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Linux "is not piracy" Says Microsoft Lawyer
dipfan writes "Further to this Slashdot piece on the activities of the Business Software Alliance, the BBC reports on a European conference on piracy organised by the BSA. The good news is even Microsoft distinguishes between open source software and piracy; it quotes Microsoft's top in-house lawyer Brad Smith as saying: 'Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.' The rest of the article is the usual panic-attack about the size of software piracy in general, and how this is holding back the software industry in Eastern Europe, according to Brad. Although the article notes the irony that despite all the piracy, software sales are forecast to grow from $50 billion in 2000 to about $90 billion by 2005."
Jane Wakefield
BBC News Online technology staff
line
Tech industry leaders gathered in Brussels have reiterated the growing threat of piracy to the software industry in Europe.
The warning was issued at a conference, organised by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which attracted delegates from firms such as Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Symantec.
The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe lost $3bn to pirates.
This figure is thought to be only a tiny fraction of the amount of piracy that is going on every day on the internet.
"We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
Unacceptable
For an industry that commits millions of pounds to research and development, and that contributes six times as much to Europe's GDP as the consumer goods industry, the levels are unacceptable, the BSA says.
"It is a risk most other businesses don't have to deal with - having 34% of your product stolen," BSA's president Robert Holleyman told the conference.
According to Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith, piracy has transformed the nature of the software industry in Europe.
"If there wasn't piracy there would be more software companies in Russia and Eastern Europe," he said.
Instead Russia has become an enclave for pirated software and Microsoft has recently declared a five-month amnesty for Russian and Ukrainian internet cafes to switch to legally licensed software.
Software pirates range from professional businessmen to teenagers selling illegal programmes from their bedrooms to organised criminals.
Organised crime is giving the BSA the biggest headache.
"Criminal organisations can sell software direct, as well as through retail channels," said Symantec lawyer Art Courville. "So, it is harder to monitor."
Tightening legislation
Europe has a greater rate of piracy than the US - around 34% compared with 25% in the US. Software leaders put this down in part to differing rules in Europe.
"Some countries in Europe had copyright laws dating back to the 1940s," pointed out Apple lawyer Peter Davies.
The last thing that you want is to create havens where the legislation is weaker
BSA spokesperson
That is about to change as the European Commission puts into force a directive intended to harmonise civil laws governing how courts deal with cases involving intellectual property.
All BSA members are hopeful that this will act as a deterrent.
"The last thing that you want is to create havens where the legislation is weaker," said a BSA spokesperson.
Change of attitude
There is also work to be done on educating the public about the importance of intellectual property, especially as a web counter-culture advocating free software, such as music downloads, continues to grow.
Open source software such as Linux is not seen as a threat to the work the BSA is doing, however.
"Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying," said Microsoft's Brad Smith.
He does believe that stopping the pirates could have a dramatic effect on the current pricing of software, however.
"As the legal market grows, there is more investment in new products and enhanced competition. A healthy market leads to more attractive prices for consumers," he said.
Despite the efforts of the pirates, the software industry in Europe is looking pretty healthy.
It is forecast to grow from £35bn in 2000 to £67bn by 2005.
Slashdot, come for the goatse, stay for the trolls.
for each new copy protection scheme, you'll have ten ways to circumvent it from release groups (fleet, razor, ect.) and most of the people who pirate would never buy the software in the first place (like me for instance) so, i'd be a wise choice on their part to drop the charade on fighting piracy, pocket the money they save by not actively persuing it, and enjoy the software growth
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Linux is a way of developing software...
And all this time I was under the impression that Linux was an operating system kernel!
I heard a radio commercial for the Business Software Aliance this morning while driving into work. This was a first in the Jacksonville, Florida area. I suppose the BSA will start harassing businesses in this area now.
No matter where you go... there you are.
Ideas developed and shared undermine Intellectual Property. i.e. If you invented a better moustrap and GPL'd the design, then MSFT wouldn't be able get a patent on it, and thus license for big fees or lock any other developer or competitor out.
Having to include source to something they didn't invent and can't get along without is their problem and, like any reasonable minded person, don't want problems. They like to keep it simple, by owning or having license agreements on IP.
How anyone actually associates Linux with Piracy is beyond me and reflective of a lack of understanding the spirit of MSFT's gripes.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"piracy is copying."
So 18th century pirates just boarded your ship, copied everything, and left?
Is it just me or does this contradict things?
They tell us we can't buy machines without an OS. Then they say that we're not allowed to remove the OS. Oh, and we can't give away the machine without a Microsoft OS either.
Oh, and you can be sure that they think that a machine with Linux preinstalled is an OS-free machine.
These guys play both sides so much you'd swear they were U.S. negotiators in the Middle East. Well, granted, Microsoft has been more successful. Bill Gates to solve the crisis in the West Bank???
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
#include "StandardWhineAboutExpensiveSoftware.h"
#include "WhineAboutOnlyUsingItOnce.h"
#include "RantAboutNeedingPhotoshopInsteadOfGimp.h"
etc...
Of course Linux isn't piracy. It would be extraordinarily difficult for me to pirate RedHat when I can get it legally from their website.
This is another one of those "We'll look like we're compromising on this minor point so that people can buy into our other major point" things. Linux may not be piracy, but it is viral and anti-capitalist and bad for consumers because it's supported by hobbyists with PHDs in CS rather than a major company whose tech support knows as much as their average supportee (is that a word?).
What is the market for Linux like in Europe? Does M$ have any more reason to be worried over there than they do here?
(sorry if this is a dumb question, but I'm an American so I have no clue what goes on outside of my own country)
No... Piracy should be defined as 'breaking the license the software was issued under'.
If they get away with defining 'piracy'=='copying', even in people's perceptions, the main distribution method of linux will be severely hampered. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone receive a burnt CD with 'Red Hat xx' scribbled with a magic marker, and they ask something like, "is this legal?". It just 'feels' like you are doing something dirty.
It is only illegal to copy it if you have specifically given up that right. As the GPL says, "Most lices are created with the purpose of taking away your rights..."
And wow, it sure took them a long time to figure out the "codeword" for pirated software :)
Ceci n'est pas un post
If anything, I believe piracy has progressed the software industry there, atleast the MS-centric part of it. If they didn't have illegal copies of Windows and VC++ to develop on, there is no way they'd be able to afford the real thing. So in a way, pirated software helps Microsoft, because then more people are able to develop Windows applications.
Sheesh. Are there any insulting comparisons Microsoft hasn't yet made?
49 20 68 61 76 65 20 74 6F 6F 20 6D 75 63 68 20 66 72 65 65 20 74 69 6D 65 2E
It's darn nice of Microsoft to admit that it's not stealing if someone gives it to you. What they and the BSA are still dancing around is that open source is one of the very best solutions to piracy. An organization that uses only open source won't have to waste its time and money maintaining license compliance. Of course, this doesn't help software sellers, but in the spirit of the very capitalism they claim to support: that's their problem. The companies who make money in some way besides selling software (i.e. most of us) aren't obliged to provide welfare to Microsoft.
Miko O'Sullivan
The problem is that you have software like Napster that represents the freeloader movement getting confused with the free software movement. Popular websites like slashdot do more to hurt than to help with this problem. A lot of people are under the false impression that Linux and open source are about "free beer", and if you believe that, then it's not an enormous stretch to conclude that Linux is about piracy.
What do you expect. Software is write-once sell-many (WOSM)
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
You don't think it'll lower prices? Remember when music started coming out on CDs? They said that would lower the price of music recordings...
They were so right.......
