Free Software Magazine

EmilEifrem writes: "Why hasn't everyone submitted this story one million times? Anyway, the Free Software Magazine (FSM), issue 01 is out there. There's a column by RMS, an article about making a living with free software, a C advocacy article and even an "enterprise" section, amongst other things. Seems like a promising first issue. s/Linux/GNU\/Linux/g."

Comments

C Advocacy

[__past__]

Wow, that "C is here to stay" aticle must be the most content-free piece of text I ever read. Come on: C is good because some guys wanted to use a PDP some 30 Years ago, and because Perl is mainly used for text processing?

I see that there are areas where C may still be useful, like bare-metal hardware access, but the rest is purely historical accident. OK, there are lots of C code in use. There are also lots of COBOL programms. However, there are also languages (basically all except C, and by inheritance C++) where there was more progress in the last decades than finding funny new ways to get root by exploiting new classes of bugs (first buffer overflows, then format string errors...)

What is it that there are so many C advocates? I just don't get it...

Re:C Advocacy

[moncyb]

However, there are also languages (basically all except C, and by inheritance C++) where there was more progress in the last decades than finding funny new ways to get root by exploiting new classes of bugs (first buffer overflows, then format string errors...)

Ummm...those problems come from mistakes made by the programmer. Like writing printf(mystring) instead of printf("%s", mystring), using the outdated gets instead of fgets, or incorrectly specifying the amount of space a buffer has--such as coding read(fd, buffer, 256) when your buffer has only 200 byes of space.

Those types of mistakes could just as easily be made in other languages...for example doing something like popen("sort " . $HTTP_GET_VARS['filename']."r") would be a big security mistake in PHP.

What is it that there are so many C advocates? I just don't get it...

Maybe all of the people you are referring to aren't advocates, but people who see the need for a language like C. There are many cases where a low level language is needed, and C is much easier to program and much more portable than assembly. Not to mention there are some cases where using C is a more elegant or easier solution.

There is a reason C has been around for a while--it gives the maximum control for the least amount of coding. There are a few things assembly has over C (just try to figure out if that last addtion operation just overflowed). PHP is far better for web programming. I hear Perl is great for text processing. I have also heard Python is easier to program. However, C still has its uses.

sourceforge article

[asv108]

I thought the most interesting article was this piece dealing with the recent changes over at Sourceforge. It probably deserves it's own submission even though we have discussed this before.

Editing?

[Uberminky]

I know I'll probably get modded down for this, but... where's the editing? Granted, I only read the C advocacy article mentioned. But if these people want to be taken seriously as a magazine, don't you think they should do a little proofreading of the articles?

GNU and W3C Standards

[AirLace]

I've noticed they've placed a W3C XHTML 1.0 logo at the bottom of their index page. This is a mark that shows the designer has conformed to Web standards and provided a basic level of accessibility for disabled users. It typically links to the W3C page validator. They probably put it there to show that GNU supports open standards, but the page is in fact nothing like well formed XHTML, and contains numerous basic HTML errors that could make the page inaccessible to page-readers for the blind, for example.

I'm not saying everyone who puts up a webpage should have to write perfect HTML, but why do they feel the need to put the logo of compliance there if it's just a lie? I know GNU supports open standards by principle, but they should do more than just pay lip-service. Either take the logo off the page, or fix the HTML!

Re:GNU and W3C Standards

[Maul]

Agreed. When I've always used the W3C logo for a page conforming to the W3C standards, I have always linked the logo to a URL that will validate my HTML.

Obviously, it looks bad if a page displays the logo and does not validate. I'm not blaming everyone involved with the magazine, but they should really get on the case of the web page designer(s) to either
get the HTML to validate, or to remove the logo.

It is a pet peeve of mine when people use the logos without validating.

Re:No Gnus is good Gnus

[Penrod Pooch]

Am I the only one that is completely put off by all the Linus fanboys who refuse to see that a kernel does not a system make? Get a life people.

PDF link

[koolade]

The PDF link on the site doesn't work. The real link is http://www.rons.net.cn/english/FSM/ISSUE01/issue01 pdf.tar.bz2

Well that was a waste of time...

[perky]

Ok, I admit it. I only read the C advocacy thing. Which was poorly reasoned, poorly argued, factually lacking, and could do with a bit of proofreading.

