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O'Reilly on the Commoditization of Software
Iorek writes "International Data Group/Sverige has a great interview with Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates Inc. From predictions of eBay's purchase of Oracle to discussions of the failings of open source licenses, O'Reilly's certainly not reserved. I couldn't help but be reminded of the rise of this site and slashcode."
How well is Andover/OSDN, owner of Slashdot, doing? Honestly.
reminded of slashcode?
have you ever seen slashcode?
i've seen better code in the toilet after an all you can eat enchilada buffet.
The best/greatest standing part about open source isnt GNOME or KDE, or that we all have free speach software, its what we are DOING with that software. Amazon is built on perl, and look what it has accomplished.
Later in the artical he comments on Debian, and how the creator and his company Progeny dont view linux as a product, but "a set of commodity software components he can put together for different purposes."
What he's getting at is that if the OSS community wanted to push forward, you need an idea and then use linux as the tools for that idea, suhc as automated backup, or something snazy like amazon (where it is a tool, and not the product). Trying to market it as a free desktop platform (in which case linux is the product) just wont cut it. I've done projects for my university, and its worked before, and it will work again.
Disclaimer: Do I beleive that linux cant be a product? No, I'm just saying that *ONE OF* (and not limited to) the best ways is to use it as a tool, not a product.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
Here's O'Reilly's take... it's kind of quick, though:
Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You are a terrorist! Cut his mic! Cut his mic! Shut up! Shut up! Shut your mouth! Shut up!
What, are you nuts? Ellison can probably buy ebay with his pocket change!
...Apple. Look at what Apple did with OS X. Apple took an Open Source OS and pinned it up with a proprietary front-end. The system benefits from all of the Open Source advancements in hardware control, while at the same time, the user has all the benefits of a modern, easy-to-use interface.
Perhaps the article should have pointed out that the commoditization of Open Source largely involves the things the user never sees. What hasn't evolved yet is a fundamentally easy-to-use Open Source GUI for the whole slew of commodity parts in the back-end.
Other companies have taken a similar path with commodity software, Red Hat for instance. However, their business plan involves capitalization on commodity products, not in the interface department, but rather in the support department. In theory, these two branches aren't that far separated. Interface and support both help the user accomplish the same thing, that is, getting work done on the computer.
I think we're nearing the turning point where we decide there aren't that many tasks we haven't managed to code on the computer. In comparison, we have a much larger area to cross in making things easier for the user. It would make perfect sense, business-wise, to assume that the area that is most open for development is the area that is most profitable. Therefore, I imagine this is the next area that software, internet, and computer manufacturers will flourish.
I just finished attending a Molecular Biology Training class, and I couldn't help drawing parallels between Open Source and the public Research that is on-going, such as the Human Genome Project.
Like open source software, public research labs publish the data they found, such as mouse or yeast genome, into the public domain (Humor me, I know that Open Source is not public domain, but it's darn close in terms of availability and cost). In addition, when a lab creates a new genomic library, they are supposed to make it available to anyone who asks. Sounds a lot like Open Source.
However, privately funded research usually do not have such policy, and use patents, trade secrets, and Copyrights to protect the IP. This has some effect in slowly down advancement in science in many ways. Such research also lead to imporant, and profitable advances for the companies involved.
But, due to limited public funding, not all worthwhile projects are funded in a timely fashion. A grant request to the NIH may take years before approved. A private company, seizing an oppertunity, may choose to invest and jump start a new field of research.
It seems that both models can co exist, and maybe it's time to have a publicly funded, or even an industry funded, organization, the supports Open Source development. The group should focus on open standards, common tools and platforms, and anything else someone can make a good case for. Something that will advance our knowledge, and make life easier. Something that we all cooperate on, rather than having blackmails or mighty pissing contests.
Maybe we should begin to treat Computer Science like Science, and really advance it methodically, rather than "My code is faster than your code..."
What's wrong with this picture? Well, one thing is that one of the fundamental premises of open source is that the licenses are all conditioned on the act of software distribution, and once you're no longer distributing an application, none of the licenses mean squat.
One of the things that was criticized about the APSL was that it covers deployment as well. And they define deployment as anything other than R&D and personal use. Check it out in Section 1.4.
simon
home page
I think that a lot of the dyanamics he's talking about hold true -- obviously, O'Reilley is a very smart guy.
But it seems to me that he's looking at service industries, and calling them software companies. In order to do that, he has to change the definition of a software company, and as a result he's able to announce this as a shift in the software industry.
My problem with what he says is mostly aesthetic. It's that same old silicon valley rich guy entrepeneur guru bs.
He's making a lot of points that most people know -- web applications are more exciting, in many respects, than desktop applications now. Web applications are being built out of commodity pieces. The data in eBay and the customer good will is worth more than the code. All of those are good points, if not exactly earth shaking.
But the way he's stiched them together is mostly a semantic trick, and he's out there like he's been given stone tablets on some moutaintop.
It's not evil or anything, just a little icky.
hinderances to OSS is the image. I say this because ive met people who will use macs but they wont use linux because of the people who promote it as an anti business anti capitalist vehicle. The mozilla logo doesnt go very far in helping remove that image. then there those who genuinely belive that through linux they can bring a revolution of a politicla nature. its unlikely to happen it wil just hurt linux
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Oh come on come on come on. What, exactly is hard to use about KDE3? Just name one thing, anything. Please, go for it.
To condense, O'Reilly says that licenses which allow you to modify and use code without releasing it because you aren't distributing it -- as is the case with Amazon and eBay -- are failures, because they don't force those changes and possible improvements back to the community.
He does not, however, provide a solution or an alternative, or get into the question of whether Amazon and eBay actually are "distributing" the code by having millions of people outside their organizations use it every day. I believe this (the "ASP loophole") is one of the things being addressed by version 3 of the GPL (the current version dates to 1991, before the birth of the web). If the GPL does change to define, say, execution of programs via CGI interface, as distribution, it's hard to fully imagine what the repercussions will be.
Posted with Mozilla
Thank You, somebody had to say what we all were thinking.
The fact of the matter is that the various open source or free products are good enough. As the software consumers become better educated, the market for traditional applications shrinks. OpenOffice.org is good enough that anyone who knows better won't buy MS Office. Opera is as good as any browser out there and can be run free of charge - with only a minor banner ad. One by one any major "shrink wrap" product will feel the pinch.
The future is in two places - integration and data critical mass.
Integration is really going to be two businesses - creating then supporting custom collections of free software and writing code to integrate free applications into custom solutions. The first business is already developing - with companies such as RedHat leading the way. The second business is in its infancy - but much of our future lay with workflow scripting.
Data Critical Mass is the business of becoming the big boy in a market with no natural barriers and doing it well enough that there is no reason for customers to look elsewhere. Very honestly, how long would it take a small group of decent programers to replicate "eBay"? I think about a week. But at the end of the week could we provide better value? Hell, no! Why would anyone list with us, and our "dozens of potential buyers" on day one when they can list with eBay and be seen by "millions"?
In the future, all general purpose applications will be written by bearded socialist hippies while smoking pot in their basements as the professional (in the sense of getting paid - not work quality) programmers write workflow scripts in the office. Meanwhile the eBays and Amazons are smart enough to keep the "goose laying the golden eggs" alive, content to dominate their marketplace and earn a decent margin rather than try to get a fat margin and instead create an opeing for a competitor.
Bingo.
Don't think that O'Reilly doesn't know this either. Check out how many books, articles, and so forth they have published since OS X came out. I had the privilege a few months ago to have a sit down with the current editor of the Apple books, and from the way he talked it seems that O'Reilly is nothing short of ecstatic about the OS.
O'Reilly, IMHO, publishes by far the best books on the market. This is because they have excellent editors and scouts (for lack of a better word) to find very intelligent, very insightful people to write their books. I suggest people check out there dev sites more often; they are treasure troves of info
The O'Reilly Network
MacDevCenter.com
OnDotNet.com
OnJava.com
OnLamp.com
openp2p.com
osdir.com
Perl.com
XML.com
100% Crunchier
Tim O'Reilly's comments about open source licenses and their irrelevance for internet applications reminded of this article by Joe Johnston from a few years ago. It was written around the beginning of the media blitz on Microsoft's .NET platform, and goes into some more detail about possible ramifications for open source software developers of the shift to web services and internet applications.