I would say that part of the secret behind Microsoft's success is that there are plenty of people out there running pirate versions of Windows on their desktop. Without these - Microsoft would have far less of a monopoly.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Lots of money will continue to be made in software simply because piracy is a pain in the tuckus. If you come right down to it, most software hasn't really gotten that much more expensive over the years.
;-)
Take games for example. They still usually cost around $50 bucks, just like they have for years. I pay $50 dollars for my tax program every year now because, after all, what's $50 bucks? 10 years ago it cost the same and we used to get 5 people together and pay $10 bucks each. Now we just buy it because it's more of a nuisance to pirate than it is to just pony up the cash.
Games are relatively cheap too. If you use a pirated version, half the time you're having problems like, "I need the latest 1.09 patch for such and such bug/feature but it breaks my 1.07 pirated no-cd version". It's just easier to buy it than it is to go surfing warez sites/kazaa, etc. My time is more valuable than that.....surfing for warez takes time away from gaming.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
In other news: "Mozilla piracy has grown 12% last year according to MS sources. Also, GIMP piracy has also grown considerably."
Come on MS... come on... grow up!
Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
http://www.morroida.com.br
Even Gates never failed to make the distinction. Linux is a cancer, remember, not piracy.
Besides, at least the pirates use windows. Us linux users are much more lowlife, in their opinion.
In other news Micro$oft spokesman says "we magnanimously concede that breathing oxygen is not, in and of itself, stealing from us".
To me, the big brotherish quote was:
"Criminal organisations can sell software direct, as well as through retail channels," said Symantec lawyer Art Courville. "So, it is harder to monitor."
yep- can't have that ol' free market in the way, somebody might be doing something unlawful
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
It may not be piracy, but it sure stole my heart.
aawwwwww...
They provide the source, but not the actual ISOs or other form of download. I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to dealing with OSS software, and I wouldn't want to take on compiling all of the elements of a distro!
Minor difference? Am I nitpicking? Maybe, but it's still important!
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
The remark about piracy holding Eastern Europe back is partially right. In Russia, Ukraine and other states you can pick up just about any software for next to nothing. Imagine paying $1.80US for Windows XP Professional? The piracy rings there are so good you get it fully cracked, you get it in nice packaging and if you need help they can sell you a ton of books that have been scanned into PDF format also on CD.
The problem isn't piracy. It is a lack of respect or even awareness of Intellectual Property in my opinion. There is no respect for it at all, it seems, in these countries. Their legislatures are just now starting to examine laws concerning it. I am not sure which industry is bigger: China's piracy rings or Russia's. In China the piracy goes to aid specific Red Army units (in fact the rings are allegedly controled by Army Generals).
It is an interesting problem. While we want to business with these countries, lack of protections makes it nearly impossible. At least under the rules and structure of Capitalism. While those rules can lead to our current situation where we have an agressively bad and dangerous monopoly controlled by Bill Gates, they generally are good and promote sane business practices. My hope is that Eastern Europe reforms. With China, I don't see and end coming to their ways of doing business.
Well even the GPL license states that you can't just copy the software without agreeing to the license agreement, and so it's pretty safe to assume that unless you know otherwise that it's "piracy" to just copy the software. That's true for both "commercial" and "free" software - you need to agree to the license (including paying any fees etc.) to be able to copy the software legally. As most "non-computer" people have little idea about how their software is actually licensed, it's probably fair to assume they don't know the difference between free software and pirated software. We might not like that level of ignorance, but I suspect it's true.
Sig is taking a break!
That doesn't explain why they are on a holy war against all things GPL. If they don't want to use it, that's fine, but why bitch that nobody else should use it either?
Microsoft would secretly love to carpetbomb Eastern Europe, Russia, China etc. with their software.
People learn to use Microsoft and end up paying later, or encouraging other people to use microsoft through a network effect ('everyone uses Word/Excel'). If Microsoft software was available only at full price they would be more likely to try other alternative. The main battle is for mindshare not dollars.
Piracy allows microsoft to effectively sell cheap, without being accused of dumping.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
Why do they insist on equating an illegal copy with a stolen copy. The "thief" in the stolen copy case has not deprived the owner of the copyright of anything, the victim still has everything he had before the "theft"
Here we go - in very tiny words for you, ok?
You go into a store. Software Product A is sitting on the shelf for $10.
You go around to your friend's house. Software Product A is copied to you for free.
Producer of Software Product A has now lost a $10 sale.
Whether you would have bought it for $10 or not is irrelevant - you made a copy, so it obviously has value to you.
Therefore, you are depriving the software company of their profit on that product.
If you disagree with this, then fine, disagree with the software company too - and DON'T USE or COPY THEIR PRODUCT.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
This is probably off topic, but I feel the need to share it.
It is easy for those of us hip to the open source movement to laugh at this crap from MS, even though we know that some end users and such might be taken in by it. But the depths to which MS FUD penetrates the general IT community is bloody incredible to me.
Yesterday I was talking with a mid-level QA engineer from Apple. This guy is working on a very complex product. He knows how to code.
We start talking about software development, and I mention some things I am working on, mostly centered on Linux. At which point he says:
"That's cool, but anything you do on Linux you would have to give away for free, right?"
Contrary to what everyone is thinking, this guy isn't stupid. He isn't even technically inept. He works on a complex project and knows what he is doing in his problem domain.
Anything that MS might say about Linux and open source that isn't totally negative should be lauded, because a LOT more people than some of us realize, people we think should know better, apparently are buying pretty much everything MS is trying to spread about open source and Linux.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
I can do a search for "warez" right now and probably come up with at least a million sites. These guys are so full of shit it should be criminal. They are deliberately misleading people about this issue. So, is anyone standing up to call them on it? Who has the clout to be heard there?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
You've got that backwards. It is only legal to copy a copyrighted work (other than for fair use) if you've been specifically granted that right by a license (e.g. the GPL). (IANAL)
The default under copyright law is to forbid copying; most shrink-wrap "licenses" try to restrict your rights beyond the ordinary powers of copyright.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
It took them a whole day?
Geez. A quick Google search on 'warez' yields not merely a million, but 4,290,000 sites!
Search took 0.04 seconds. How much are they paying these guys?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
"We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
:)
I assume here they are referring to "warez". And yes, you will get a LOT of hits if you put that into a search engine. However, before you get TOO excited about it, understand that 99 times out of 100, you're more likely to find porn than pirated software if you actually visit any of those sites. Its a completely meaningless association.
The majority of "warez" trading is done through IRC or usenet. Yet those who are striving to rid the internet of piracy rarely mention these treasure troves. Certainly they get mentioned as the breeding ground for evil "hackers" and for child porn distribution, but as far as piracy goes, they tend to stay rather mum about it.
Could it be that their only real mission is one of sensationalism? They know for a fact that the average clueless newbie will do a hunt for pirated software on the web (because as far as they know, the web IS the internet), and will be disillusioned by all the porn websites, banners, and popups that they will figure its more trouble than its worth. They might trade with their friends and download some mp3's off Morpheus, but that will be the limit of their piracy activities.
However, if lots of news articles spent a great deal of time complaining about the rampant piracy on IRC and usenet and other places, then that clueless newbie might actually decide for once that a clue isn't such a bad thing and venture into that world. "What do you mean that IE can't go there???" But once entrenched in that world, they'll be very difficult to "retrain".
The public at large has been convinced by and large that child pornography and hacking are indeed "Bad things (tm)" and will probably avoid those places that distribute them. But software piracy hasn't reached that degree of evil in most people's eyes. So they will to some small degree actually seek it out. And deep down, there's probably an even bigger fear. Their preverbial sheep might stumble across something dangerous. "What's this here linux thing all about???"
ok. Fine. Mod me down.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Nice twist with "the product has value to you" mental gymnastics... so here's a few questions for you.
