiest and professional) that could take advantage of recycling "useless" code. O'Reilly's example of a user wanting to share "obsolete" software for a niche application is something I have experienced myself and it is frustrating. I say encourage companies to release their abandonware to the public.
In either case however, the decision should be voluntary, and in the case of bankruptcy, with input from all interested parties.
I can understand why companies (especially the big guys) are reluctant to share abandonware. The support issue really never goes away. In some cases there might be some lingering IP that you carried through to your current products that your competitors still don't have, and you might not even know it. I think a lot of companies hold onto abandonware because they don't want to unknowingly form the basis for someone else's business or worse yet, aid their competitors.
-z
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!
Does he plan to make all the out of print books
text available?
This article illustrates the complete failure of the only constitutional purpose of modern copyright law with respect to software -- a failure to establish a public domain, in both senses of the word.
The first sense is the idea of public domain as "uncopyrighted" or "expired copyright." Had Congress resisted the urge to tamper with the copyright laws in 1976, things would be different. Under the pre-1976 copyright regime, copyright lasted for 28 years, with the option to re-register for an additional 28 year term. Under this system, abandonware from the early 1970s would be now regularly entering the public domain. In two or so years, we would start to see the first generation of abandoned PC software enter the public domain -- old Apple II software, games and system software from long-lost companies. Instead, by repeatedly extending copyright, and removing the renewal requirement, Congress has essentially consigned the history of computer software to destruction. Very few of us will live long enough to be allowed to legally copy the software that was written before many of us were even born. Even if we did live long enough, the media will have long decayed, any software from the early days of personal computers will only survive as illegally made copies. In essence, Congress has criminalized the work of the historian and archivist, with no real benefit to anyone.
There is another sense of the "public domain" in which the copyright laws have even more drastically failed. This is the sense of the "public domain" as "the body of work available to the public to read and learn from." The problem is that by allowing copyright on object code, and by allowing software publishers to treat source code as trade secrets, in essence, computer programmers are forced to learn their trade from scratch. Imagine if a student expressed an interest in becoming a writer, and was told, "If you want to be a writer, you will never be permitted to legally read books written by successful, popular authors." I doubt that the result would be better literature, but that our public policy with respect to software -- both by attaching copyright protection to object code, and by allowing the attachment of licenses to software that forbid reverse-engineering -- a technical term for "reading" software.
The primary purpose of copyright was to place knowledge into the public domain. That's why patents must be openly published, and why, originally, only published works were eligible for copyright. Now, with copyright protection automatically attaching to all works, whether or not they are ever published in a form that adds to the public domain, we are back to the bad old days of proprietary licensing of -- and the subsequent destruction of learning and knowledge -- the very problem that copyright was designed to put an end to!
I believe that the real revolution in free software is not a better business model. It is not the sense of community that it fosters. It is not the reduced costs or the improved quality.
The real revolution in free software is that it in effect reestablishes the public domain that has been systematically destroyed by Congress in passing ever more restrictive, destructive copyright legislation. In the year 2002, free software is the public domain. It's the software that you can download, study, modify, improve, sell, and give away. It's the software that you can learn from, instead of just use.
Unlike proprietary software, free software is the software that promotes the progress of science and the useful arts, and anyone who is interested in promoting progress in the field of computer science should strongly consider releasing their software under the GPL, after its commercial potential has been exhausted.
I really disagree with Tim's proposal to force abandoned code to be made available at the source code level. That's not free speech, it's forced speech. Sure Lotus Improv is out there already, it's been abandoned, let people copy the binaries as they wish. But to force Lotus to cough up the source is an unreasonable burden. Hell, the source code could be near impossible to find even for the original programmers. Finally, the source code can represent an asset for the company that will be valuable when they sell off.
-sk
still have it being run daily by the users on one of our aix boxen here. (got a vertical market package on there that uses it for mail merges.)