At the end of the day C is a good language for low level programming and there is a great deal of experienced in programming C. there is also a lot of legacy code. These do not make it a good language. Pretty much any mature language has its uses, and these mostly correspond with what the language was designed for. Even C++ with all its knobs and ugly bits is nice when you've got used to it. And as for the comment about Java: If you don't think that the more rapid development, cross-platform compliance, and "coherent" design of Java are worth having, then .... something bad.

They Need Better Writers

[Kerg]

From C Advocacy Article:

So Java became a language in search of home and found in the web browser. But it's never been more than a cult language outside this market.

;-)

Mr. Steve Oualline seems to be well in touch with reality and the industry direction, heh.

Advocate all you want but come on... surely you can do better than that.

Re:objective C

[Pengo]

I never realized how important the GnuStep movement could be until I took the time (one afternoon) to learn Objective C. It really is everything -I- could want from a language, with the only exception of NSStrings feel a bit clutsy to use after using python and java for so long.

If apple continues to break ground in market-share, and attracts more and more commercial development maybe we will start to see OSX ported GnuStep applications.

Cheers

Re:Some info about IP costs.

[renehollan]

Yes, of course, this is all true (pretty much, anyway).

As others have pointed out, it isn't just R&D, but costs for space, uilities, legal fees, etc.

However, that is generally amortized against the expectation of selling some number of copies a year, and coming up with a price per unit. Now, what if you sell more units.

Yup, assuming an efficient distribution infrastructure, like online-downloads (sorry, charlie, boxed sets in retail shops aren't efficient), you're looking at essentially pure profit.

So, no: software does not cost a lot to produce, only the first X units cost a lot to produce. And while it stands to reason that there should be legal principles, like licenses and copyright, that permit one to recover one's development expenses and overhead by being able to restrict redistribution of those first few copies, should those same principles permit the subsequent generation of extreme profits? As much as I am a free market libertarian, I'm not sure.

Certainly, in liew of copyright and license, one could have a subscription model: pre-sell a given number of units and use that to fund the R&D and initial overhead. If insufficient demand exists, all monies collected are returned, and the project scrapped. IIRC, some classical music by certain desired orchestras was recorded this way, by subscribtion. But, this technique is awkward: the buyer assumes all the risk regarding the quality of the product, and whether it gets finished at all, once started. The restrictions imposed by copyright and licenses appear to work quite well, in this regard: make something, offer it, and be secure that (almost) everyone who wants a copy pays you for one. The risk falls on the developer, not the buyer, and the system generally works quite well.

Of course, not all software is produced as an "adventure in trade" as some government desciptions of business put it. Some is produced for personal benefit, none of which is diminished by sharing the result. So the R&D costs are effectively written off, and the overhead is essentially nil. A lot of good free software gets written that way. Other free software gets written for reasons of, as ESR put it, egoboo, or prestige. Some gets written to satisfy political of philosophical pressures: RMS helped bring forth a C compiler because a free one was required.

Whether one supports the proprietary (make money) or free (help the world) camps, and I think most of use lean toward some combination of both, one can not deny that when software is free, everyone benefits, except perhaps, providers of a non-free alternative. Note Microsoft's recent rants about how "open source software" (their words) is "unamerican". About the only thing that free software inhibits is a right to profit. Last time I checked, there was no such constitutional right, at least not in the U.S.A. If there were, any semblence of free market competition would disappear to be replaced by government-sanctioned monopolies in a multitude of areas. Clearly, free software serves the public good.

This means that attempts to stifle it's propagation need to be for reasons that also serve the public good. If one has invested significant time and money to develop a better algorithm of some kind, this should be rewarded with a limited right to exclusively exploit the algorithm. If one has invested time and money to discover a novel idea, this should be rewarded with a limited right to exclusively publish the idea for other interested parties. Enter patents and copyrights.

Of course, both patent and copyright appear horribly broken un the U.S.A. of late, primarily because legislators appear to have forgotten what for a limited time means. The founding fathers of the U.S.A. recognized that ideas were not property, but to secure their development, artificial property-like protections would be granted to individuals (patents are awarded to indivuals, subsequently assigned, perhaps, to ficticious citizens, i.e. corporations) for limited times, so that the ideas could be exploited for financial gain.