1) What if getting a copy the product required no effort on my part?
2) Are all things I get free of charge that are "of value to me" AND that somebody else sells piracy? For example, I hire somebody to clean my windows, I learn how they do it, then fire them and clean my windows myself. Is that piracy? Or shall we patent/copyright "a method for cleaning windows?"
So you are saying that if I go into a store and put a copy of The Sims under my jacket and walk out without paying it is the same as burning an illegal copy of a friend's game? I have to disagree
Free cell phone tracking
No, they don't. If they were "selling Linux", ftp.kernel.org would be a better deal.
They provide the source, but not the actual ISOs or other form of download. I consider myself pretty savvy when it comes to dealing with OSS software, and I wouldn't want to take on compiling all of the elements of a distro!
Exactly. They're selling the packaging and more importantly, maintenance of that packaging. They are not selling the software itself. In particular, they may fund software development, but this doesn't directly provide them with revenue (because the end result of that development is given away)
Comments like yours do more to hurt than to help with this problem.
/. as the root of all evil then at least explain yourself.
/. or knows what open source is, doesn't know that Linux is an OS and not an idea or an action.
Ok, if you're going to mark
Secondly, Yes, a lot of people are under the impression that open source means "free as in beer" because it DOES! Look at Freshmeat or SourceForge and try to find some pay products. The percentage probably can't get measures in whole numbers.
Lastly, who the hell that reads
"Look at the Brain on Brad!"
Smith graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University, where he received the Class of 1901 Medal, the Dewitt Clinton Poole Memorial Prize, and the Harold Willis Dodds Achievement Award, the highest award given to a graduating senior at commencement. He was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar at the Columbia University School of Law, where he received the David M. Berger Memorial Award. He also studied international law and economics at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He has written numerous articles regarding international intellectual property and electronic commerce issues and has served as a lecturer at the Hague Academy of International Law.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Or shall we patent/copyright "a method for cleaning windows?"
I believe Linus holds the trademark on "Linux," and I've used it to clean Windows off of several systems.
Nope, no sig
I made a copy FOR FREE, rather than buy it.
Assume that sans this option, I wouldn't
have bought it. That means the value it has
for me is less than the amount they are asking.
Possibly, near zero value.
They lost no profit, because they never would
have made any off me.
It's leeches like you that give leeches a bad name.
Look: they don't want to give you free entertainment. They want to sell entertainment to others.
If you don't like that, don't do it. Don't fuck with other peoples livelihoods just because you're too cheap to buy your toys.
I hope one of these days I get the opportunity to steal from you.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
They don't sell Linux. They charge for the distribution media and support. They legally can't sell Linux. They also developed very little of what goes into their Linux distributions. They are making money distributing other people's software and providing support. Red Hat, SuSE, etc are NOT software companies. They do very little product development, and have very little overhead because the software they support and distribute is free.
"The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe lost $3bn to pirates."
I am always curious where they actually come up with these numbers. Some kid in his basement downloading a $3,000 software package hasn't actually cost the industry anything b/c he wouldn't have bought it anyway. Now if a company like IBM bought 1 copy of office and installed on every corporate desktop then I think that is a real problem. The real question is how many companys are really in gross violations of the current laws?
You go into a store. Software Product A is sitting on the shelf for $10.
You decide that Product A isn't worth $10 to you. (The step you missed)
You go around to your friend's house. Software Product A is copied to you for free.
Producer of Software Product A has now lost a $10 sale.
Oops, except that the producer wouldn't have had that sale anyway. So while the revenue lost to unauthorized redistribution is probably non-zero, it is ceratinly not the total retail value of the number of unauthorized copies.
Nope, no sig
Sorry, but not only are you wrong, but the substance of your comment is about style, not grammar.
"Progress" is usually an intransitive verb, but it does have an (mostly obsolete, but coming back in style as you noted) usage as a transitive verb.
One big motivation to stomp out piracy is the current piracy situation in China. It's pretty amazing, I think.
Right now, Piracy is such a problem in China that it actually has an impact on their economy. However, the piracy is not on software like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, it's on the software that governs assembly lines and supports large scale manufacturing, etc.
It's so established that there are actual private networks that have been built specifically for shuffling pirated software back and forth.
So why doesn't the government go after these private networks? Because the cost of bandwidth on these networks is much cheaper than the regular service providers...which means you have regular, legal companies using these pirate networks for everyday business use. And to top it all off, the average joe looks at these pirates as the underdog against the big bad govnt. The Chinese government can't touch these nets because they risk putting a lot of small businesses, well, out of business.
That's pretty scary to me.
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
- A vegitable
- An animal
- A mineral
- A verb (although I have heard people say "let's linux this project," which made me want to slap them)
- A birthcontrol device (well, arguably)
- A form of martial arts
- A cure for the common cold
- A paint remover
- A shoe manufacturer
- A religion (arguably)
etc..._______
2B1ASK1
This quote scares me. Nothing to see here regarding Linux and piracy. The second half of the sentence carries the real message MS wants to bring forth. Come on, say (chant) it after me:
Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.
Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.
Linux is software whereas piracy is copying.
Linux is software whereas piracy is copying.
Piracy is copying.
Piracy is copying.
<therefore>
Copying is piracy.
Copying is piracy.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I don't think so. MS has a long history of very careful wordsmithing when it comes to public statements.
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
Someone should let them know that .NET is a widely available domain type and not a Microsoft product.
~ now you know
Everything else even remotely related to computers has gotten drastically cheaper over the years.
I'm not sure about this.
A decent, new system has cost between $1500 and $2000 Cdn ($1000 and $1300 US) for about a decade and a half now.
You can buy a used Pentium machine for under $200, but good luck running XP on it (you run Linux, I run Linux, but most people don't, and you can't play Tribes 2 on a Pentium under any OS).
What we get for our money has gotten better, but the cost of a system has remained more or less constant (it's a market sweet-spot).
Why does the Topic say the lawyer said "is not piracy" when the text of the submission does not use these words? In fact, the text says: "Brad Smith as saying: 'Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.'"
Could be just me, but I don't see the words "is not piracy" in there. We couldn't be bothered to use the actual words I suppose?
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Losing sales to piracy is like missing an opportunity to profit. Find every one of those pirates and offer them a chance to buy your software for $10, and 90 percent of them will take you up on it. It's how to do this without eroding your market that is the problem!
"A healthy market leads to more attractive prices for consumers".
By this standard, I suppose the music industry and (perhaps to a lesser extent) the software industry are "unhealthy". In fact, this makes piracy look pretty attractive, unless these "attractive prices" are cheaper than "free".
Obviously, the reason we have piracy is *because* the current prices aren't "more attractive". Also, not everyone who pirates a program really needs it, especially not for the price that it is selling at.
This goes double for programs that have free alternatives; most people don't really need that new copy of Photoshop 6, but why bother learning about The Gimp when you can just pirate the industry standard? Actually, bundling free alternatives to commercial software would be a good way to decrease piracy, but I doubt that most companies would agree to this, because it might also decrease *SALES*, which is all they really care about. They don't care about their customers, just their money...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Ok, we're going to take words away from you now, because they mean things, and you don't want to acknowledge that. We're going to use math instead. You can't argue with math unless it's added up wrong. Here we go.
Software company 'A' sells a piece of software for $159.95. User 'Bob' doesn't have $159.95 to spend on software. Now, if we take the amount of money that company 'A' has when 'Bob' doesn't buy the software, and subtract it from the amount of money that the company 'A' has when 'Bob' pirates the software we get the indisputably correct amount of money that company 'A' has lost from 'Bob's piracy. I hope you can add, because here we go:
$0 - $0 = $0.