BrettGlass' objections to the GPL are just that - GPL specific. Really this is easy to work around; (1) if you don't like GPL, don't release it that way; and (2) if you don't like GPL, don't use GPL code, including obsolete code. The publisher can and should decide which way (GPL or something else) is better.
What I don't see is the downside. What possible harm could come from code being out there? Sure, it's harmful to competitors, but so also is newly written GPL (or BSD, or ...) code that's out there, free as in beer/speech, and in any case protecting competitors shouldn't be our business.
If it's bad for the publisher, for example if it increases support costs or cannibalizes sales of the current product, then of course the publisher may choose to trash it. But if it isn't, there's zero (0) harm to anyone else, so let's encourage this behavior!
sulli
RTFJ.
Experience only comes with mistakes. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.
This from a guy who has recently compared RMS with Osama Bin Laden. His blind hatred of the GPL has robbed him of all objectivity.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Umm... so where's the rest of the O'Reilly books? Where's the previous editions of Perl Cookbook? Where's everything? All I see in that Open Books list is just a handfull (one hand) of books. Am I looking at the right list?
had something similar in Wired a few months ago. He proposed that software be held in trust by the patent office, (or was it copyright?), and when the patent(copyright) expired(a shorter time than regular copyright, because of the nature of software), be put out to the public. Sounds good to me.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
I'm such a cynic.
-- Oh Well
a lot of company fail even though some of them have great products.
Of course they should make them available under an open source license, no question about it.
Here's a guy who likes to pay a lot of lip service to Open Source methods, etc., but doesn't actually put his MONEY where his mouth is. Let's see all your *new* manuals online right now, not just a bunch of old ones that you don't make any money on any more. Let's see your contribution.
-sk
Jar-Jar-sa doesn't-sa wantsa youze-sa using Windows 3.1sa. Jar-Jar-sa has-sa BIIIIG shiny new Windowsa for youze-sa.
Well, XP still ships with Program Manager.
The request sounds simple in theory, but as always it's more complicated than this.
// we have to do it this way because Intel is a bunch of fucking idiots
// Bob Martel isn't at the company anymore, so I can safely say that this is the worse piece of shit code I've ever seen. I'll rewrite it when I get a chance
... sort of like quickly straightening up the house before visitors show up. I don't want people seeing my dirty laundry. If I don't have time to straighten up, I'd rather not let people in at all.
What if somebody is scanning through the code and finds
Would you really want that being leaked into the public? Particularly if you have a close working relationship with Intel?
Or how about:
Not to mention potentially plagiarized code, or patent violations, or any number of other nastiness buried in the code. Sure, it *probably* doesn't contain any of the above, but do you really want to scan through all two million lines of it just to make sure?
Further, every time somebody wants to see my source code, I find myself preparing it a little more thoroughly. Removing a few of those ugly hacks, documenting the ones I can't remove
Source code is the same way -- you generally don't want other people looking over it until you've had a chance to clean it up a little bit. If you don't want to clean it up, you just don't release it. Releasing source code *always* costs time and money to a corporation.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
All large programs have bugs. Releasing the source code makes it easy to find (and fix) the bugs.
The old bugs would not only be a public-relations problem for the company but could open the doors to serious product liability threats.
The copyright holder should at least be indemnified against such liability upon release of the source code.
And I still can't find a copy of improv for nextstep and lotus isn't helping.
server is down
Heh. From what I've seen of failed companies or read about their failures, not that many failed as a result of poor software (or any other product). Rather some spectacular administrative screwup, boneheaded marketing decisions, or just bad timing seems to have been more at fault.
Heck, if bad software could sink a company, Microsoft would have been history over a decade ago.
IMHO, turning over the software assets of failed companies to some site that would make them available to all-comers for inspection and cannibalization would be great. Sort of a farewell gift:
(My pessimistic side senses that this'll never happen as some lawyers will find a way to make it impossible.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
While protecting competitors shouldn't be our business, neither should destroying other businesses.
