Last Word on ADTI Document

kris writes "Linux and Main's Anthony Awtrey put together a very nice analysis of the ADTI "Opening the Open Source Debate" paper before and after the temporary retraction. He came up with some interesting research of just why the paper adressed specific examples such as the FAA and exposes the FUD behind the FUD in the paper."

Comments

a link to the original report

[gimpboy]

original report

Again with the inflamation

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Ya think we might, one day, get a non-inflammatory response to the ADTI paper? This latest one is as bad as all the others - filled with deprecating comments written as if the audience was part of the "in-crowd." If you really care about the accuracy of the debate, why waste your time writing a rebuttal article for the linux audience? The ADTI article was not aimed at the linux audience but rather at the suits who don't know the details of the either the politics or the tecnology. A rebuttal written for that target audience is worth more to the forward progress of linux than a hundred of these "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" rebuttals that can only sound like the squabbling of an infant to an outside party.

Re:Again with the inflamation

[kubla2000]

A rebuttal written for that target audience is worth more to the forward progress of linux than a hundred of these "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" rebuttals that can only sound like the squabbling of an infant to an outside party.

The author makes it quite plane, both in his preface and in his methodology: he's simply providing a resource for others to use in their arguments in the "perception battle". That's why he went through the process of converting the pdfs to text and diff'ing them.

The additional comments were there to offer his own perspective and, quite rightly, they were to the intended audience: those who'd be using his research as substance for their own arguments in their own forums.

It's all about the audience.

[mjfgates]

The ADTI report is written to be read by politicians; the rebuttals I've seen are written to be read by techies. I do hope that anybody who's sending one of these rebuttals to their congresscritter does an editing pass first, though.

Context?

[peterdaly]

I am unclear on the context. Where was the article he is commenting on, and who was the intended audience?

Other than me not being clear on that, it was a good article once I got through some rough parts at the beginning. I think this guy should write his own paper on the topic, since he seems to know it and took quite a bit of effort to comment on someone else's.

Can someone clue me in to the context? Should I know the names of the people involved? I don't.

Must be a slow Sunday.

-Pete

Re:Context?

[handsomepete]

I went to the site I thought it was and the paper appears to be for sale(?) But, being the web wizards that they are, they left the directories publically readable, so... here's the white paper (don't know if it's the revised version or not - I don't have time to dig through it again)

Just drop down to the /defense/ directory to browse whatever else they have.

Re:Context?

[fermion]

I am unsure why this is so highly rated.

The basis of the review is a rewritten version of a paper published by the he Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. The main purpose of the original paper was presumably to put a credible "Think Tank" justification on the standard Microsoft closed source dogma. The original paper was quickly withdrawn after widespread criticism for lack of credible scholarship or logic. The paper did, and does, largely contain unsupported statments and hearsay. It is important to discredit this paper, as it appears to be an important part of the anti-GPL PR campaign

Microsoft has been forging a war against open source software in general, and the GPL in particular. The GPL is a serious threat to companies like Microsoft because they can no longer take previously developed outside software, modify it, repackage it, and sell the product as thier own innovation. The GPL will force such companies to provide all code to the customer for which the software was intended, and acknowledge that the software uses GPL code. This openness has huge economic and competitive consequences to closed source software vendors who maintain a monopoly in their field (the problem is likely greater than Microsoft).

The revised paper is still a contrived piece of propaganda meant to scare people into thinking that open source software, and most notably the GPL, will cause economic collapse and massive terrorist attacks. This is interesting because lack of transparency in business and politics in precisely what causes economic collapse and terrorist attacks. Remember Enron and the lack of communication between the various U.S. agencies. We should therefore expect companies and government to insist on transparent business practices.

In any case, the paper will be used to get the U.S. congress, schools, and other governments to fork over huge licensing fees to Microsoft, Sun, and other such companies, for software that these agencies can neither control or properly audit. Which is not to say that closed source software is good, or open source software is bad, but to say that silly wolf in sheep clothing papers are a waste of everyones time.

Reverse Engineering

[Waffle Iron]

They highlight a quote from the original white paper:

"reverse engineering harbors very close to IP infringement because and has staggering economic implications."

That is utterly bogus. I spent the first 5 years of my career reverse engineering IBM's PCs (back in the days when IBM was the "bad guy" and Microsoft supplied a fun little OS that freed users from sysadmin tyranny). Due to the efforts of hundreds of engineers like myself at PC "clone" manufacurers, we now enjoy a utopia of cheap, fast, interchangeable PCs supplied by numerous competitors in the marketplace.

Decades of continued reverse engineering between manufacturers as they added improvements has maintained compatibility as the architecture has scaled in performance by over 1000X. The affordable computing power made possible by reverse engineering has provided immeasurably huge benefits to the world's economy.

Unfortunately, the software market has not seen nearly as much reverse engineering and cloning as the hardware market. If it did, we'd all get to keep more of our money to spend as we wish, and we'd have fewer headaches managing and sharing our data.

Sending your money to someone just because they've erected a barrier of obscurity and secrets around the tools you need to use your data does not help the economy or spur innovation. It's more like being taxed to pay for an entitlement program.

You know, it just depresses me

[Dark Paladin]

I have yet to read the newly revised version of the ADTI document, but looking at the original doesn't fill me with anger, or the need to go change the world.