That's right, the company lost $0. $0. That's it, just $0.
I'm a professional software developer. That's what I do for a living. I fully understand that software piracy is bad, but to say that every pirated copy is a loss of money is just a lie. Some are, some aren't. I just showed you the math to prove it. Stop spreading you BSA marketing department lies.
If you want people to listen to you, more importantly if you want to influence people, then you have to tell the truth. People aren't stupid, and they can tell when you are lying to them. If you want to convince people to stop pirating software, you will have to find honest arguments, and you should know that there are many of them. Even 'Bob' the hypothetical software pirate can add, so your arguement won't work on him.
There you go again confusing the two. When you drive a car off a dealers lot you deprive him of the use of the car while enriching yourself by that same use. A zero sum situation. When you make an un-licensed copy of a program the copyright holder still has everything he had before you made the copy. Making an un-licensed copy is more akin to breaking a lease with a landlord, where stealing would be burning the place down, you must admit there is a difference
Free cell phone tracking
OK, scott1853. That tears it! I'm gonna Linux you but good! Say it again and I'll Be you, for jibbity's sake!
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
"software piracy in general, and how this is holding back the software industry in Eastern Europe"
You can't expect somebody making 50-300$/month to pay for software that is priced to harm customers.
I wonder how a converted to Unix user would look wearing a Microsoft T-Shirt.
Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.
But in a sense, Linux is copying. It is a Unix-LIKE operating system, which attempts to give the feel of being on a classic Unix OS machine without the requisite licensure requirements other than those promoted by itself (the GPL). So, Linux is a copy, but not piracy sense the creator did not take source code from the original to create the copy. He merely looked at what that original did and mimed it. Therefore it is copying in the mimetic sense, not the representing sense, where one merely takes the code, compiles it and represents the copy as an original. Where's Judith Butler when you need her?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I just deprived the software company of $9.98 (either your math or my math doesn't quite add up, but that's ok.) Does that make me only 47% better than somebody who copied it?
Or, even worse -- suppose I had decided that I didn't want the Sims at all? Then I've deprived the software company of $18.97 of revenue. That makes me exactly as bad as a pirate, doesn't it?
This allows all the benefits of piracy - lots of people who wouldn't or couldn't otherwise buy the software get familiar with it, and you can still send the BSA out to raid corporations that use it to run their sales force without paying. It has the further benefit of not promoting the moral decay that comes with deliberately disrespecting the legal rights of copyright holders.
Well, you just proved that theft does equal piracy and that piracy equals theft. Using your examples, either method deprives the producer and/or distributor of their share of revenue on the software product in question.
By shoplifting you deprive both. By piracy, you deprive the producer.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I thought MSFT didn't like Linux because it competed with Windows?
Having to include source to something they didn't invent and can't get along without is their problem and, like any reasonable minded person, don't want problems. They like to keep it simple, by owning or having license agreements on IP.
This statement pretty much is the same conclusion I came to when I first heard the Software Ecosystem Speech from BillG last summer.
Micro$oft has a monopoly. What's worse is they use those powers regularly in a way that is not productive to the consumer or, IMO, the computer industry. However, /. cannot get into the belief that software piracy is *not* a bad thing. Especially when it is commercial piracy (shrink wrapping copied/conterfeit products). The observation that sales are increasing has nothing to do with whether piracy is good/bad or affecting/not affecting the market.
/. community gets up in arms over gpl violations but thinks piracy against the evil empire is somehow less bad. There are better ways to work for a better (more fair) computer industry.
I'm surprised that the
-Sean
If it's not worth $10 to you, why are you making a copy? What possible value could that copy have to you?
Clearly, less than $10, but more than nothing. But if I have already decided not to pay for a copy of the software, then logically no action on my part can possibly lose the firm in question a sale. This is self-evidently true. Of course, it depends on whether I would have bought a copy if I was unable to make a copy illegally.
I bet you go to car dealerships and drive cars off the lot that are 'too expensive' for you too.
An imbecilic analogy. If someone steals a car, someone loses a car: a zero-sum game. If, however, someone copies information, the original copy still exists.
Whatever. I thought Adam Waring was funnier anyway.
Unless you created the product.
If you create the product, you're entirely within your rights to set it at whatever price you think its worth.
If someone else creates the product, they're entirely within their rights to establish the value. Your choices are "I accept that and will use your product" or "I don't accept that and will not use your product." They do not include "I don't accept what value you put on your work, but will use your work anyway."
When you do this, you've devalued the authors time. If this is legit, then it's entirely legit for an employer to say "Good work. We're not paying you by the way. Maybe somebody else will. Thanks!"
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Let me be more explicit. With the GPL software is and must continue to be free. This means that software has no value, you can't make money off of it directly. This is saying that most everything that Microsoft has spent hundreds of billions developing in since it's creation is worthless. Sound like something worth starting a holy war over?
Remember, Microsoft is a publicly traded company. Even if their IP isn't any less valuable, the perception that it is less valuable can have serious impact on them. Many of their employees get a significant amount of their compensation in stock options. Every time their stock takes a hit it becomes significantly more costly for them to retain valuable employees.
Another good question is if software doesn't have value, how do you pay the developers? You can fund some development costs from support and training, but I can't think of any consumer product that's been successful on that business model. Some people write software for the joy of creating good software. Most of us write it because it's an enjoyable job that pays well. If you take away the paying well part, it's much harder to attract good employees to software fields. That means more competition between employeers, which means good programmers will cost even more.
Free software, when taken to the extreme pretty much destroys the current business model of most every software company out there. It's questionable if selling services and support to fund software development is a valid business model. It would require shifting a lot of costs from the many people who use the software on to a few that require the support and training. I'm sure there are niche markets where that's a valid model, but I'm skeptical that it can work for wide scale consumer software development.
They [Redhat et al.] provide the source, but not the actual ISOs or other form of download.
You sure about that?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I agree that piracy equals theft, and I did show that with my example, however you say "either method deprives the producer and/or distributor of their share of revenue on the software product in question". This is not true in the special case where the revenue is $0. When a person will not otherwise buy the product, the revenue that the company is loosing is $0. Because of that, only in cases where the software pirate would have actually paid for the product does the piracy result in a loss for the company. This is different then with shoplifting, since the revenue is less then $0 in the transaction because the company had costs involved in physically putting the product on the shelf that they can now not recover.
You may have missed this trend in geek language, but some of us noticed it literally over a decade ago: all nouns can be verbed, and also all verbs can be nouned. While it is not "proper english", neither is most anyone's dialogue these days.
As for linux not being a cure for the common cold; It may not help with that one, but it does tend to make your system somewhat immune to virii.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
In one word: Control.
Control is an important issue for Microsoft, but I'll add another word. Revenue. Where does Microsoft make it's money if the software is free?
The usual answer I hear is services and support. I just don't see how they can support their product development on that kind of business model. Red Hat barely makes money, and they do very, very little software development themselves. Someone has to develop the software, and those people need to make a living. Linux distributions do demonstrate that some exellent software can be developed by utilizing a lot of donated labor, but how many of those people who are donating that labor are making their money writing software for another company. Could GPLed software become the norm? Or is it doing so well because the commercial software market is booming, and developers can afford to donate their time?
Control is a significant issue for Microsoft, but as the largest Software company in the world. Shaking up people's faith in their business model may even be more of a problem for them.
"Say it again and I'll Be you, for jibbity's sake!"