Very soon, everyone would have lathes. The market for lathes would be nil. The new market would be for what you could produce with your lathe. Even that market would wane, since anything that was produced for market could be quickly copied by others.
I think eventually, the market would shift again. Now, the lathe owners would create new proprietary tools that would be used to produce goods and services.
It seems the IT industry is going through those evolutions now.
The PC is our lathe, and the software is the first tier of production from these lathes.
When a new application comes out, such as the browser, it's just a question of time before the concept is copied to the point of market saturation.
Open Source is the recognition of this inevitability, and is providing the templates for this first tier.
Now, the challenge is to take these tools and make our own, custom applications and profit from them.
Amazon and Ebay have done this for themselves, but are wisely cooperating with individuals who are making new tools to profit with them.
If Bucky was right, the wealth that can be created by such cooperation has no limits.
Linux vs Windows was never the proper battle, it was always a battle over what you DO with these things, and how you do them more effieciently than the other guy. Lots of companies NEED something like Exchange, so they by an Active Directory and Windows by default, and so on and so on.
O'Reilly is dead on right. All this shit is just commodity for the applications built upon it that actually generate income. Superiority of one platform over another is a moot point. No one decides to buy a book at Amazon because of Linux, instead of Barnes and Noble because they run on IIS, so get over it.
Windows against Linux is now like Goodyear versus Michelin. Who gives a shit? Only tire makers, not CAR makers. So, it is time to focus on building shit that rides on these things, instead of so much focus on the things themselves. No side has an advantage right now, but that could change overnight. Suppose Microsoft buys Amazon, or EBay buys Oracle? Same players, whole new battle, and all this crap over which OS is better doesnt mean a thing.
What if Microsoft buys Macromedia; takes Flash and does interesting remoting stuff with Web Services tied only to .NET? What is the competing solution from IBM going to look like?
I've got no answers, but I agree with O'Reilly that things are going to get very interesting over the next few years, and things are never going to be the same.
I think O'Reilly is right, but it points to a very disturbing trend, especially if you are someone who makes a living writing code.
What he is saying is that business solutions in the immediate future are no longer going to be development and integrated applications (basically, code), but ideas. Why is this disturbing? Because it removes the an entire industry from the equation, or at least, it shifts the software industry down in terms of relevance and importance.
He is saying that innovation will no longer come from companies like IBM or Oracle, but from the development of new business processes.
In fact, if you replace the word commodity with the word marginalization in his interview, you'll better see my point. And as software becomes more and more marginalized, the value of the software as well as those of us who write the software drops.
Frankly, it scares me to think that the skills I've worked so hard and spend so much to develop (and continue to develop) have nothing but marginal value.
Having read the article twice I'm not qutie sure I get O'Reilly's point.
What he's saying is correct, but it's not exactly earthshattering in anyway. Amazon puts together some services that rock. They patent them. And then they sell the service to others. That just seems logical.
How that ties into driving Open Source I'm not sure. If they're only devleoping proprietary things (services) on top of an open source backbone, they're not really driving Open Source devlopment. Just because I compile my program with gcc or use a perl script doesn't mean I'm driving open source development in anyway. They're just using it as the foundation to build on.
Open Source is by definition controlled by anyone who wants it to be. Maybe I'm missing something here, but it seems like he's just stating the obvious and it has little to do with Open Source.
Software is a commodity? +5 Insightful - if this were 200 years ago before software was invented!
What's going to happen on the home level is what's already happened to the hardware market. Everyone is looking for the lowest price. When the PC first came out, a lot of people were concerned about the brand/reputation, et al., and were willing to pay a premium for an AT&T, IBM, or other high-line product. That's where the software market is right now. The high-end hardware makers got slaughtered by price. And now the high-end software market is about to get slaughtered. Microsoft (and lots of others) are going to have to compete against the software equivalent of incredibly cheap clone hardware... and they are going to lose.
IAAL
I'm happy for the change, so we can get over these stupid platform wars, and focus on things that actually do something besides send bits back and forth. Now we get to focus more on the value of those bits, and I think that is a good thing.
Amazon and all the others are free to build and deploy using the same tools everyone else uses, and playing by the same rules. They are not to blame for being successful enough that their data being manipulated by those tools is more valuable than someone elses. Or for having the money and foresight to employ programmers to use those tools to create new tools for the company's own personal use.
There's nothing to "fix" here because nothing is broken. Should you have to license hammers from Black & Decker because you build houses for a living?
I'm not sure what kind of point you're trying to make, but making a living in my basement home office coding applications while high sounds a lot better than writing TPS workflow scripts for a faceless corporation in a partitioned rat maze.
"It is tempting for Open Source developers to look at Microsoft's marketing blitz surrounding .NET and scoff. Unfortunately for them, Microsoft is positioning itself for the future. Because only descriptions of Web Services are needed in order to use them, Web Services greatly reduces the need for vendor-supplied libraries to be installed on local workstations. A Web Service aware application will become a small shell of a program that contains display logic. Where does this leave the Open Source community? It won't be hard to create Open Source work-alike applications to access the same services that the closed source version does, but is that the point? The Open Source movement is about the freedom to play with code as if it were a box of Lego; Web Services just might take the most interesting parts away."
I predict that---and this is probably total bullshit---O'Reilly will become 1/10th the master of the software universe he thinks he is.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Few people seem to realize how much a post can be spruced up with judicious use of bold and italics.
en tea bitch
O'Reilly is dead on right. All this shit is just commodity for the applications built upon it that actually generate income. Superiority of one platform over another is a moot point. No one decides to buy a book at Amazon because of Linux, instead of Barnes and Noble because they run on IIS, so get over it.
Supperiority of the Linux opperating system, and it's useability in business was never the point. It has always been supperiority of the GPL and how the freedom it secures creates more opportunities than the alternatives. GNU/Linux takes advantage of the fact that information can be coppied freely rather than treating it as a threat. GNU/Linux treats information like information rather than a false property right - that has no rational place in a world where true property derives from true physical limits and the fact that not everybody can have everything at the same time. Well with information they can, it is irrational to treat it any other way, and contrary to what everybody says - copyrights are more like information regulations than any sort of free market property right, ones that might have been bearable when the only issue was copy machines, but just don't have a place in the information age.
The end is not that the Linux kernel will be successful.
The end is a society in which the thinking about software has radically shifted.
The success of the Linux kernel may be a means to this end, but it most certainly is not the only means.
If we fail with Linux, then we will succeed with the Hurd. If we fail with the Hurd, then we will try yet again. We will not cease. We will not tire.
The final end of the politico/economic cycle is inevitable.
The final end is a society in which there are no copyright and no patents, where what can be freely reproduced and distributed is freely reproduced and distributed to all who desire it or who may benefit from it.
It is a grave wrong to withold from your fellow man what you could give to him at no cost to yourself, when doing so would bring him benefit.
The final end is a society in which individuals well-suited to create are funded by the community. A community in which all needs held in common are funded in common. A community in which it is given unto each according to his or her need, the need to survive, the need for satisfying labor, the need for satisfying social practices, and the need to create. A community in which each gives according to his or her ability, for the good of the his or her brothers and sisters in waiting.
Put off the chains of your capitalist masters!
Workers of the world unite!
Interesting question! Let's perform a benchmark.
$ time figlet lunix fudge packers | tr ' ' '_'
real 0m0.005s
user 0m0.002s
sys 0m0.002s
If every application that matters is on the web, then there is no "home market" for anything, except glorified dumb terminals and games.
considering how long it took to even reach 70 posts on this story, I can laugh at people that complain how /. is too US-centric. I mean, just look, most of the /. community is american, i just think the louder ones are foreign ;]
YOU SUCK BALLS!
O'Reilly is WRONG about the license thing. He seems to think it was an oversight, or mistake, that allowed Amazon, Google, etc to work the way they do. As IF. /is/ possible to make money with it"). I think I was there for like 5 minutes sometime in '96.
It was no oversight at all. It was design. Seems liked he's been believing OpenSource as described by its opponents, like it's communism or something, as opposed to what it is. Those are successes, not failures!