-sk
I noticed that while vaporware is in the Jargon File, abandonware itself is nowhere to be found even though the term has been in general usage for a while.
Perhaps, then, that allows us to define `abandoned software' in two senses. First, abandonware might mean software that is abandoned but made Open Source or placed in the Public Domain. This makes sense in that once you've abandoned something, anybody may be able to pick it up and use itbecause, after all, you've thrown it away.
Secondly, perhaps we can have vaporizedware to mean abandoned software made to disappear because the `owner' of the software is either too lazy, too disappointed by the commerical failure of the company that owns it, or too greedy to place it in the Public Domain. It's the "if I can't be as rich Bill Gates with this stuff, nobody can" mentality.
The Jargon File, even though it purports to be a dictionary, is still a political document (cf. the cracker vs hacker controversy) and word usage is a political activity. Let's then claim the word abandonware in the sense that we wish it to mean as well, that is, discarded software made Open Source or even placed in the Public Domain?
Yes, I like the sound of that.
See for example the massive collection of PDP-10 (the architecture that the Arpanet and early TCP/IP stuff was done on, and certainly the source of much of the hacker culture) software at
or the large number of historically interesting OS's and tools (including many early Unix releases) that you can run onThat said, these only scratch the surface of vitally interesting stuff that needs to be preserved, so anything to further similar projects is 100% goodness.
Ignore the fact that they catalyzed the web market (either as Netscape or as their preceding life as the Mosaic free university-ware browser) by making it easy to view pictures and text on the same page, as opposed to the previous ftp-like interfaces. And those Bad Bad Netscape Monopolists destroyed the chances for REAL HYPERTEXT which the Xanadu project was planning to ship Real Soon (after a mere 25 years of development :-).
Also, people *do* make superior browsers. The World Wide Web Consortium W3.org has done a variety of browsers that are cleaner, smaller, and more correct than the big MS and NetscapeZilla product suites. Opera has been lured away into bloatware by the evils of flashiness and feature creep, so they're no longer the lean, mean, fits-on-a-floppy browser that their wonderful early versions were, but they're still a lot smaller than their major competitors. And there are bunches of EMACS-based browser hacks, which were the original integrated browser/mailtool/newsreader/wordprocessor suite. (It's no longer "Eight Megabytes", but it's still "And Continually Swapping".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I was once a use of the library zAPP of Inmark, later bought up by Rogue Wave.
Rogue Wave discontinued the product.
zApp is a library, a portable GUI library, allowing you to write software once and recompile it on different platforms, somewhat compare able to Qt.
As Rogue Wave discontinued the product, they sent me a letter: now is your last chance to buy the platforms you don't have so far (e.g. Solaris, from that I could have ported it to LINUX and at least my program would run under LINUX)
Unfortunatly they still asked for $10k. Now I bite my ass that I did not buy it.
IMHO libraries are software falling into the cathegory of: MUST BE OPEN SOURCE after discontinuing.
OTOH, an application like a Text Editor or a Data Base, I have the feeling it would hurt competition. The Microsoft SQL server versus Oracle is in fact a dumb example, they do not only NOT play in the same league, they play different games.
For me Qt is not an option. And zAPP being OS now would not hurt Qt(in fact I'm missing zAPP on LINUX where Qt is free). zAPP being OS now also would not hurt Rogue Wave.
Probably a project now newly started would might consider using zAPP because its would be OS on Windows then where Qt is not cost free on Windows.
However for a new project completly differnt questions regarding what to chose why are usuly mattering.
I say: yes, libraries MUST be open sourced after they get discontinued. So basicly one can buy them if a company files bankrupcy, but has to continue them.
I say: no, Applications are a totaly different matter. Same for "systems" like a data base.
Some people argued: all the money set free because companies do not need to buy Oracle because they have a cost free alternative forget:
For one Oracle sold are ten companies providing services. Not the mighty Oracle Inc. is suffering, a whole industry might be suffering.