Actually, I'd rather be Bill Gates, if only for the money...
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Except that it'd be more like asking for two glasses, but the jerk says "No, this float can only be drunk from the glass that it came in".
Not only that, but you can't donate that glass without the original root beer float in it.
Oh yeah, and if it were up to him, buying empty glasses would be illegal because, after all, every glass needs a beverage...
Stupid sexy Flanders.
wtf? I just said if they don't want to use it thats fine, but why this holy war? If Microsoft doesn't want to use GPL software they don't have too.
Depends on what copying you are referring to. If you mean "get myself a copy of a GPL'ed software" then you are wrong. No licensing is needed; GPL doesn't really enter the picture here.
If you mean handing out a copy to another person, then you do need to agree to the license; that's considered distribution, which is what GPL is built on (that is, restrictions on distribution, not in use). [I know I know, this is just GPL FAQ... sorry if I'm preaching to choir here].
An interesting question is how would Gnutella and other networks be handled as there people can distribute GPL'ed software automatically and almost without realizing they are distributors? It's more of an academic question, probably, since if you just take a "valid" GPL'ed thing and hand it over, it does still contain GPL license stuff and will still be in accordance with GPL... but still, an interesting point; "implicit agreement" with GPL?
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Actually, I'd rather be Bill Gates, if only for the money...
promise me you'll spend some of that money on a decent haircut..
Hmm... perhaps too this is debatable? :)
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
You are correct that they can charge whatever they want for the distribution, but they have no actuall rights to the software itself, and have no way to keep someone else from makeing a copy of that distribution and selling it themselves. They have no way to maintain a revenue stream from sales of the software. They can only add value above what someone else can offer by offering non-gpled products such as training and support.
Acutally Microsoft doesn't sell Windows. The liscense it in a limited way to people. Since Microsoft licenses other people's software for use in Windows, Microsoft probably can't just outright sell Windows either, my statement that micorsoft makes it's money selling windows was where this started going wrong.
Linux vendors can charge whatever they like for their distributions, but they don't own the software and can't keep others from copying or recareating it from the source code, and then selling the same thing.
Microsoft is a Software company. They make their money selling software. Over and over again to the same person, if they have their way...
With GPL software you can't sell the software itself, the expenses of developing the software must be shifted elsewhere.
You can sell GPL software to anyone you like, at any price you like, just that you must provide the source in accordance with the licence. However if you try and charge excessivly then any customer, who is not a fool, will simply go elsewhere.
>They [Redhat et al.] provide the source
well, you read it that way... I read it this:
I don't think SuSE even provides dowloads of thier distro anymore.
They [SuSE] provide the source, but not the actual ISOs or other form of download
Obviously redhat lets you download the whole distro (I just got done burnin 7.2 CDs "for a friend")
But that being said, that's still not the same as selling "Linux", IMO.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I was incorrect when I said that Microsoft sells software. They license it to people. Neither Microsoft or Red Hat sells OSs. Microsoft has the rights to sell a license of their software to people because they own the copyrights, or licensed them from other developers. Red Hat doesn't have any particular rights to the software they distribute. They can charge you wantever they want for their distribution, but they aren't selling you Linux. When you buy the distribution you don't own Linux.
Why is this distinction important? Because there's no laws agains me taking a red hat distribution, writing it to a CD, and selling it myself for less than what Red Hat is selling it for. Since I'm not paying people to develop any software or even compile and test a distribution, I can do it cheaper than Red Hat can. Red Hat could put together the perfect distribution full of the best patches and the best GPLed software. They could test and verify it works with hundreds of different computers. They could spend millions advertising it as the best Linux distribution ever created. As soon as they sell the first copy and deliver the source code, there's nothing keeping the person who bought that first copy from giving it away to every person in the world, and there's nothing Red Hat can do to directly recoup their development expenses past what they sold that one copy for. In reality, if they price their distribution reasonably they'll likly sell a reasonable number of coppies, but they aren't selling the rights to use that software. They're just selling you a bunch of CDs with some stuff they have no control over on it.
They don't have to, they don't even want to. They would rather see others use a BSD license than GPL. They can bitch and moan all they want, it's a free country. ;-)
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
I don't think you'd want to Be me. I'm probably the most underpaid programmer in the country ;)
I try to tell them it would be better not to pirate, but they don't listen. None of these guys would buy Microsoft products. They're all poor college students like me. Software piracy is the only thing keeping Windows alive with college and high school students. If anti-piracy methods became really effective, Microsoft products would lose the rising generation. That would be swell. Microsoft being able to enforce anti-piracy measures is the thing that will make Linux a viable alternative on the desktop.
The only reason our pirate isn't getting hauled into court is because it is fiscally prohibative for the copyright owner to do so over a single copy. The pirate is getting value out of the product while the producer is not being compensated. Call it what you want, spin it as a cardinal sin or as a mere faus pax, but it is an act which is wrong and illegal.
Whether the pirate would have bought the copy or not is irrelevent. He doesn't dictate the value of the software. The copyright owner does. Now I may question how they arrive at their numbers but I won't deny the fact that an illegal copy is for all intents and purposes a lost sale. As others have said before me, if you don't like the price don't use the product.
That lottery analogy is just plain wrong.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
It should be noted that Islam is roughly 500 years younger than Christianity too, so being stuck in roughly the 14th century makes sense, if you view religion has a social phenomenon, as I do. Religions go through life cycles.
Which brings me to this point. MS "Shared Source License" is just as viral as the GPL (see The Register
Given the concept of how Linux is developed using the GNU Public License, the whole idea of piracy doesn't apply at all, especially when the software is encouraged to be freely copied and given away.
I mean, the US$30 or higher you pay for a retail copy essentially covers the cost of packaging and manuals, plus probably the development costs of the software distribution. People at Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Slackware, etc. in fact pass out Linux install disks like AOL passes out installation CD-ROM's for their access software.
However, the success of Linux will still be limited until they get Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) incorporated into the OS. (I believe the 2.6.x kernel will include ACPI support.) With ACPI, Linux upgrades becomes much, much easier, for starters.
I just saw on the BBC how another Mosque was ransacked by the Israelis.
And what about in the USA? The whole Jewish Defense League (JDL) conspiracy? Oh, didn't hear about that one on the largely Jewish controlled news, did you? To make a long story short, an organization that claims to uphold and protect Jewish interests was busted by the FBI for plotting to bomb Mosques in California. They got caught during the bomb material aquisition phase of their plotting. (Note that the FBI usually does do a good job of nipping things in the bud.) Is it terrorism when a Muslim ain't doing the bombing?
What about the recent pro-Israeli rally in the USA, when Paul Wolfowitz said that terrorists must be stopped, but Palestinians are people to and have also suffered... what did the rally of people say to that? They all booed! This is a sign of a huge problem... when large out spoken groups from either side view the other as being less than human.
Here is my tidbit of moral clarity: if you are responsible for killing people, you are committing a sin. If you are responsible for ethnic clensing, you are committing a sin. If you are responsible for stealing people's homes/land, you are committing a sin.
According to my moral clarity "tidbits", certain Israelis and certain Palestinians are committing sins. Now, for those slow on the upkeep: WHAT ABOUT THE MAJORITY OF INNOCENT PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI PEOPLE? Why let a rabid sinful minority run the show?