Actually, I'm a little surprised -- I mean where is that on the 5 stages of understanding the GPL? ("OH its NOT communism, it
Plenty of companies have been screwed by not getting the source, and getting straight-jacketed into dealing w/ only 1 company.. not just individuals. I see that as the point of opensource, take away the power to abuse that the software industry has, but not to be anti-industry in general. More of a return to the pleasant past, before PC's tookover.
eBay's service isn't very good, and that they run IIS, and that they have a cowardly attitude about items anyone considers offensive? And that they cooperate with the evil government thugs?
I don't have a reference to the post, but in the ReiserFS interview thread, a link was posted to a thread in which RMS specifically addresses this.
There will be no such restriction in version 3 of the GPL. There will never be such a restriction.
RMS believes that it would violate a central tenent of FSF philosophy.
I disagree. I think that the problem is with corporations being treated as persons. Any one human person should be able to modify without redistributing, but we are under no ethical obligation to do the same for these artificial entities created long ago through bribes to judges and government officials. That they are persons, is a lie.
If you believe that you have ethical obligations to these fake persons, then you have been duped; you have been duped into accepting the lie that there is nothing wrong with one man exploiting his brothers and sisters to raise hiimself and his underlings above their peers.
Put off the chains of your capitalist masters!
Workers of the world unite!
I hope you were using Microsoft Windows in conjunction with a licensed Unix compatibility environment such as Microsoft Unix Services for Windows, or a fully licensed version of Unix such as SCO Unixware or Solaris, in order to run that program. Hopefully you are aware that the popular Linux operating system has been revealed by many leading industry analysts to contain copyrighted Unix code, making it effectively illegal to use, and opening all users and distributors to possible damages due to SCO for illegal use of licensed intellectual property.
I agree with this post.
[snip]
The end is not that the Linux kernel will be successful.
The end is a society in which the thinking about software has radically shifted.
The success of the Linux kernel may be a means to this end, but it most certainly is not the only means.
If we fail with Linux, then we will succeed with the Hurd. If we fail with the Hurd, then we will try yet again. We will not cease. We will not tire.
The final end of the politico/economic cycle is inevitable.
The final end is a society in which there are no copyright and no patents, where what can be freely reproduced and distributed is freely reproduced and distributed to all who desire it or who may benefit from it.
It is a grave wrong to withold from your fellow man what you could give to him at no cost to yourself, when doing so would bring him benefit.
The final end is a society in which individuals well-suited to create are funded by the community. A community in which all needs held in common are funded in common. A community in which it is given unto each according to his or her need, the need to survive, the need for satisfying labor, the need for satisfying social practices, and the need to create. A community in which each gives according to his or her ability, for the good of the his or her brothers and sisters in waiting.
Put off the chains of your capitalist masters!
Workers of the world unite!
Totally false. If you dont think information is 'PROPERTY' then go take some that is claimed by someone else and see what happens to you. Information is like anything else. It can be free, it can be owned, it can be rented, it can be stolen, it can be borrowed and returned. It that is irrational, then the world is irrational.
The GPL is moot, pal. Or did you read the article and understand it? Web Services kick the GPL in the ass and send it running home to momma.
Copyrights become even more important now, because services themseves will become redundant, and features and availability will determine who gets the dollar. It used to be that the guy who made the movie got rich. Now, it is going to be the guy who sells tickets, and the maker will be happy to share his wares with anyone and everyone who wants to build upon them.
Microsoft has moved toward Web Services more than any other vendor. With a couple of strategic purchases, I think they stand to win big time.
That's very true. I was considering adding a <tt> tag to add a little "je ne c'est quoi?", but a true style maven knows when a touch more is just too much.
With Warmest Regards,
Martha Stewart
CEO of Martha Stewart OmniTrolling
regarding an open source gui...
,or change it's behavior.. but, in general, it's built to behave a certain way, and you can go around to macs everywhere, and the machine behave the way you expect them to. The developer knows what the user expects, and doesn't have to account for a dozen different ways to interface with things. More importantly, he has somewhre to start.. look how many windows applications have varied interfaces. To really understand this, in case anyone is doubting it, just sit down with a fresh mac and mac user for a few hours and learn how to install software, work with files, etc... you'll get it.
(agree with everything you said, btw)
As a long time hardcore technical guy, and let me back that up by saying I'm a unix nut, I've been using linux heavily for 10 years now, solaris before that, and I get right into the guts.. I like assembly, circuit boards, and whatnot. I like a command prompt and I don't like microsoft.... anyway....
as a hardcore technical guy, open source liker, and a recent convert to OS-X... the comment about a gui got me thinking.
I like open source. I like open everything. I don't like being told what to do with my computer. Yet, I LOVE OSX, and I recognize that the one strength MacOS really has is that apple controls the desktop. It's not that you can't skin it,
So.. we want an open source gui. Here's the thing... the only reason the mac has the "world class gui" feel to it is BECAUSE of a certain lack of openness.. we're talking about a benevolent dictator here. Apple developers know what to expect on the desktop, know how the mac user expects it to behave... and that's the main attraction. If you don't want that, you might as well go use linux.
Yes, we can do stuff in linux that OSX can't do. Yes, open is good, no argument here...I'm just tossing out the thought that, when it comes to providing a rock solid user experience, for a general purpose computer... a lack of choice is sometimes what's needed.. to get people thinking and doing the same thing.
You can sit someone down and show them windows -vs- mac.. and invariably, the mac people get more done, and are more comfortable with their gui.. and it's not because one is more customizable, or more flexible.. in fact it's the opposite.
Actaully, that never even came up. The choice to use linux as a platform for projects is based on whether or not it can deliver, and how easily the developers involved in the project can work with it, and the cost/benefit ratio of using it.
Complying with the license, in this case, sharing source again, is simply part of the cost of using it, and not that hard in practice to deal with.
So while what you say about linux treating information freely is very true, and quite important from an overall viewpoint, it is not the reason why people, or companies, use it.
I can guarantee that the company I work for didn't decide to use linux just so they could "give back" to the world... they picked it becuase it got the job done.. giving back is part of the cost.
and conversly I've met plenty of people who will use GNU/Linux precisely because for them it is an effective work around to the problem of the domination of capitalist software. its not just in OSS' image, its in its reality aswell
...Apple. Look at what Apple did with OS X. Apple took an Open Source OS and pinned it up with a proprietary front-end. The system benefits from all of the Open Source advancements in hardware control, while at the same time, the user has all the benefits of a modern, easy-to-use interface.
The FreeBSD folks get some benefit as well. Besides having another big company using their code, testing it (and supplying patches) they kind of avoid the tug of war that part of Linux is going through - the whole "is it for geeks or the masses?" The coders who are good at one tend not to be as good in the other. So the FreeBSD coders can concentrate on the lower level bits, and have the Apple folks worry about getting the real fancy GUI on top of it.
Does anyone get how open source will be a profitable "build to order" business plan? Certainly there are a lot of tools which are yet to be created in open source, but it seems like the whole system already is "build to order" for free. You figure out what you need, do a little research, testing, and implementation. A standard procurement model. CD-RW drives all do the same thing, but no one manufacturer is the sole provider. RDBMSs all do pretty much the same thing (+- important features for some), but there's still plenty of room of Postgresql to live along with MySQL and Oracle.
I can see the use of companies who offer service plans for a base configuration (i.e. a distribution, e.g. Red Hat), and at some point in the near future, much more automation as a whole. But where can you profit from build to order free components except for service, be it sys admin, or tech support?
IMNSHO, information technology will someday be a commodity service sector. But I don't think software will be the product... just the tools, like a deep fryer or a bucket and mop.
I'm very sorry. I apologize. Please be merciful.
Yes, IBM claims to be selling Linux solutions, and I am certain they are responsible for many installations of Linux. Also see their PDF of software available for Linux.
.
But IBM has not ported a critical piece of their own software to Linux clients.
GOOD
Clients for DB2 seem to have been ported to Linux.
Tivoli clients have been ported to RedHat and SuSE.
Rational seems to have been ported only for RedHat. It also works for SuSE if you are running IBM hardware. (Is this a marketing ploy or because of technical difficulties?)