The money saved at the one end is lost at the other, I doubt there is easyly to find a balance or a eayly made an impact calculation.
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Netscape was selling their browser (on a "try me first" plan) until Internet Explorer under cut their price, $35 as I recall. Plus tax and shipping.
So it's improper to claim that Netscape destroyed the browser market. They were trying to grow their market (wasn't it web server software?) so they were selling it at cost, or slightly less. And not worrying too much about the individuals that ripped off copies. (Does AOL worry about copies of the subscription CDs?) But they were selling them until MS started giving away IE.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I support free software, but to suggest that software and other works should be forced into the public domain is ridiculous. The copywrited work, whether it is still sold or not, still has worth. When companies go bankrupt, sometimes the only assets they have are intellectual property. Sure, it would be nice if people placed the work into the public domain. Weakening copyright to some of the extremes proposed would decrease, sometimes drastically, the incentive to create such works, which is the whole point of copywrites and patents.
I have to disagree with him on the degree of harm that would be caused to commercial development efforts by this. The market has already shown a tendancy to go with commercially supported solutions.
You're being kind.
He is basically arguing that if a failed package in a given market becomes free, it will automatically overtake the previously victorious competitor, even if it is missing features or buggy.
Unfortunately, historical fact proves exactly the opposite. StarOffice/OpenOffice hasn't made even a fractional percentage dent into Microsoft Office's sales. Interbase has taken exactly zero customers away from Oracle.
Now, it is certainly true that a pre-existing free product may discourage further development in the niche it occupies. Thus do we have the complete paucity of alternatives to GCC on the Linux and BSD platforms. But that's a very different scenario than the one Glass is addressing.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I've found W3's browsers to be buggy and crash a lot. That said, they often have interesting features...
Be, Inc just got bought by Palm, Inc. BeOS was a great software product, and now probably has no use to Palm anyway. People are petitioning for its source code to be released.
The problem with this is licensing conflicts. I'm sure it would take a lot of work to just strip out the code that can be released without being sued. Plus go through all the mundane release procedures, prepare announcements, package the code, etc. I know Palm doesn't want to invest man-hours into that, for basically no reason but a small group of peoples' affection.
Too bad things have to be so difficult...
Is it any surprise that so little abandonware gets converted into open source? I don't think so.
Bad linux grammar makes me barfen. And what the hell is u*ix? Do you meanen *nix? They maden unix only.... go aheaden and usen the whole word.
Right on the money.... who cares about source code? I don't want to hack Bard's Tale, just to play it again....
Sob.
I suppose it really is karma if it shows up when you least expect it.
-------------------------------------------------
charlton heston is more of a man than yo
It's not about using code. And it's not about giving away source code, just removing copyright protection. Briefly, if word processor company x went out of business and removed copyright protection from their program, anybody could then use it for no cost - nothing to prevent people copying it and giving it away. So that word processor company y would have a smaller group of people to sell to and their business would suffer. The assumption being of course that we should give a rat's ass about a soulless multi-nat or naive start-up. Which I don't, so the argument carries no weight with me.
I owned Bard's Tale on my old Amiga. Don't have the Amiga any more, can't buy the game for the PC. Now I could copy it from any of a dozen abandonware sites and nobody would come after me, but I would be doing something that's technically illegal. Things that should be permissible and whose sanctions are not enforced shouldn't be illegal. It's illegal to have oral sex in Virginia. That law and copyright protection for abandonware have equal (that is zero) moral weight. Now I've never let these silly laws get in my way, but it annoys the heck out of me that just living my life, harming nobody, marks me as a criminal.
And the earlier posts about Frogger and Pac-Man - offbase there. You could remove copyright restrictions on the games, but still retain your registered trademark so that nobody else can make Frogger 2002, but people can play their childhood favorite for free.