It just depresses me. That there are people out there who find nothing better to do with their time and money than to tear other people down.

We have Microsoft machines at my Day Job. And MS SQL servers. And an AS 400. And a Macintosh (granted, only me, but hey, it's a start). And several Novell servers (I love the new licensing scheme.) And a Nokia IPSO box.

They all do a job, they all work together, and when I need to do something new, I look it over, and choose what I need. More often than not, it's Open Source, and everything else is slowly being pushed out (well, except for the Netware boxes - NDS rocks). I don't care about philosphy. I care about cost, performance, and how easy/difficult it is for me to use.

I might read the new version of the ADTI just for the heck of it. Odds are, I won't. It doesn't nothing but tear down, and I have a hard enough time building things to worry about what I should be taking out.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Last word?

[Roadmaster]

Last word, my ass. The AdTI paper is so freaking biased and badly written, that we'll be ripping it apart for weeks to come. Unfortunately, it'll do little good until a) a serious and polite rebuttal, aimed at the same kind of people the original paper is aimed at, gets written, and b) it gets diffusion equal or superior to that of the AdTI document. The much maligned, "inflammatory" rebuttals that have been written and published in mostly-linux weblogs are little more than preaching to the choir.

Perhaps some of the big Open Source organizations can help? someone from the Free Software camp? the FSF perhaps?

Several reasons

[epepke]

1. This is under Section 3, which only applies to distributing executables. If you don't distribute executables, it doesn't apply.
2. This is clarified in Section 0: "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope."
3. 3b is one of three options. If you do 3a, giving the source, you don't have to do 3b.

There's one more thing about the GPL that most people miss. It is directed to a licensee, not the author. Note from section 7: "Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice."

I want a "FUD FAQ"

[bokmann]

I want a document that has the 10-20 most often heard arguments representing the FUD companies try to spread about Open Source in general and the GPL in particular, and a clear, concise, relevant, non-inflammatory rebuttal to each.

The author's language, such as "the market is a tough bitch" and "hell yes!" will not fly if I ever want to supply a rebuttal to these kinds of arguments.

Take the original paper's example of "a piece of software an engineer writes that represents 5000 hours worth of work, but uses a GPL component that represents 100 hours of effort. Is the GPL'ed component's requirement to release the original work under the GPL 'fair'?"

The proper rebuttal to this is:
Imagine that an engineer writes a piece of software representing 5000 hours worth of work, but uses a PROPRIETARY component that represents 100 hours worth of effort. That proprietary component has a license that says 'the engineer will pay $10,000, plus some percercentage of revenue the original work generates". There are PLENTY of proprietary products like that. Is that fair?

It is up to the engineer to decide. If his time-to-market is so critical that those 100 hours are worth $10,000 plus a percentage, then that engineer will do it... otherwise, they will just write it. It is a business decision, like any other.

In both cases, the person who wrote the 100 hour effort component OWN THAT WORK, and get to say what the costs of its use will be. The person using it has to decide what costs they are willing to pay.

In GPL, the cost is not financial (at least, not directly). The 'cost' is to release the 'new' product under the same license. Many other licenses (both Open and Proprietary) put 'costs' on that have nothing to do with monetary value.

I want to see 10-20 arguments like this made. they are clear, concise, NON-INFLAMMATORY, and make a point.

Re:I want a "FUD FAQ"

[sconeu]

I believe that Villaneuva's letter to Microsoft does that rather nicely.

Re:I want a "FUD FAQ"

[kyras]

I want to see 10-20 arguments like this made. they are clear, concise, NON-INFLAMMATORY, and make a point.

Then I suggest you get writing. It's not like Santa Claus can be expected to bring you this stuff for christmas.

I don't mean to be a complete asshole. I'm just trying to say, if you know what the arguments are, why not write them down yourself? I don't see why you have to wait for someone else to do it, unless you want the official RMS guide to why FUD sucks or something. Part and parcel of the whole OSS mentality is this: if you have an itch, scratch it yourself.

The paper from the think tank?

[peterdaly]

This is the paper about Open Source put out by that Microsoft funded (among other) thinktank a little while ago.

Now it all makes sense. Took me the longest time to figure out the connections.

-Pete

Interesting link

[rjamestaylor]

Thanks for the link you provided. Hunting around, using only hyperlinks provided on their pages, I found another directory: http://www.adti.net/html_files/technology/ which may go a long way to explaining the ADTI's comfort level with Microsoft. For example, see the pro MSCE articles:

• http://www.adti.net/html_files/technology/anders on ad_techtrends020501.html
• http://www.adti.net/html_files/technology/purpsq ui rrel_familiarity0201.html
• http://www.adti.net/html_files/technology/Weston _c ounty_gazette_041901.html
• http://www.adti.net/html_files/technology/Standa rd _examiner_techtrends041001.html

And so on... Just click through the stories that are ALL pro-Microsoft, anti-Antitrust. Holy Cow. Western Civilization depends on an unfettered Microsoft to lead the technology charge!

A very brief rebuttal... (with text)

[dwheeler]

A very brief rebuttal can be found in my "Look at the Numbers!" paper; see http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#adti; I also include links to other rebuttals.

In one place, ADTI claimed I said something I didn't say, and in others ADTI intentionally carefully quotes only part of what I said.