WebSphere has a developer client for Linux. I first thought it was not available, then I found this mention of it. But I could not find it in the Buy Now area.
BAD
Lotus does not have Linux clients. IBM recommends running the client under WINE, but this is not acceptable for Fortune 500 companies with tens of thousands of desktops.
This is the killer. DB2, Rational, and WebSphere are used by developers. Tivoli is used by administrators. Every employee needs to use the mail client and information resources and collaboration abilities of the Lotus Notes client. Without a Linux version of the Lotus Notes client, many companies cannot migrate to Linux desktops. Also, Lotus Notes is the only commercial software with significant marketshare to compete with MsOutlook
So, yes, IBM is pushing Linux for servers. But they control one of the major blocks for the Linux desktop in the corporate world, and they are letting us down.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
I love Linux, but please don't instult our intelligence by saying it is as easy to use as OS X or Win XP.
programmed and also integrated a lot of stuff.
And yet, I don't see any difference between
creating a new app or integrating many parts
together into an application (or for that matter
into a "system", for me they mean the same thing.)
Perhaps I fail to understand what is "creation" and "integration",
and to you I appeal. Isn't the act of creating
actually an integration, and isn't the act
of integration the same as creating? I don't
see the difference between these two tasks, when
both involve synthesis and "creating".
(Actually, I do understand these buzzwords in
the sense that are commonly spoken, but is there
a diffence beween these two? No! None.)
The fact that data/content is far more valuable than code would have been seen by anyone watching the two sectors that continue to drive the technological envelope...
;).
Games and pron
http://slashdot.org/~tadghin/
BTW, have you noticed that an awful lot of smart people have low Slashdot user ID numbers? Tim's is 2229. OTOH, other smart people have fairly high user ID numbers, e.g., Paul Everitt, one of the smartest software developers on the face of the earth, has a user ID of 595824.
A lawyer & digital forensics examiner. Also an expert on open source software (OSS).
The GPL does not recursively modify existing licenses unless the author of a program allows it. Right in the text you quoted it state ...which applies to and "any later version"...
This is only true if the program specifies a version and any later. If it doesn't specify any later version then only the version of the license that the program is licensed under applies to it.
I am not a script!
But there's other segments. Some software companies have other software companies as customers (look at Id, they license their engine). Those companies are completely unaffected by commodity software, since they're pushing the envelope and offering something only they can offer. Moreover, Id actually control the rate of commoditization for other players, by releasing the source to their games.
You are an idiot, 9907.
I'm not sure what kind of point you're trying to make, but making a living in my basement home office coding applications while high sounds a lot better than writing TPS workflow scripts for a faceless corporation in a partitioned rat maze.
MMmmmm Can I come work with you? I can supply the, er, supplies.
watch it all on video
I believe this (the "ASP loophole") is one of the things being addressed by version 3 of the GPL (the current version dates to 1991, before the birth of the web). If the GPL does change to define, say, execution of programs via CGI interface, as distribution, it's hard to fully imagine what the repercussions will be.
Um, lack of upgrades followed by GPL2 forks?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
...O'Reilly's point. Commoditization is not the same as marginalization.
He is comparing the current situation to 1980 when Wang could charge $40,000 for a minicomputer word-processing system. IBM commoditized the market with an open architecture for microcomputers. Tim's saying the same thing could happen in software with its commoditization (which is coming whether programmers like it or not).
The '80s didn't produce a "marginalization" of hardware engineers (except those who insisted on continuing to sell word-processing for $10,000 a station). It produced a golden age for hardware engineers.
Tim's also noting that the ultimate winner in those hardware wars was not the company which commoditized it (IBM), nor the company which first took advantaged of the commoditization (Compaq), but the company that realized the ultimate goal of commoditization was build-to-order (Dell).
It might not be totally clear who O'Reilly's comparing to IBM in the software commoditization process (maybe he's thinking of Microsoft or even Red Hat). But he explicitly states that IBM is filling the role of Compaq with its Websphere package. And he suggests the ultimate winner will offer something like Websphere with no proprietary components and make their money customizing it to each user.
Not a bad idea. I'm putting my small personal fortune behind it and finding it's not costing much more than Michael Dell spent in his college dorm room. I hope to be announcing just the kind of product he's talking about at OSCON.
So maybe I'm a little biased.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Linux is just Linux and Perl is just Perl. They are just two nice little pieces of software that Amazon is using. Sure, they are making a lot from what they have built on top of that. But that is their right. Wasn't opensource about freedom? I think we should be glad if Amazon reports a Linux bug if they find one.
O'Reilly is right that data collections like Yahoo maps, E-bay and Amazon are the future. However, he is wrong about the answer. We will have to collect our own data. And just as with the software it may take some legal experimenting before we find the right formula.
There will be some setbacks like CDDB, but we can overcome that.
Also I am not very worried about the fact that the first implementations of such collections are commercial. The power of the opensource/opencontent is not in being first. It is in being with many and in being volunteers who provide things for free. We are a herd: slow to react, but impossible to resist.
Let me just do some guesswork how the answers might look like:
- Amazon: for the book evaluations we might have some open alternative that gets supported by a lot of smaller vendors. Just as with Netscape one vendor (maybe Borders) might pay the bills and let the others have a free ride just to get access to a wider public.
- Yahoo maps: at some point all software about maps will be standardized. At that point it might very well happen that the real providers of the data in the maps - mainly government agencies - take over.
- E-bay. E-bay doesn't have a real data collection. It is just the place where everyone goes, just as Slashdot is the place where everyone goes when they want a certain type of discussion. But this is a rather delicate position. It is just as with pubs or search websites: for years one is the most popular and then at once there is a shift.
I sumbit that hardware/software/applications form something akin to a protocol stack.
Regardless of whether the spec for any chip is made public, Joe User is not going to bake his own.
Up the abstraction hierarchy, we hava a GPL. The whole gamut of software products are available and free and effective, for all that some, in the words of Trent Reznor, have "...found you can find happiness in slavery".
What is wrong with saying that the end product, say a business, actually happens outside the scope of the GPL?
That's a Good Thing, too. If more people start businesses that are GPL-based where software is concerned, that would be the basis for better economic growth. Said another way, we lower the infrastructer costs of doing business.
Thus, the argument that GPL is anti-business is, overall, crap, unless your name is Ballmer or Gates. Which sort of challenges your argument, Mr. O'Reilly. But my shelf is still crowded with books having various animals and insects on the cover, so that's OK.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
He's mixing things together, trying to appear smart (and fails).
Just look at this quote. He talks about Gnome, and how people sometimes discuss if it is easy-to-use or not, and then says, that this discussion is fundamentally misleading because we should rather look at "all of the killer apps of the Internet era: Amazon (.com, Inc), Google (Inc.), and Maps.yahoo.com. They run on Linux or FreeBSD, but they're not apps in the way that people have traditionally thought of applications, so they just don't get considered."
So, Amazon is using GNU/Linux as their server OS. Great. Honestly! But, next time when someone says to me "I won't use Gnome because it lacks feature X", I should say to him "I know, but Amazon uses Linux for their servers"? Are you kidding?
We'll know Microsoft understands what's happening when they dump the Windows OS layer and start selling a closed source window manager and office application suite that runs on top of an open source Unix. They are in a good situation to compete with Wine, allowing people to reliably run Win32 apps on top of Unix, and it's the kind of backwards compatibility hack they have always managed to pull off.
If they're really smart, their slimmed stack will include a closed source graphics layer (with lots of drivers) before XFree86 gets user friendly enough to compete. Setting up XFree86 with full 3D support is still one of the most fiddly and uncertain things about Linux.
Microsoft's next version of Windows, Longhorn, is trudging along because they are burdened with maintaining all levels of the stack, while Apple is starting to fly along now that they have specialised on the top of the software stack.
Mac OS X isn't available on Intel chips yet, so Microsoft has a breather until some other open or closed source project starts gaining critical mass in the window manager and application space.
If Microsoft tries to hold on to the whole stack, they may feel like they are succeeding for longer, only to fall harder by losing more of the stack when they do inevitably lose market dominance of the OS layer for both desktops and servers.