But what would REALLY happen if this idea of releasing source code of dead products becomes normal is:
Big company (say Survivor Inc) has a competitor (Titsup Ltd) who goes under.. If Titsup had a reasonably good product, Survivor is simply going to offer Titsup a whole lot of money for their source code, and sit on it forever. Titsup is bankrupt and needs to pay creditors. Their trustees won't let Titsup be morally superior and deny the sale of their source.
All the comments that I've read here so far discuss the rights of the consumers, of the engineers, and of broader society. One set of parties that they appear to overlook is the creditors of a failed corporation. When a corporation enters receivership, its assets - including its intellectual property - are allocated for the benefit of its creditors. The idea is that those to whom the corporation owes money should be able to recover what they can from those assets. If they so choose, they have a perfect right to try to remarket the intellectual property, or to sell the rights to the highest bidder. I think that right must be preserved; as many have pointed out, the company's failure may have had little to do with the quality of the software. The problem arises only if the receivers see no value in the intellectual property and choose to abandon it. I'd see this, though, as irresponsible behavior on the part of the receivers. If they cavalierly put the corporation's physical assets out with the trash, they'd certainly be found negligent in their duty to the creditors! Instead, require them to put it on the auction block, with a reserve price high enough to pay for the effort of transferring it to the buyer. Let it go to the highest bidder - which could be a users' consortium or another software house. Of course, this scheme will run the risk that the high bidder will be the chief competitor of the failed company. To some extent, that's business -- they at least have to pay enough to outbid the rest of the community. If this idea turns you off viscerally, think of it as getting some extra money to protect the engineers whose paychecks have bounced.
There has been much discussion of Free Software in the vein of cottage industry or startups versus large/mature organizations (see D. Winer for example), however, the most interesting examples of broadly deployed Open Source and Free Software are large companies leveraging that against other big co's. (see Apple, IBM, AOL).
What's going to get early Aldus PageMaker code out of Adobe? Money. What's going to keep the developers who'll turn it into a simple Linux page layout app? Money. Who can do that? It'll take some larger organization who isn't interested in the distraction of remarketing software and has much to gain by the broad deployment of that software.
Unfortunately, more often than not these software companies entered into entangling agreements with contractors or companies to provide missing pieces of their program. These pieces are often intermeshed so wildly that it's nearly impossible to extract them.
I've been told that Microsoft Word has a complete copy of WordStar somewhere in the build tree, and they never bothered to untangle it for fear of all the work that implied. I suspect it's so wrapped up in class interfaces that nobody notices.
So the copyright holders on your abandoned proprietary software, like the open source developer who has incorporated lots of large third-party patches, probably doesn't have the right to re-license the program.
--
I noticed
It's getting about time to leave everywhere
Bravo, it doesn't get said any better than that.
With all due respect, if an actively developed, marketed, and supported product cannot withstand the horrific onslaught of an unsupported, unmarketed competitor that didn't succeed in the market in the first place, I doubt that even protection could help it or its manufacturer.
That is all.
You're just fucking brilliant.
Twit
I reject the notion that as a creator of code, I have an obligation to release this to the public if it becomes obsolete. It may be generous, it may be a good thing to do, but the proposition that I am obligated to do so is ludicrous.
And frankly, I find Tim O'Reilly's constant railing on the open source issue to be quite hypocritical. Almost all his books, it seems are under a license which would be roundly discredited if they were code, and I doubt that all his older books are all available for free. If O'Reilly believes so strongly in openness, why not release electronic copies of ALL his books, under a GPL-style license ? What makes book publishing so fundamentally different than publishing software ? Is it that he is making a pretty penny selling books to the crowd that is producing and studying this open source code ?
Suddenly, the market climate changes dramatically. A product similar to mine is available to consumers for free! Ironically, the failure of my competitor is likely to kill my company, too -- EVEN IF MY PRODUCT IS SUPERIOR.