Let me reply to this :)
Here are some examples of (IMHO)successful russian software companies:
http://www.kaspersky.com/ "Kaspersky labs". Antivirus software.
http://www.1c.ru/ "1C". Office, Educational, games, and localized distributions.
http://maddox.1c.ru/ "Maddox Games", now part of "1C". Il-2 Sturmovik.
http://www.buka.ru/
the list goes on. Just see here at Google
Microsoft is treated by the GPL, because the concept of quality, free software threatens them. They ignored the GPL until it became a common buzzword. There are a lot of pointy haired bosses out there that don't understand what GPL is, but they know it's free, and there's a increasing number of examples of quality software packages that are GPLed. Microsoft's marketing people see the need to address this. The problem is that the details of the benefits and consequences of the GPL are pretty hard to explain to pointy haired bosses. By the time MS dumbes down their point of view, and the marketing trolls are done spinning things, it pretty much comes out as "GPL will destroy you, run away!"
I wonder how (or if) reasonable people can see any claims of software piracy and intellectual property. It simply doesn't make sense.
The idea that I am hurting someone by copying software.
The idea that the creator of a work has significantly greater rights than the user or borrower of that work. (note: not in the legal sense, but in a political sense)
Common terms such as "software piracy" and "intellectual property" are merely propagandas used instead of rational argument. I suspect that these propagandas would not hold to rational argument.
Can you imagine a world where copyright was much stronger than it is now? At least we have some of our fair use rights. Do we have fair use rights for software? I'm not sure. And when we buy a DVD, isn't it fair use to play it on a computer--even if it runs only GNU/Linux?
If you can't tell already, IANAL.
...in other news, Microsoft released a statement which said that the Pope is Catholic...
The problem with this analogy is that it assumes no innovation on the part of the commercial party. Let's say, for example, that someone creates a GPL'd pump. Now let's say that a company wants to use the pump as a built-in bilge pump in a boat design. Either they GPL the entire boat design (which means they have to expand into the boat servicing industry) or they design their own (potentially sub-standard) pump.
Now imagine if the pump was under a license similar to that used for the Berkeley DB. Under that license, the pump is free for non-commercial use (allowing John Q. Hacker to make his own pumps in the backyard and such), but requires a fee for commercial use (forcing the boat maker to pay out money but also allowing the boat maker to charge for the boat design).
Oh, this is just too good.
"We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
I believe the "code word" is WAREZ and I believe that the inference was that because there are a lot of sites advertising "WAREZ" there must be a lot of piracy.
Yes, there are an awful lot of sites that try to sucker people in by having "WAREZ" in their site name. Most of these sites have a lot of shareware not actual pirated software. So the inference is total crap. Not that there isn't a lot of piracy just that the hit count for "WAREZ" is no proof of it.
"For an industry that commits millions of pounds to research and development, and that contributes six times as much to Europe's GDP as the consumer goods industry, the levels are unacceptable, the BSA says. "
I thought they just said that "We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net..." If so, how do the know that "the levels are unacceptable?"
"That is about to change as the European Commission puts into force a directive intended to harmonise civil laws governing how courts deal with cases involving intellectual property"
Software piracy is already illegal. So what do they want to do? Make it REALLY, REALLY illegal?
"There is also work to be done on educating the public about the importance of intellectual property, especially as a web counter-culture advocating free software, such as music downloads, continues to grow."
Oh, so now we get to the crux of the matter. We're back on the "Kill Mp3s" track again. They want laws to take away fair use so that they can increase corporate profits.
"Open source software such as Linux is not seen as a threat to the work the BSA is doing, however."
Then why mention it? "Look! Your shoe is untied!"
"Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying," said Microsoft's Brad Smith.
Wrong again Bozo. Linux is an operating system. Someday Microsoft should try to create one.
"He does believe that stopping the pirates could have a dramatic effect on the current pricing of software, however."
And why does he bundle the discussion of Linux in with the discussion of piracy? He's not using subtle association techniques is he?
"As the legal market grows, there is more investment in new products and enhanced competition. A healthy market leads to more attractive prices for consumers," he said.
So does the open source movement. You can't get a better price than free. The only problem that I see with open source is that society as a whole isn't mature enough to break out of the "take what you can get and give back nothing" attitude. We need to learn to do a better job of voluntarily supporting open source companies.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Actually, sea pirates currently operating are at least as bad as they were in the past: robbing and murdering without mercy. Last December, pirates killed a famous blue water competition sailer who anchored somewhere too close to pirates with an eye on his equipment and engine. Another story about that incident here
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Errr, I mean they HAD the way out...
http://www.wehadthewayout.com
-- Windows security? Sure, which ONE would you like? -me
You ask:
If it's not worth $10 to you, why are you making a copy? What possible value could that copy have to you?
The last line of my post to which you are replying was:
So while the revenue lost to unauthorized redistribution is probably non-zero, it is ceratinly not the total retail value of the number of unauthorized copies.
So it seems the answer to your question is: something less than $10, but possibly more than $0.
Nope, no sig
The old testament, in my opinion, generally implies the existence of other gods - it's not that they don't exist, but they aren't the gods of Israel, and thus Israelites shouldn't worship them (note that the old testatment is very insular and elitist - it doesn't care about people who aren't Jews). The New Testament is more of the "I am the one, true, and only God" type thing.
Actually, Microsoft has every right to dislike its greatest threat.
The Linux kernal is more than just a better mouse trap. Its free software.
I believe we are seeing the beginnings of the third and last stage of software. An age where software is largely mutually beneficial to everyone. Much as math and sciences are today and have been for a long time now.
This stage is an unfortunate stage for software businesses. Because they can not continue to exist.
And its not just the threat of GNU and the large body of free software either. Its economics. Even though software isn't scarce, lets assume it is for benefit of argument.
What do you do when everyone has the software they need? This is the burden Microsoft has had for a while. So they play every trick in the book. Changing file formats -- more restrictive licensing -- regular upgrades -- huge marketing -- and the creation of new technologies. The hope is to obsolete the previous version of software.
Problem is that this provides almost zero benefit for the customer. Sure -- every so often someone gets a fringe benefit from a new technology. But usually, people are happy with the software they have now.
So, in economics, if the customer gets no benefit from a product, they won't buy it--right? And thats the future as I see it. "Piracy" is the least of their worries. Their business model is about to collapse upon itself.
And the GNU/Linux operating system represents this collapse all too vividly. Microsoft, there is no hope for you.
The funny thing is that so many of the fears of a World Government were that it would come from quasi-socialistic NGO's. But here, the multinationals are coming in and dictating the property model for other countries to use. What if a nation doesn't want to recognize IP as property? What does it cost Microsoft if an entire nation opts out? After all, most Russians and Ukrainians probably aren't getting *any* real benefit from intellectual property laws - how much Russian or Ukrainian-owned software do *you* use? (US companies employing coding sweatshops doesn't count - after all, the IP is owned and enforced in the US.)
Hmm. Actually, for centuries piracy usually happens in international waters where the piracy acts that were performed would not fall under the jurisdiction of any country. No countries' laws apply in international waters. If the pirates operated in the jurisdiction of a country, the pirates could be prosecuted by that country, and hence it would not be called piracy, but it would be called by what crimes occured during the piracy acts 'theft', 'murder', 'robbery', etc.
So, piracy in history has always happened in a place where there are no laws to protect the victims.
Now in this case, since there are laws and valid jurisdictions to protect the victims of these acts described as 'piracy' (in the form of copyright laws), I resent the use of the term 'piracy' as it pollutes the genuine history of the words 'pirate' and 'piracy'. Why don't they call it what it is: the act of 'unauthorized copying of copyrighted material'? If they did that, then it would be clear to everybody what was meant and statements like 'piracy is copying' would not be necessary, because the statement 'unauthorized copying of copyrighted material is copying' doesn't have any informative value to begin with.