There'll still be plenty of competition for the top of the stack, and closed and open source will both be in the game. But I think Tim's genius is in spotting the way that free software is assimilating its way up the software stack from the network protocols up the through the OS and beyond.
I just thought this through a bit more. My scenario above means that Microsoft might end up buying Red Hat! Not to squash it, but to buy into Linux as their OS layer.
Of course the GPL would give them serious indigestion, so more likely they would go with BSD like Apple did. We know they already use a little BSD in the Windows networking code after all.
Using OSS tools (Perl, php, gcc) and running on a OSS platform (Linux, Apache, mySQL, pg) is a decoupling from vendor centric solutions to one that's portable across a full range of hardware today and probably well into the future. The same source that runs on a z Series mainframe can run on the smallest devices available - phones and handhelds - and everything in between. Portable code.
I see just the opposite for the 'lack of standards' argument. Built with XML/SOAP, data is portable.
If I have to rewrite it's because of a better *idea* - a new way of doing things.. not because some bean counter can get a better *deal* from another vendor.
A MDSN Universal subscription for 1 year is over $2,500 - locked into ia32 architecture and a propritary os, etc. Right where they want you.
Totally false. If you dont think information is 'PROPERTY' then go take some that is claimed by someone else and see what happens to you.
You mean like when someone leaked internal documents from Microsoft? Or Siebel? Or the Department of Energy? Anyhow, this argument is bound to go in circles. You say that information is property because the government says it is property. So if the government said that air was property and you could only expect fresh air if you bought it from a private company then air would be property too. Or they could say that light is property and it is illegal to allow light from your neighbor's porch to go into your window. I know these are silly examples but they are reductio ad absurdum. We own the government and we should tell them what is or isn't property based on our goals for society.
Information is like anything else. It can be free, it can be owned, it can be rented, it can be stolen, it can be borrowed and returned.
If you really can't see the difference between "stealing" information and "stealing" a car (hint: in one case I deprive someone else of the use of the thing) then you are really not worth further energy.
The GPL is moot, pal. Or did you read the article and understand it? Web Services kick the GPL in the ass and send it running home to momma.
Grow up.
Copyrights become even more important now, because services themseves will become redundant, and features and availability will determine who gets the dollar. It used to be that the guy who made the movie got rich. Now, it is going to be the guy who sells tickets, and the maker will be happy to share his wares with anyone and everyone who wants to build upon them.
And this demonstrates copyrights are more important than ever because...what valuable copyrights do Google and eBay have? None. They may have trade secrets but I have never seen any valuable information with a (c) Google tag on it.
Microsoft has moved toward Web Services more than any other vendor. With a couple of strategic purchases, I think they stand to win big time.
Did you read the article? Has Microsoft moved to Web Services more than eBay? Or Amazon? Or the Apache Group? Or IBM? I don't think so. Microsoft has the most to lose if network-based services become more important than desktop software.
Here's the thing... the only reason the mac has the "world class gui" feel to it is BECAUSE of a certain lack of openness
Wow. You just realized this? Last I checked, Ms has been doing this for 20 years, which is why they are where they are on the desktop.
Following the rest of the article, one would get the impression that the transition to, and the conversion of applications for the net has already happened years ago. It might be right. I believe that there will not be an either-or relationship between net-apps and desktop apps. The reason for that is that revolutions never change everything. They generally change something and open up for new ventures. What it would do is to open up what would be called the modern paradigm. The moderns are where we all want to be (well, maybe not all of us...). But the older versions of the computerworld are still with us. And you might expect that to be the case in the future as well.
XML and Web Services are creating all these new possibilitites and are true modern stuff. As they are backwards-compatible they enable their success, since the non-moderns are also able to participate (only to a lesser degree). But what is important is that building your business-models on something that is not based on these modern developments will make sure that you will fail in a year or two.
... but did anybody else look at the rest of the page the article was on?
Am I the only geek here who looked at all the Swedish and thought: Wow, there's a lot of Tolkien-style words!
- Näringsliv: An elvish sword from the goblin wars.
- Enkelt: Like an ent, but for ferns.
- Javaarkitekter: A legendary craftsman who worked in runes.
- Nagon: A dwarvish city in the southern end of the Misty Mountains.
Or am I just a leetle bit too excited about the upcoming Two Towers DVD release?
- AJLB
I say the future is a serious matter
And so for god's sake - hock and soda water!
"Open source is a contributor to the commoditization of software, but it's not the only contributor. Open standards lead to commoditization. The Web browser is proprietary, but it's a commodity."
That's a feature, not a bug.
The thing that struck me about the article is that he just now figured out what's going on.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
He says software becomes a commodity,therefore Oracle becomes a producers of commodities.
Why would ebay buy a company which makes a commodity? Are they going to buy the companies which makes there coffeecups and officesupplies also.
In someways, it is a commodity/marginalized. Having someone do your personal income tax is a commodity. It mostly based on price and its standarilized. Its not a big part of the process because you could do it yourself and the accountant gets removed from the whole process of calculating taxes.
In other ways its not a commodity/marginal. Doing corporate taxes is just one SPECIALIZATION which is in high demand. If you are good and specialized accountant then you get paid well. Another example are sports lawyers. Another example are Harly Davidson bikes.
Maybe what I am getting at is work on your computer/technical skills but also follow the bounding ball. THINK.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
But, the individual consumer buying an Apple product really doesn't care about licenses. Apple's relationship with open source is, almost certainly, unknown to that consumer. It is relevant only because it allows Apple to market an attractive product.
O'Reilly noted that keying a license to distribution rights and obligations loses impact when the application is something like Amazon ot Yahoo, i.e. an app that won't be distributed. That applies, too, to millions of consumers of open source code who will never modify or distribute any code.
The GPL and other open source licenses assume that code consumers are also code producers, i.e., developers. That is no longer the case.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The Silmarillion (and by extension The Lord of the Rings) was essentially an experiment in linguistics. Tolkien was a philologist (studier of languages), and his specialty was Old English. Old English has a lot in common with other Scandinavian languages, and is almost unrecognizable next to modern English because modern English is full of French and other southern European languages.
Tolkien created the languages and built the myths on top, including place names like Thangorodrim, Ered Nimrais and Nargothrond.
So no, you are not crazy. For the White Tower and Gondor!
"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
After reading the article, I remembered all those times PM mentors would expound on the idea, "separate business logic from programming logic", which is essentially what O'Reilly (and others) are saying. Companies like Google, Amazon, et al. are creating proprietary "business logic" on Open Source "programming logic".
Frankly, I think this commoditization of the "programming logic" part is inevitable as businesses look for the most efficient framework in which to please customers and make money for their shareholders. Businesses are starting to wake up to some new freedoms they didn't know they had in Open Source, and the focus of the competition is shifting (rightly) to the *products* a software developer creates rather than the tools they use to create them.
Closed-source companies prey on the absence of interoperability standards, but I can't see that lasting forever - businesses will *require* more from their software dev companies from fidiuciary responsibility if anything else, not wanting to be tied to a single company for fear of out-of-control pricing.
- Jack
And neither one has anything to do with KDE. Sound is a kernel level feature, and printing is handled by another demon entirely. BTW most Linux distributions use CUPS which is the printing system used by OSX.
The problem with examples like OpenOffice, Mozilla, Opera, etc., is that they are functional copies of proprietary applications.
People use Office not for the joy of using Word, or PowerPoint, or Access, or Excel, or Outlook, or Internet Explorer. They use Office because they need to write, to draw, to store and manipulate data, to calculate, to communicate, to deal with the web. What Microsoft is really selling is a solution to that problem.
By concentrating on building software that mimics the proprietary software that is already meeting those needs, open source is simply playing catchup. More importantly, all those open source apps will become useless overnight when someone successfully markets a better way to write, draw, store, calculate, communicate, etc.
To conjure a poor analogy, who cares about free VHS recorders when the DVD guy shows up?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Information is not property because the government says it is. Information is property because it is something that belongs to the person who created it.
Information does not fill the Universe, waiting to be discovered. Information -- a book, a song, an image, a piece of software -- doesn't exist until someone creates it. At that point, the information creator owns that information, as clearly as a furniture maker owns the chair they just finished building.