Should software not be treated in a similar manner? If source is disclosed, patent protection may be available. In any case patent and copyright protections expire in a reasonable length of time, present limits being laughingly unreasonable. That leaves licenses to restrict software.

Licenses serve to limit how something may be used. The presumption is that property rights remain with the provider of the item. Of course, if property rights secured by patent and copuright are artificial and limited to begin with, there is no property to license once they expire. A license can certainly be used to restrict software beyond whatever protections copyright and patents provide, but such extra restrictions should expire when the copyrights and/or patents or license does, whichever comes first.

But wait! Because new ideas were recognized as being in the public interest even while those who thought of them were granted temporary property-like priveledges, these property rights were not absolute: copyright was envisioned as a balance between author and reader. Witness the doctrine of first sale: you could resell a copyright work if you retained no copies. With all the effort expended to come up with a reasonable balance of rights with regard to copyright works, should licenses changing such a balance even be permitted? Why bother trying for a reasonable balance in the first place?

If a system is in place to supposedly serve the public good, it makes no sense to do an about face and permit circumvention of that system. So, if you have copyright law with fair use provisions, it should not be possible to use licenses to restrict such fair use. It would be reasonable to use licenses to define liquidated damages if copright or patent rights were subsequently violated.

So, what does this leave?

We are left with shortened copyright and sane patent protections on software, after which it reverts to the public domain. Note, this is not free in the GPL sense, but closer to a BSD-style license. I wonder what RMS would say about a system where all software would, within a reasonable term, revert to the public domain, including GPL-covered software. Perhaps a condition of securing these rights would be a requirement to place the source code in escrow, to be made public when the terms expire.

This rather lengthy analysis ultimately addresses the initial concern of "excessive" profits on software, after all the R&D has been amortized away. It would retain many of the benefits of copyright and patent protection, but temper a runaway profit-engine, running on artificial property rights. While all code would eventually become public domain, and anyone could produce derivitive works of popular software after a time, the original author would enjoy a head-start in getting such works ready. So long as they continue to innovate, they will effectively enjoy their early property rights over and over again. Surely that is a reasonable balance.

Nice try but falls short

[prototype]

Is it just me or are these articles written by people that have a poor grasp of the English language? I can understand it comes out of China (or seems to indicate that) but I read the article "Making a Living with Free Software" and it seems to be a collection of one sentance paragraphs. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't even answer the original question. The article talks about writing free software, which I do on a regular basis (about 10 projects on the go right now), but never talks about making a living with it. It's a long diatribe about the freedom of writing free software and overusing the words "metaphor" and "freedom" way too much. There's no mention of how you can make a living off it (which isn't possible AFAIK). In any case, the magazine (and I'll use that term loosely) isn't really that impressive both visually or literally.

liB

Re:business models

[justin.warren]

This article was of particular interest to me for reasons I won't go into here, but I agree with you about its poor quality. There are other bits I disagree with too:

What's this "One movement with two factions" nonsense? I don't belong to any faction, or movement. They are two viewpoints shared by two separate groups of people who seem to spend a hell of a lot of time bickering about who has the moral high ground. I don't have an affiliation with either of them. I happen to use some of their software is all.

I've seen some pretty reasonable explanations of the costs of software development too, which surprised me. To summarise: R&D costs, equipment costs, legal fees, rent, wages, etc. Now, if you're running a not-for-profit type charitable organisation, that's basically it and all you have to do is cover costs. If you're a commercial business with shareholders, you have to make profit. This is usually codified in the corporations law of whatever country you're in. The shareholders want to make money on their investment too.. otherwise they'll take their money and go somewhere else. That's why a company, no matter what it does, needs to make money.

People seem to have an issue with this concept.. particularly if the company makes lots of money. Sure, they've made back the development costs on the original software project.. but now what do they do? Improve the software or add new products to their portfolio. It's a rare company that will survive for long by sitting on their laurels after a single successful project.

And while we're at it, what's wrong with making a lot of money by doing a great job? You make a piece of really useful software and a lot of people part with their hard earned cash to use it to make their lives easier in some way. I just don't see why that's a bad thing.