Why do they need to misappropriate a historic term. After their abuse, a 'pirates story' will never be the same anymore. Genuine piracy has nothing to do with the Internet or software, or 'IP' in whichever context, piracy has to do with parrots, hooks, eye patches, cannons, knives, strong liquor, drunks, and sinking ships.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I can pull GPL software that you wrote off of sourceforge and sell it if I want. Anyone would be a fool to buy it, but as long as I make the source available I'm completely in the clear.
As far as just selling the packaging and support, to tell you the truth that's how I feel about MS. They're selling me a really big number recorded in a certain format on a cd. Once I have tha number I'll do with it what I want.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
it sounds like socialism to the majority of people in the U.S. at least. It probably also sounds like that to those in the EU regimes that are socialists only so far as they can use socialist economics to control the lower and middle classes (ie the aristocrats that want to tax you and me 60-80% but want their yacts and porsches). And yes, I know socialism is not really the dirty word in Europe that it is in the US, but it can still influence center, right wing and the equivalent (if they even exist in Europe) of libertarians. Therefore insinuating a socialist connection with OSS can have an effective propaganda effect.
I'm pretty paranoid about most things MS does, perhaps because of their record of back stabbing and this is no exception. In another article on one of MS' VPs in the court talking about how allowing competitors access to the desktop is not in MS' interests because "they might boot Linux" and in conjunction with the article on how MS wants the BIOS to be flashable from Windows itself, I suspect that MS has some trickery up it's sleeve. I really do suspect that MS is planning on releasing a future version of Windows or a SP that will actively prevent you from booting another OS on your PC and I think any "nice talk" from MS with respect to Linux is imply a means to an end.
Whether or not a person would have bought the copy is completely relevant. He doesn't have to dictate the value of the software. The dictated value could be anything, it could be ridiculously high, that doesn't mean it's worth it. I'm not so sure why it's difficult to understand. If there is no way I'll buy a piece of software then you have no lost revenue due to me. You've lost ABSOLUTELY nothing. You didn't front the costs for the blank cd's, you didn't pay for the paper I used to photocopy the manual. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THAT I'VE COPIED IT. It's a completely different situation than theft.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Your history is different than mine. Mine says that not only do christians destroy other peoples holy places, even sects within christianity destroy the holy places of the other sects.
The special thing about the middle east is that due to a historical quirk, many of the places there are holy to all three of the major religions fighting there. This also makes peace more difficult, as each one wants exclusive control of the "significant holy relics", e.g., Jerusalem ("i.e., the peace of the Jews" approx.). And Jerusalem is currently largely occupied by Muslims.
Not that religion has much to do with this fight other than as a justifier, but justifiers can be used to keep people fighting beyond any reasonable bounds.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Well, I think there's a BIG difference between something being ON SALE vs. FOREVER FREE.
Of course if you want to get into a socialogical discussion about this topic, one could argue that a homeless person would not be guilty about stealing a candy bar since there is no other way for him/her to obtain it. Of course, using the same example, Hershey doesn't mandate a 3000% markup on the retail price of their products.
On the other hand, if Joe's Chocolate Shop starts giving away free chocolate just because he wants to, it stands to reason that the public would question why Hershey has to charge money in the first place. It's all just part of the neverending utopia vs. capitalism.
Uhh, hmm. It's actually the other way around. We use Linux for real work. Why because it's better at it. What's my Windows box for... games, and that's it, and it does an awfully poor job at it to boot.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
"If you invented a better moustrap and GPL'd the design, then MSFT wouldn't be able get a patent on it,..."
This actually isn't true. If you really want to protect yourself, you need to file for a patent. If you can't foot that expense, it's essential you widely disseminate your work so that it becomes a well-known piece of prior art. Even then, it's quite possible some third party could get a patent on it; if you don't have one yourself, you're effectively fucked unless you have $1-2M buckaroos to caugh up.
C//
The homeless person shouldn't HAVE to steal his food in the first place. He should be able to walk in the doors of any religous organization and get help.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
Hehe, just to be an argumentitive asshole, I must state that just like Linux is not piracy, you are not open source. So the message you want to personally send out is yours alone and may relate to your own open source projects but not the projects of the general populous ;)
"We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
I just found 125,000 web pages for "masochism", yet there are hundreds of times that many people using Windows. It would appear that page count does not accurately reflect societal penetration [sic].
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Do you believe in a free marketplace of ideas (where ideas are traded for currency or other valuable items in a free marketplace) or do you believe in a marketplace of free ideas? The GPL demands the second -- that's the problem with it.
Ideas developed and shared undermine Intellectual Property. i.e. If you invented a better moustrap and GPL'd the design, then MSFT wouldn't be able get a patent on it, and thus license for big fees or lock any other developer or competitor out.
Well, almost. IIRC, the m$ implementation of TCP/IP involved licensing the code from BSD and making a few hacks to it. m$ likes the BSD license because it allows them to take somebody else's IP, modify it a bit, and then claim the derivative work as their own. They are unable to do this with GPL code which is no doubt why they refer to the "viral" nature of the GPL.
If they could take GPL code and re-use it in the same way, they would not have any issues with Linux.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
it sounds like socialism to the majority of people in the U.S. at least.
:-)
I'm glad you checked with the majority of people in the US to make sure
Take a look around you - the world is more "socialist" now than it has ever been it the past. Tell me, What sort of intergovernmental organizations existed 400 years ago. What was the state of public infrastructure (roads, sewers, canals) 300 years ago. What were the public recreation options (parks, playgrounds, sports fields, swimming pools, etc) 200 years ago. What were the options for public education 100 hears ago? How much public healtcare was there 50 years ago?
Like it or note, the world is indeed a more "socialist" place. I am not sure that this is a necessarily a bad thing either...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
*cough* newsgroups *cough*
Funny how linux doesn't have a single decent gui newsreader that'll combine binaries from newsgroups like Newsbin on Windows. Probably because we don't need one for warez right?
the article is one of those "got press release, changed a few words, printed it" pieces of "journalism". here's what I wrote to BBC in reply:
1 951000/1951231.stm
Dear Jane Wakefield,
In the article titled "Net pirates 'threaten software industry'", posted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_
on Monday, 29 April, 2002, 07:52 GMT 08:52 UK, you write down a few items that I don't consider to be entirely correct, and even more that are very one-sided.
Allow me to comment on some of these items:
> The warning was issued at a conference, organised by the Business
> Software Alliance (BSA), which attracted delegates from firms such as
> Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and Symantec.
This sounds like an accomplishment with credits to the BSA, except that the BSA is funded by the firms mentioned, especially Microsoft. Once you check the speakers list against the BSA membership list, you realize that what appears to be a conference is, in fact, a PR meeting.
Pointing this out to the reader would have enabled him to take the points made by these "delegates" with the grain of salt they deserve.
> The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe lost
> $3bn to pirates.
I have always been interested in finding out just how BSA and other "independent" researchers arrive at these figures. They don't tell. Any credible claim should name its sources, shouldn't it?
> This figure is thought to be only a tiny fraction of the amount of
> piracy that is going on every day on the internet.
If I interpret "tiny fraction" as less than 10%, I'm at $30bn EVERY DAY, or about 11 trillion per year. The GDP of the UK in 2000 was $1.36 trillion. So these people are telling you that internet piracy is a business 10 times the size of the whole UK economy?
Obviously that is, if you excuse the word, bullshit. The sentence does, however, create the impression that internet piracy is unbelievably huge.
Even so, $30bn is more than Microsoft's worldwide net profits, and a considerable percentage of the total net earnings of europe's software industry. A claim of this size better be substantiated by serious facts and sources. Where are they?