If something can be owned, it is property.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Productivity growth means that all static skills head towards marginal value.
It should be remembered that Linus, himself, grew up in Finland, neighbor, for much of his life, to the Soviet Union. So, he and other Finns were influenced by the communist monster next door. Go along to get along. It would be interesting to learn how much of Linus' mind was formed by his early experiences in such an environment and how his mind might have differed if he had grown up in a different place. Does his head Dr. read /. and might shed some light on this?
slashcode is a piece of shit that people -only- use because they mistakenly assume that the code behind slashdot is worth a damn. its not. gross. perl. mess. yuck.
what, your parents' basement?
Information is not property because the government says it is. Information is property because it is something that belongs to the person who created it.
Excuse me, but the very letters you are typing were created by someone. Are you paying royalities to their heirs? Have you created your own mathematics, languages, terms, fact tables, or payed the proper royalities to their orgins. Or are you just being the ultimate hypocrite because no creator is an island. We all build on information knowledge and works passed down to us over time and from our peers. How do you know these weren't created on the terms that all derivitave creative works be shared freely? Considering that you got it without royality, I would suggest that my proposition is stronger that yours.
Perhaps you feel you should own a monopoly on distribution just because you created something, but property rights don't come about because of feelings, they come about because of realities like natural limits in supply and demand. The simple fact is that if someone makes 10 million coppies of your creation - you can still do what ever the hell you want with your original, anything else is bullshit morality.
Sure the bidding starts at $1, but Oracle Corp.'s reserve price is $63.6 billion! Or just Buy It Now for $100 billion?
cpeterso
Tim touches on something here that I have noticed too. Open source does not have a reputation for being easy to use. But why is that so? Some projects are very user friendly but in general the profit motive works against Open Source here. Consulting, Support, and Customization is the main business model in the Open Source world, but if a software is extremely easy for the end users to set up then there is less of a reason for consultants to be brought in.
Mod parent "-1 Stupid" please. As a matter of fact, the biggest anti-communists I know came from former USSR, or escaped from Cuba.
The Open Source movement eschews freedom. The Free Software movement is about freedom. When Open Source advocates adopt the language of freedom, I think that's good and telling at the same time--good in that more people need to know about software freedom. I agree with the FSF when they say we need more freedom talk. And I think everyone is grateful for the Open Source movement bringing in more people who use and develop Free Software (as well as securing the GNU General Public License--developed by and for the Free Software movement--as the most widely used Free Software license). But I find it is also telling at the same time because it means the message the Open Source movement was based on, the message that movement conveys--a development methodology--is being lost.
Digital Citizen
The point is that the closed source version will likely be accessing services which are not free. So how can the Open Source version access the same services without passing the cost to the user?
More likely I would imagine it calling an alternative free web service (an equivalent to the 'open source' library).
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
IANAL, but I have done business with a lot of them. I have also been a participant in legal proceedings, and have seen judges make some mind-boggling decisions.
The GPL does not recursively modify existing licenses unless the author of a program allows it
This is the kind of thing that makes lawyers freak and consequently bill you for more time.
I am becoming more concerned about the GPL. If I want to build the next killer app, I am first inclined to think "Open Source!" But then I have to think about the business model, and that means I better have a Very Good Lawyer look at the implications of the GPL. I can confidently inform you that the VGL's time will cost FAR more than any proprietary OS license.
You might say that I, the developer, am paying more for legal expenses, but the customers on their open source platforms will have paid much less, so there will be a total cost savings. The problem is that to get the Next Big Idea of the ground, I have to control my costs, and lawyers are expensive.
I'm not saying that I would never think of creating something based on the GPL, but I do think it prudent to recognize that it is not a inexpensive as some might think.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
The RPL (which is OSI approved) was specifically designed to support an open vs. closed model rather than the all-too-familiar "open unless you make money" game. It also closes the distribution loophole and provides a clearer definition of what code is covered.
Under the RPL, the scope of coverage is code YOU (organization or individual) write that's required to run any application containing RPL code. In essence, if a third party downloaded your application package and couldn't run it because it was missing code YOU wrote, you're in violation of the license. That being the case it reaches "across the wire" to encompass the application, without causing issues mixing in third-party code from other licenses.
The bottom line for the RPL is that if you derive value (through either use or distribution) you reciprocate either with your cash or your code. It's a question of returning fair value in whatever currency you have the most of, time or money.
I think it's the best example yet of the kind of licensing models we'll see in the future. When combined with a "traditional" commercial license it creates a powerful dual-licensing model that can support open source development by companies whose customers can't always open source their own products.
See http://www.opensource.org/licenses/rpl.php
>> Perhaps you feel you should own a monopoly on distribution just because you created something...
Absolutely, and I've no need to resort to claims of morality.
If I make something -- a chair, a book, whatever -- it is impossible for anyone else to own that property or any rights to it until and unless I transfer it to them. To argue otherwise is to argue against logic and reality.
Before I make a chair, there is no chair. When I make the chair, the chair exists. Who owns it? I do. Since the chair had no previous existence, it is clearly impossible for anyone else to own it.
The same logic applies to a book, a song or any other work. The person who creates it owns it and has absolute rights to it until some or all of those rights are transferred elsewhere. (Note than rights transfer can take place prior to the creation of the work.)
You appear to be arguing that any work utilizing language, the alphabet or mathematics is communally owned by "everyone" because languge, math and the alphabet are everyone's common inheritance. (What is this silly business about "How do you know these weren't created on the terms that all derivitave creative works be shared freely?"
Again, that isn't logical or honest. Trees are also the common inheritance of all. Would you claim that fact means that I have a right to the furniture on sale at the store down the street? I doubt that, but yet your "logic" leads to the assertion that the people who wrote the books on sale at the bookshop down the street have no right of ownership vested in those books and act immoraly by attempting to derive profit from their efforts.
The author and the chairmaker both use existing material (language and wood) to make something unique. That's what they own, anbd we buy. (Rather like a cook in a restaurant making meals out of common groceries. But, by you logic, I own those meals, not the restaurant.)
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The OpenSource communists forced Bill Gates to compete with "free", which means there must be a reduction in Cost of Production at Microsoft. Now, there is total redistribution of their techniques and wealth to Bangalore and Hyderabad in play which will have ramifications for decades to come. Yet the communists continue to logon to Slashdot and seem prepared to defend their failed ideals until the end.
I now look upon those nice little animals gracing the cover of the O'Rielly books as psychologically subversive tactics similar to those employed by the USSR to attract supporters.
What can you? Stop contributing to SourceForge and give Bill Gates $2500 for MSDN (or Steve Jobs $2000 for ADC) --even if it means you must work on older hardware and work longer days in order to afford it. If you can't afford it, then form a small business and share a subscription or write to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for assistance. Play baseball with your fellow Americans and innovate for profit! The alternative is to sit back and pretend you are changing the world as part of some sort of non-existant "COMMUNIty" and watch another truckload of $100,000/yr jobs head over to Bangalore while all of the neighborhood proprietors that supported those workers go under.
Bill Gates is expanding his Hyderabad facility to 150-1000 people (each making around $10,000/yr) and has invested $400MM in their technology industry! If we can kick these communists out of our industry, regain PRICING POWER for commercial software by crushing SourceForge --and we change Bill's icon here on Slashdot --he might be inclined to have MERCY upon us and decide to slam those Indian people and shift development back to San Jose. --But the way things are now, RMS, Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, Miguel DeIcazza and a whole lot of dillusioned Slashdoters are doing nothing short of bringing an End to the entire American software development industry.
Information is not property because the government says it is. Information is property because it is something that belongs to the person who created it.
You are saying that "information is property because information is property." By definition anything that belongs to a person is property.
Information does not fill the Universe, waiting to be discovered. Information -- a book, a song, an image, a piece of software -- doesn't exist until someone creates it.
Well, that applies to some kinds of information but I'm happy to talk specifically about things like books and songs that are obviously created.
At that point, the information creator owns that information, as clearly as a furniture maker owns the chair they just finished building.