I'm surprised that Brett's caps didn't trigger the lameness filter (I don't know if it will as I'm typing this.) Anyway, the reason he types in all caps is that he wants you to consider his conclusion rather than the logical conclusion of his argument. He implies that the best products will be less popular, hence reducing the quality of software in general. That's not correct. The correct conclusion is:
Now:
Firms charge users the value their software adds.
Recycle-world:
firms charge users the difference in value created between their product and the best free alternatives.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
In order to find space for other BBC productions.
Wonderful! Imagine what it would do the programmers if they knew that in some years, maybe three, maybe seven, their code would be posted for anyone to read. Imagine a programmer explaining to a manager that the code he's written may solve the problem today, but he won't have his name going public with it, because frankly, it sucks, and given another week, he'll write a much neater implementation of the same algorithm...
Imagine if a company had a clause releasing all their software under GPL in case of bankruptcy or takeover (keeping the copyright and honouring all existing license agreements, of course). Great guarantee for customers, and a bit of extra stability for the company.
If I had to buy mission-critical software, I would love to have such conditions in the agreement. Wouldn't you?
In Murphy We Turst
I have to argue with you on this point. When the source code is available it does not make the game free. Available source code lets you learn from other people's programming techniques.
See with the release of the Quake 2 source. Nowhere does it say "Free copy of Quake 2!". It instead is an invitation for you to look at something done by an excellent and renown bunch of developers who continually push the edge on what you can pump through a graphics card.
You still have to buy Quake 2 if you want the maps, sounds, and textures.
All you gain is the ability to see what was going on inside that AI's head or that translucency routine.
I heard that New Deal went out of business. I believe it; the web site sure hasn't changed in a long time.
Yes. The Music "industry" fascists had their own phrase: "home taping is killing music". What it was killing was their controlled access to exposure to music. People were swapping tapes thereby bypassing playlist wank.
This gave rise to the slogan "home fucking is killing prostitution".
I'm not anti music, I'm a record producer by day. That's why I'm anti record industry. Artists/producers get 75 pence from a product retailing for 13-18 quid. And that's for songwriting arrangement, rehearsal, gigging in every toilet in the country over the last 2 years. And what do they do with this cash, Snort it. That's why I use my expertise on Open Source projects. Why should I work to protect a system that exploits me. The US boosters wouldn't like that... sounds dangerously socialist, maybe TERRORIST to point that out.
Lucius Sour
O'Reilly is exceptional because they're closely affiliated with free information and open source software, so a lot of their authors are willing to let their books pass into free electronic distribution. Sorry, but that isn't what most writers want, and it isn't what most programmers want, either. Book contracts typically have clauses saying that if the book goes out of print, the rights go back to the author, who can then try to sell it to another publisher, self-publish it, give it away on the web, or transcribe it in crayon on toilet paper as a kind of performance art. Authors in general are very interested in getting their rights back in this situation.
What gives people the idea that they deserve to have their free information presented to them on a platter? Should Britney Spears be forced to produce music so that every antisocial college student in the world can download it for free? Why should commercial software companies be expected to give away their source code? We've all heard the Eric Raymond propaganda about how open source is such a superior method of development, destined to rule the planet, etc. If so, then why does the free information movement need a free handout? Open source software has a few huge success stories to brag about, e.g. Apache and Perl. But if the open-source movement doesn't do as well in other categories, it doesn't have a god-given right to be subsidized.
Find free books.
Mr. O'Reilly,
I would like to post a comment to your discussion of "The Obligation To Recycle", but the links to "must be a member" and "comment..." both lead me to "Bad username/password combination" with no way to say, "Of course it's bad, where do I sign up?"
Comment: I believe the real fault has been in the abusive extension of "copyright" enforcement beyond any rational meaning of "limited time". If copyright were given the same weight as patent, 7 years, such problems as the Lotus Improv one addressed in your article would be moot. If intellectual efforts after 7 years moved into the public domain just like physical efforts, we would all benefit.
Especially in computer terms, software more than 7 years old (dare I say two years?) is not something anyone is going to make a profit by keeping closed.