> "We can't estimate how much piracy is on the net but in one day we
> found a million sites under a search for one of the codenames for
> pirated software," said a BSA spokesperson.
One of the "codenames" is "warez" and does indeed return about 4,230,000 hits when put into google.
However, what kind of point does that make? "Buckingham Palace" returns 99,300 hits, but as far as I am aware, there is only one.
More to the point, a search engine just tells you how many sites mention a given topic. Ironically, the BSA's own websites, both at bsa.org and national sites such as bsa.de or bsa.org.tr appear in the above-mentioned search for "warez", because they use the "bad word". A majority of the "real" warez sites are just traps with pornographic advertisement. A little research would have taken an hour or two and been quite revealing.
Warez sites are very real. The BSA, however, having an agenda, is greatly exagerating both their number and capabilities.
Finally, here are a few choice quotes that should have really ticked you off to the fact that the figures are made up:
> The meeting was told that in 2000 the software industry in Europe
> lost $3bn to pirates.
[...]
> Europe has a greater rate of piracy than the US - around 34%
[...]
> It is forecast to grow from £35bn in 2000
Maybe math works differently in america, but even without a calculator I can see that $3bn isn't 34% of $50bn.
It sorries me when I see journalists lifting whole articles almost verbatim out of corporate press releases. It is especially not the kind of reporting I expect from a respectable news source like BBC.
For the record, I am a computer security professional with a telco company. I have been working professionally on the internet for over 5 years, and I have seen the warez scene both from inside (when I was a teenager) and from the outside now that I deal with people abusing our computer resources for these purposes or help the law enforcement agencies to track criminals through our systems.
Piracy is real, no question about it. The BSA, however, justifies its very existence by a gross exageration of the facts, and as a very interested party should not be believed too much.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
What do you do when everyone has the software they need? This is the burden Microsoft has had for a while. So they play every trick in the book. Changing file formats -- more restrictive licensing -- regular upgrades -- huge marketing -- and the creation of new technologies. The hope is to obsolete the previous version of software.
You also have BSA "audits" where people can end up paying twice. Because they can't demonstrate to a (highly partisan) party that they have already licenced the software
Problem is that this provides almost zero benefit for the customer. Sure -- every so often someone gets a fringe benefit from a new technology. But usually, people are happy with the software they have now.
It could provide negative benefit. If the new software does the job no better than the old, but contains more bugs, where workarounds are yet to be discovered.
That doesn't explain why they are on a holy war against all things GPL.
Because the GPL specifically prevents the code being co-opted as proprietary code. (Unless the proprietary software producer were to get a new licence from the copyright holder or copyright has expired, placing it into the public domain.)
Also any derived work of a GPL program must be also under the GPL, this includes intermingling other code into a GPL program. Since Microsoft appear to deliberatly write sphagetti code this would mean that they would have to release just about everything under the GPL.
It's easy. Same way we associate "drugs" and "bad". It's all down to an understanding of the way the human brain interprets repitition, association, emphasis and repitition:
Linux is a way of developing software whereas piracy is copying.
Linux is [mumble] software whereas piracy is copying.
Linux is [mumble] software [mumble] piracy [mumble] copying.
Linux is [mumble mumble] piracy.
Linux is piracy.
Linux is piracy.
LINUX is PIRACY.
Incidentally, I am not - repeat NOT - trying to be cute or funny here. Microsoft are mentioning Linux and piracy in the same sentence because they are laying the foundations for Joe Reader to imagine an association. Expect to see a lot more of this in the future, especially once they figure out whether they want to demonise specifically Linux, the GPL, or Open Source in general.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Here's some more info regarding what Slack is.
Simplicity. Stability. We don't need no steekin' RPM's.
You don't own the software. It's licensed to you under the GPL through copyright law. The GPL is less restrictive than some software licenses and more restrictive than others, but the software is licensed to you not transferred to you. You just own the media.
the long-sought missing link!
:)
hawk, setting out with some moldy jam to grow a rock-group
what would *anyone* expect a=b to do?
pip, though, has a serious bug: all important commands should contain no more than two letters.
hawk, off to file bugs against mkdir and rmdir
Microsoft is a convicted Monopoly. That means that the rule of Supply and Demand don't apply to them. Until this is alleviated or remedied they can't be considered capitalists. I suppose that the reason I've gotten some negative responses to my posting stem from having used them as an example. Perhaps they are a great example because even their power has a tough time enforcing their price points.
What should happen, especially since software is so easy to manufacture once it has been completed is there should be normal rules of supply and demand in Eastern Europe. For example. If they won't pay 1,000 grivnas for XYZ Software then the price should be lowered. There is a business process called "Price Discovery" that is supposed to occur. Businesses try to find the optimal price to sell their wares at. People try to find the price they are comfortable paying. This gets interesting when there are choices among products in a line or across lines. Look at Flat-Panel monitors. You have tons of choices (DVI vs. RGB, 15" vs. 17", etc.) You also have tons of lines to chose from (Samsung vs. Sony vs. NEC, etc.) I've seen prices vary between products and lines tremendously in the past two weeks I've been looking for a new monitor. Having control means that I can buy what I want at a price I am happy with. I may have to alter what my expectations are depending on what I want to spend, but the process is there.
This doesn't exist in Eastern Europe presently, however they are working towards it. A software company here that doesn't give it's software away would be irrational to attempt to sell via legitimate channels in Eastern Europe. They could never recover their costs. Since the pirates have none of the costs associtated with writing the software they simply have the variable production costs to overcome. You can't compete with that. Piracy and Monopoly are at opposite ends of Capitalism and are equally bad.
Capitalism as expressed in the United States, Europe, South America and Australia (perhaps other places too, I haven't seen the whole world yet) has many rules. Intelectual Property is one of them. A stance against monopoly is another. Fair business practices, better business associations, consumer advocacy groups... the list goes on in ways that modern capitalism works to provide fairness between buyer and seller.
The purest and most fair capitalism I have ever seen exists in the bazarrs of Kiev. You are one on one with the seller. You see his wares and the wares of the other sellers and you can negotiate right there. They sell just about anything there too. Unless there is theft or piracy involved the system is universally fair.
If you don't respect the rights of Intellectual Property, then why respect the rights of physical property? You state that because the pirates don't have R&D costs they can pass on additional savings. Well, I can steal TV's and sell them on Ebay too. I just have to cover my capital costs (crowbar & dolly + truck rental) and my variable costs (gas, set up of ebay account, rental of storage bin) and I can pass incredible savings on to my customers. In fact it happens every day that way.
Do you think forcing the GPL onto other's software is fair? Are you advocating that piracy is a common good? I'd like to hear more of your opinion.
Thats the thing. Them millions will only switch to another OS when forced to. If forced to, then moving to GNU/Linux rather than Windows XP isn't so much of a problem.
As far as "User Friendly" goes, I say screw it. There's a certain point where you need a logical and consistant interface to the computer--but the fact is that computers aren't for everyone. Certain applications that are likely to be used by them millions of casual users should probably be made as easy as possible. But other applications don't need to bow down to that level.
As far as GNU/Linux developers coding for the Technology minded, an article by one of the leading GNOME developers provides a good counterargument to your statement (http://www.advogato.org/article/462.html). In fact, it proves your statement false. Developers are *consciously* aware of human-computer interactions (of course, only when developing interfaces). It just takes time to both get all the interface up to spec and to educate other and new developers to usability techniques. Both of these concerns are addressed in the above article.
What free applications are not compatible with other platforms and in what fashion? In fact, of all portable applications I am sure you will find an enormous majority of them are free software. Why? Because we are free to port them.
Please, don't troll me.