No. That does not follow. Just asserting it does not make it true. There are a variety of circumstances under which a furniture maker can make chairs without owning the resulting chair. Do the people who made your running shoes (not the company, the people) own your shoes? No. The company does. Because that's how the laws are set up. Because property in any particular nation is defined by government and they've said: "work for hire is owned by the salary payer." Fair enough. They could equally say that a song is owned as long as you do not share it and at the point of sharing the person who heard it has equal ownership rights to the person who sang it. If you don't want to share it, don't share it. Now economists could have a very interesting debate about whether this is a good idea or not, but it is a perfectly valid definition of "intellectual property". And in fact, it is a much more established, ancient view of intellectual property. Cultures where singers expected a monopoloy on their songs were rare until quite recently. How much did Beethoven make off of ownership of his 9th symphony?
And while we are on the topic, what does your simplistic view of intellectual property have to say about the fact that in large part Shakespeare ripped off plots from ancient and contemporary writers? Those plots wouldn't have existed if someone hadn't created them, but Shakespeare made them much more interesting and popular. So whos dependents should get paid? And for how long? After all, the chair is owned by the furniture company forever if they don't sell it to somebody. Do you similarly propose that a poem should pay dividends to the owner's descendents in perpetuity? Should we hunt down the descendents of Shakespeare?
Your view that works of the intellect are similar to created things does not have any basis even in law. The law says (in the US, at least) that copyright is a limited form of monopoly granted by the government to the creator at the government's discretion. It is not an inherent, God-given right like the right to free speech or the right to own physical property.
..Do the people who made your running shoes (not the company, the people) own your shoes?
As I noted, this is a case of the shoe maker transferring rights to the shoe before it is made. In this case, as a condition of employment.
You go on to assert: "Because that's how the laws are set up.. Well, yes, but, presumably, laws that do not recognize the right of an individual to barter skills and labor for money would provoke a range of serious problems.
>> They could equally say that a song is owned as long as you do not share it and at the point of sharing the person who heard it has equal ownership rights to the person who sang it.
They might say it, but it isn't true. The statement is imprecise. One doesn't "hear" a song. One hears a performance of a song. You can't acquire ownership of a song by listening to its performance anymore than you can acquire ownership of New York City by riding on a tour bus in Manhattan.
>> How much did Beethoven make off of ownership of his 9th symphony?
How much he earned from it is not relevant to the fact of his ownership.
>> what does your simplistic view of intellectual property have to say about the fact that in large part Shakespeare ripped off plots from ancient and contemporary writers?
Not much. He owned what he wrote. Others owned what they wrote. To them is due any gain and benefit from the marketing of their works, until the work passes into the public domain. (Note that arguments about the duration of copyright do not bear on the fundamental notion that a work is owned by the work's maker until the rights of ownership are transferred elsewhere, which can happen at the expiration of copyright.)
So, yes, absent devolution into the public domain, Shakespeare's heirs are entitled to royalties.
Finally, copyright is not ownership. If I make something, I own it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
That's not to say this guy's problems with printing or sound may be lack of driver/kernel support, but you're implying it can't be to do with KDE, period. If it's not due to lack of driver support, then it's very definitely a front end issue, and if it's a front-end issue...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You go on to assert: "Because that's how the laws are set up.. Well, yes, but, presumably, laws that do not recognize the right of an individual to barter skills and labor for money would provoke a range of serious problems.
Of course, laws that accept copying and immitation do not restrict the right of an individual to barter skills for labor and money.
They might say it, but it isn't true. The statement is imprecise. One doesn't "hear" a song. One hears a performance of a song. You can't acquire ownership of a song by listening to its performance anymore than you can acquire ownership of New York City by riding on a tour bus in Manhattan.
And of course, if I ride a bus thru NewYork city, and completely memorize the layout, and build an exact replica of the city. Then it is my right to do whatever the hell I want with that replica.
If I make something, I own it.
I give up. There is no arguing with you. According to this argument, term limits on intellectual properties (i.e. patent expiry) is theft in the same way that confiscation of physical objects by the government would be theft. Property is a government invention. Every culture and nation has its own set of policies about handling property in general and so-called intellectual property in particular. I know of no nation or society that treats intellectual property as morally equivalent to physical property so your position is even more radical than the American government position that Disney has purchased.
I do not forfeit my rights in something I made simply because you happen to notice it or to look at it, nor do you have an absolute right to copy anything you see. My rights vested in my creation are absolute and, therefore, include the right to make and distribute copies.
More fundamentally, you've failed to explain how, apart from my transferring ownership or rights, someone other than myself can own or have rights to something I made. Until you do that, you are describing you own desired state of affairs, not reality.
(It's interesting to note that advocates of software licenses like te GPL, which profess to "free" software, seldom point out that the person licensing the software can only do that because, as its creator, he as exclusive ownership and rights. If he did not, he would be powerless to place the code under that license.)
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>> f I ride a bus thru NewYork city, and completely memorize the layout, and build an exact replica of the city. Then it is my right to do whatever the hell I want with that replica.
Sorry, not if the city is under copyright. (Absurd, I know, but so is your statement. A better analogy would be that watching a movie doesn't give you the right to make and distribute copies of the move.)
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>> According to this argument, term limits on intellectual properties (i.e. patent expiry) is theft...
No, that is not my argument. The creator of a work agrees to legally defined IP limits by virtue of living in that particular society. In essence, they are legally mandated transfers of rights and ownership.
You keep making reference to morality and moral positions. I'm not basing my argument on morals ot ethics. To me, it is very logical to state that I own and have exclusive rights to something I make until I transfer ownership and rights elsewhere. Absent that transfer, I cannot understand how someone else can possibly own what I make.
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OK your point is reasonable.
BTW getting beyond theory: In terms of print I'd say your point is provably false, KDE offers standard CUPS configuration + KDE print center. Its basically as easy as Apple's (which in this case is good by definition). As far as sound configuration I don't know that KDE offers anything.
You don't half to show the things you create to the world arround you, but once you do it's out of your hands. In that way you forfiet your rights (not of ownership, but of privacy and of restricting downstream copying)
More fundamentally, you've failed to explain how, apart from my transferring ownership or rights, someone other than myself can own or have rights to something I made. Until you do that, you are describing you own desired state of affairs, not reality.
The reality is that with information, two people can posess the same data at the same time without the other loosing it. I didn't make it up, it really is the way the universe works. Nor am I coercing you to put it in a place that I can copy it, nor am I busting in your house to sneak it out in the middle of the night. Nor am I even copying it and claiming to be the original creator. You have failed to explain how I have violated your rights by copying something you created - and that is because I haven't.
PS: did you ever hear the saying - fight fire with fire, hence the GPL.
Think of all software as costing nothing (a reality that is rapidly coming true). If this is true, the only thing that people will pay for is the content that the code manages or the activities that the code coordinates.
It's been coming for a long time. Programs are just the embodiment of algorithmic data. Now that most of the commonly useful data is embodied, it gets harder and harder to find more useful enough algorithmic data to embody (i.e., code to write) for people to feel it's worth paying for. So, the future for those who want to sell code (ala IBM, RedHat, etc.) is to filter all of the dreck and add a bit more proprietary algorithmic data so that people still think their getting something worthwhile.
The companies that will survive will start thinking of their products as content and services enabled by code. Those who think of their product as simply code or programs will wither.
That is all.
Another big factor is marketing - most of the audience here has enough interest in software to understand their choices; Joe Blow is as likely to be influenced by a piece of content-free marketing ("You inspire us to write great software" ???) as any rational decision making process.
A third is community support - I don't buy the nonsense that F500 apps are better because there is a big company behind them. There is a vast unfunded army of nephews and neighbours who provide hours of support for their own tools of choice, free of charge; usually this is MS stuff and MS is reaping a huge benefit from it (Office at $399.99 is no good to Aunt Mabel if she doesn't have free support) but sometimes it is OSS too (Linux).
No, that is not my argument. The creator of a work agrees to legally defined IP limits by virtue of living in that particular society.
So why could a society not decide that the legal limit is 5 minutes, or 5 seconds, or 5 nano-seconds? Economically this might be a bad decision, but it is just as valid as any other arbitrary limitation.
In essence, they are legally mandated transfers of rights and ownership.