Releasing under GPL has a further problem: Later products from the same company may very well re-use code, so placing the earlier product under the GPL would backstab the later products. I have no wish to hinder people who want to sell closed source software if they so choose.
For centuries "we" have had the public domain for ideas that have run their commercial course. It is time that the extreme efforts of the entertainment lobby that has corrupted copyright, and destroyed the idea of the benefits of public domain, be rolled back.
Yes, Disney would loose their enforcement of a character invented early in the last century. But I would finally be able to put three black circles together any way I wanted to without asking anyone's permission for the first time in my life.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
One point: If someone whos business depends on closed source software were to GPL their earlier and no-longer-supported program, they endanger their own re-use of that code in their new software.
So if Microsoft released Win95 under GPL merely because it's no longer supported, any code they re-used from Win95 may very well also then fall under the GPL. Looking at Win2K and XP, not to mention 98, that could be a lot of code.
I've read the GPL, and that seems obvious to me. Does anyone else see an "out" for works derived prior to the application of the GPL on a specific code?
Personally, I'd prefer just releasing it as Public Domain, exactly like would happen if the patent/copyright were to expire.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Actually, I have said the same thing several times. Just not as well.
Bravo, JMS. Bravicimo! Omedito! Salud!
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
About the Glass comment.. he says that a cheaper product will hurt a successful company charging more? Is that right? He doesn't believe in competition and free markets? What is he, some kind of... Communist?
I guess he's like the folks who want to make sure cheap alternative fuel sources never make it to market, so the oil companies can stay rich.
Never mind the fact that there are plenty of examples of similar products where the more expensive version is still more popular. From music, to software, to automobiles.
And the anti-GPL comment is meaningless. I suppose if I looked at Microsoft Windows source code with a Microsoft representative nearby, and then released something vaguely similar, I'd be okay? No, I'd get one hell of a "poison pill" from Redmond.
It sounds like half-completed thoughts. Kinda like when distributors of copyrighted works complain about how they won't be able to afford distribution if the public can copy their work for free... not realizing that they don't NEED to distribute it themselves any more.
It's obvious. Slashdot should implement another option on the button list for people like him.
I had an amiga then... original disks don't help me now. Hm, still available huh? I'll try to hunt it up.
I remember GEOS. I had it for my C64. I didn't realise it existed for the PC.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
I'll agree with you on this. I'm always very nervous about releasing code to the public eye as you put a lot on the line by doing so. Everyone can see you and judge you without exposing their own skills to anyones judgement. However this drives me to do a much better job. I make more effort to make sure my code is easy to understand, resuable, maintainable, well documented, and stable. Far more effort than I'd go through if I wasn't letting others see what I'd been doing. There is a sort of a high when you release some code and people download it, ask questions, use it, like it, etc. For every negative comment there are usually 100's of positive comments (assuming you made the extra effort) so I think most people that release their code once keep releasing. Even if your code sucks people will still likely use it and they'll be nice enough to fix it and send you the patches. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I think companies should be required to release drivers source after so many years. I have a cheap scanner I bought like 4 years ago, best I've ever owned including expensive ones, and it won't work under either Linux or current Windows OS's and the company went out of business. Over the years it seems there is always one or two such devices I'm having to replace and it really irks me to be throwing perfectly good devices in landfills.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Two suggestions.. first off don't put crap comments in your code and do a good job the first time.
:)
Second recruit a small group of opensource developers, that you'll be handing the project over to, and ask them to carefully clean the code of anything such as these problems before they make the first release to the public.
This would be sort of like getting someone to clean your house if your letting them have a part in it.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
... in my parent's basement :)
Actually my disks for that game got corrupted in the weirdest way... the power supply kept going out so the machine would crash randomly and I was playing Bard's Tale pretty much all the time. So in the constant crashes something got corrupted and some of the classes stopped getting their special abilities. My hunter's couldn't critical hit. Weird...