That is incorrect. To transfer something you need to have a source and a destination. But the public domain is not a legal entity that you can transfer rights to. And it is certainly not the case that the government gets the rights. So the truth is that those rights just evaporate which suggests to me that they were hardly fundamental rights in the first place. Consider also that it is more or less impossible to put a physical object "in the public domain". If you put a chair outside of your house and say it is in the public domain, the first person to claim it will own it. It would not be in the public domain in the sense that it is not owned. The closest thing would be to put it in the care of the government or a non-profit organization.
You keep making reference to morality and moral positions. I'm not basing my argument on morals ot ethics.
Okay, then what are you basing it upon? If it isn't morality, it isn't ethics and it isn't law, then what?
To me, it is very logical to state that I own and have exclusive rights to something I make until I transfer ownership and rights elsewhere.
You yourself acknowledge that you do not control the transfer to the public domain. You seem to have no problem with that. So your logic is already inconsistent. If ideas (or expressions of ideas) can be owned the same way that furniture can be, then the whole notion of public domain is bunk and mandatory transfer to the public domain is theft.
Absent that transfer, I cannot understand how someone else can possibly own what I make.
Then I guess you don't understand the current system because people have their works transferred into the public domain against their will on a regular basis.
>> So why could a society not decide that the legal limit is 5 minutes, or 5 seconds, or 5 nano-seconds?
...the public domain is not a legal entity that you can transfer rights to.
...what are you basing it upon?
They can. I'm not arguing that society has no interest in this, just that the person who makes something owns and has exclusive rights to it until he transfers ownership and/or rights elsewhere. I can conceive of no way to refute the notion that the individual who creates something that did not previously exist is the orginal owner.
>>
No, but you misconstrue the public domain. When something moves into the public domain, ownership and rights to it are transferred to the public. I.e., it is now in the domain of the public. This is in perfect harmony with the fact that all rights flow for the creator of a work. The creator can deliberately place his work in the public domain, or the work can devolve into the public domain after the expiration of copyright. In the first instance, the creator acts on is own volition; in the second instance, the work moves to the public domain according to the laws governing such affairs, which the creator give his assent to by living in that jurisdiction. Nor do the rights 'evaporate". They belong to the public.
>>
As I said, simple logic. See above.
>> You yourself acknowledge that you do not control the transfer to the public domain.
To repeat, the creator of work assents to the law governing devolution to the public domain simply by living in the place. There's nothing extraordinary about that concept.
>> If ideas (or expressions of ideas) can be owned...
Don't think I ever talked about the ownership of an "idea". I'm talking about the ownership of works such as novels, books, songs, recording, films, and other works that use imagery and symbolic representation to record the thoughts of their creators. The "ideas" remain within the minds of individuals, but the work they create based on those thoughts is an actual piece of property. (I tend to agree that ownership of an idea is a non sequitur, but only because I don't know how to identify an idea as something other than a pattern of firing synapses inside one person's brain.)
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They can. I'm not arguing that society has no interest in this, just that the person who makes something owns and has exclusive rights to it until he transfers ownership and/or rights elsewhere.
First, what do you mean "rights to it." The rights to a chair are straightforward. The owner of a chair can transport the chair where they wish and use it as they wish. Others can presumably do anything they want with it as long as they do not interfere with the owner's ability to use it and transport it. For instance if you left it on the street and someone else sat on it, I don't imagine there is any law that they could be prosecuted under, until the owner complained that the sitter prevented them from sitting on it themselves (which is theft) or broke it, (which is vandalism). Analogously, one should be able to use a song as long as you do not deny the use to the original creator.
Second, you use the word "rights" but it is not clear that you know what it means. Where do you think rights come from. They don't come from logic, that's for sure. Please describe where rights come from. Do I have a right to smoke on the street? Do I have a right to speak out against George Bush? Why or why not?
I can conceive of no way to refute the notion that the individual who creates something that did not previously exist is the orginal owner.
It isn't something to be refuted. It is something to be discovered by looking at the laws of a particular nation. Actually, there is no nation that I know of that enshrines that right in an adopted constitution.
I said: ...what are you basing it upon?
You responded: As I said, simple logic. See above.
You cannot base an argument on pure logic. Logic is a system of coming to conclusions based upon premises. When people disagree on their premises, their logic will lead them totally different places. Rights are either moral or legal and thus must have a basis either in morality or legality. You have not stated whether you believe this right comes from morality or legality so I don't know on what basis to argue.
If we can agree that ownership is a form of usage right then we need to clarify what it means to have a "right" and then we can determine whether intellectual property ownership is a right or not, using logic. But simply asserting a thing over and over again is not logic. It is just assertion.
No, but you misconstrue the public domain. When something moves into the public domain, ownership and rights to it are transferred to the public. I.e., it is now in the domain of the public.
You are incorrect. When a piece of land (e.g. a park) becomes public, it is owned by the government on the behalf of the public. The government can charge a fee for use if that is considered to be in the best interest of the public (or even if it isn't!). But when a book passes into the public domain, the government does not manage it. Quite the opposite, the government gives up the right that it previously had to control the distribution of it. Even if they wished to prevent the distribution of it, that would be against the US constitution because according to the constitution, intellectual creations are not owned. If they were property then it would be unconstitutional to place them in the public domain without compensating the creator directly.
You have rolled out a lot rhetoricl assertions about rights, along with a number of half-baked analogies.
All of that is irrelevant to your case.
You appear to be claiming that you have rights to something I make. I am stating that you only have rights to something I make if I grant you those rights. (Beats me why you bring up NDA'a.) The most common way for the creator of a work to transfer rights to other parties is via copyright and publishing. That transfer typically gives you the right to purchase copies of my work. Unless I, or a subsequent copyright holder specifcally state, or place the work in the public domain, an owner of a copy of the work does not have the right to make and distribute additional copies of the owrk.
I'm tired of saying it, but you haven't presented any evidence or logic to refute the fact that the creator of a work is its original owner and holds all rights to the work. If you can't refute that, you cannot argue that you have rights in the work not granted by the owner.
End of story.
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By rights, I mean the creator and owner of a work is solely entitled to make use of the work, to determine its disposal, to determine and control any reproductions, to control the distriubtion of those copies, to set the conditions for others use of the original or copies of the original, etc.
...one should be able to use a song as long as you do not deny the use to the original creator..
...You cannot base an argument on pure logic.
>>
"Should" is your statement of a desired state of affairs. Fine, but it does not reflect reality.
>>
Amazing. What else would it be base on? Emotion? Morals? Ethics? Come on. An argument based on anything but logic is simply an emotional outburst.
I base my belief that the creator of a work owns the work on perfect and simple reason. If something does not exist, it is impossible for anyone to own it. At the moment that it is created, it can only be owned by its creator (unless the creator had previously transferred ownership elsewhere.) That seems obvious and self-evident. Who else could it be owned by? Can you assert otherwise?
The notion of "public domain" when applied to works of art such as books, music, etc., has nothing to do with government ownership or adminsitration. It simply means that no one holds a copyright on that work.
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How is truth flamebait? Hint: "dittohead" is not a term of honor.
O'Reilly has some interesting things to say, but it seems that many are missing one part of the big picture. Open Source is as much about Linux vs. Windows as Amazon vs. Barnes & Nobles. It's not about the platform, it's about whether the software that's distributed for use by others is open source or closed source. Licenses are what dictate how it can be distributed, but as he points out, they're not the big picture... Whether people/companies choose to release modifications they make to open-source software, that they're not distributing in compiled form, is up to them. The right to do this is inherent in the GPL license; you may make the software your own, for your own use, without responsibility to anyone. In short, no royalties must be paid for the benefit of using the software. Are companies like Amazon just free-loading off the efforts of idealists? I believe the answer is no. What is the requisite skillset of a programmer who wants to work for Amazon? What is going to happen during that programmer's work for Amazon; it's not just a bullet point on the resume, it's experience and knowledge. There are far greater reaching benefits than just these, including things like greater overall acceptance of Open Source concepts in the corporate world, but such things are left as an exercise to the reader. Open Source is a methodology that continues to evolve and be adopted. It's about freedom. It's about what you can do with it, not about what you can't.