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The Open Group's New Open Source Strategy

Bruce Perens writes "The Open Group hasn't always had the best reputation in the Open Source community, mostly because of their handling of Motif, which remained proprietary for much too long. But there's no arguing with the success of our community, and now the Open Group leadership understands that their organization must be fully involved in Open Source... or it's time for them to change their name. To that end, the Open Group contracted me to develop an Open Source strategy for their organization. The draft strategy has been published and they are requesting comment. - Bruce"

165 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Viral by wo1verin3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >> Open Source = Viral.

    It's because people have pride in their work and want to share it with others that open source exists.

  2. An added strategy by mao+che+minh · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The Open Group needs to add one more major strategy: preparing for and combating frivilous legal claims and the insuing litigations.

    This is perhaps the greatest (and one day maybe even the only) threat to Open Source.

    1. Re:An added strategy by kmak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maybe... but it still remains to be seen if Open Source can generate enough revenue for the developers after reaching critical mass...

      --

      I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
    2. Re:An added strategy by Jameth · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would say it is definitely the only threat. Now, it might not be the only threat to open source expanding further, but open source has gone this far with only what it has, and a strong legal suit is the only thing that can make it backtrack.

      Worries about open source being profitable forget that open source lasted plenty long without profitability.

    3. Re:An added strategy by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      preparing for and combating frivilous legal claims and the insuing litigations.
      Not likely to occur. It appears that Sun is also one of the companies behind the SCO suit. They are also part of open group. I doubt that they will permit Open Group to help stop them, even though they have more to lose with MS holding power than Linux gaining it.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    4. Re:An added strategy by OldAndSlow · · Score: 1

      It seems to me that the best strategy to defend against frivolous suits is to be ready to countersue. If there were, say, 1000 registered copyrights within the Linux kernal, then SCO would be liable for $150,000,000 statutory damages (plus legal fees) every time someone downloaded Linux from their site after they broke the GPL.
      So if you contribute to OSS, once in a while pop for the copyright fee and register your work.

      (the statutory damages are what the RIAA is claiming when they sue college students for billions)

    5. Re:An added strategy by defile · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Worries about open source being profitable forget that open source lasted plenty long without profitability.

      Open source and business have gone hand-in-hand from the start. What's different today is that you have a few companies trying to turn it into a shrinkwrap product.

      Whether those endeavors succeed or fail is irrelevant to open source in itself.

    6. Re:An added strategy by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I think SCO is a member, too. Open Group is not vendor-dominated, as far as I can tell. They have lots of large corporate users in their membership, some government agencies (including DOD/DISA), etc.

      And regarding Sun, specifically, Sun has a multiple-personality disorder where Free Software is concerned. They help us with one hand and hurt with the other. This is also true for IBM, Intel, and HP. They have an internal conflict of interest that they won't be able to resolve in this decade. The best we can do is live with it.

      Bruce

    7. Re:An added strategy by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      Open Group does have many members, but over the years, I have noticed that large corps carry a lot of weight inside of O.G.(more than should be). And as you pointed out just about all large corps have split personalities ( I Have worked at HP/Ft.Collins and IBM years ago). But OG will need something that they have been lacking for years; a backbone.

      BTW, I do remember the fighting that occurred in OG over the toolkit. It was not really about purposeful vendor differention, but an inability to get Sun, HP, and IBM to agree on one toolkit. This is the same problem today. These companies will fight for market share amongst themselves while ignoring the big picture. This is the same mistake that Sun makes now with regards towards Linux.

      Oh, good paper; I only hope that OG's member will think about it rather than immediately trying to modify it to gain future market advantage.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    8. Re:An added strategy by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      Eric Raymond thinks my point about the no-canonical-X-widget-set decision giving the market to MS is "wack". He thinks it has more to do with vendors not wanting to give up high-margin hardware.

      Bruce

    9. Re:An added strategy by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      Eric Raymond thinks my point about the no-canonical-X-widget-set decision giving the market to MS is "wack".
      Sadly, I think that Eric is more correct. The outlandish prices being charged long ago made MS possible (like what Linux/BSD/OO is doing to MS these days). It was hard to justify Xterms when all ppl could see was the upfront costs rather than long term costs.
      But no base UI toolkit really did hurt.
      I was guessing that you were trying to be polically correct to get a sign off or simply to be polite.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  3. Well.. by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    I won't believe they're serious until they change their name to Gnu/OpenGroup.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Well.. by Uber+Banker · · Score: 1

      But... X12 offers superior seasonal adjustment than X11, and it's open source.

    2. Re:Well.. by jdray · · Score: 1

      GNOS?

      --
      The Spoon
      Updated 6/28/2011
    3. Re:Well.. by Charley's+Angel · · Score: 1

      Gnu's Not Unix?

      But Open group most definitely _is_ Unix

  4. Re:My attention span is about 5 minutes by tomstdenis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As much as this does sound like a troll put yourself in the place of a PHB...

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  5. Re:Viral by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Open Source = Viral."

    I'd agree except for one minor detail:

    No one forces you to plunder GPL'd (and other similarly licensed) code.

    Millions of programmers and developers get along just fine with the ideals set forth in 'open source' licenses. They also greatly benefit from the fact that some random person or corporation can't then steal their work.

  6. Motif? by Ed+Avis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Huh? I thought Motif still was proprietary, even to this day. Or at least, it is proprietary software in the sense of not being free software. Or was there some big announcement I missed?

    --
    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    1. Re:Motif? by TheViffer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Motif Faq

      Subject: 2)* Is the Motif source code publically available?
      [Last modified: Jan 02]

      Answer: On May 15, 2000 the Open Group released the Motif source code for
      Motif 2.1, using a public license, to the Open Source community. On January
      29, 2002, Open Motif 2.2 was released.

      --
      -- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
    2. Re:Motif? by zephc · · Score: 2, Informative

      According to the Motif FAQ, "On May 15, 2000 the Open Group released the Motif source code for Motif 2.1, using a public license, to the Open Source community. On January 29, 2002, Open Motif 2.2 was released.

      For more information on Open Motif, see:

      http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/"

      --
      "I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
    3. Re:Motif? by Ed+Avis · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes - it's available under a semi-free licence that lets you distribute it alongside Linux, but it's still not free software. So Lesstif is not obsolete quite yet.

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    4. Re:Motif? by Horny+Smurf · · Score: 1

      lesstiff is a buggy piece of shit. few to no non-trivial motif applications work properly with it. But then again, you probably consider jacking off to be better than dinner and a movie with a real girl.

    5. Re:Motif? by Art+Tatum · · Score: 1
      But then again, you probably consider jacking off to be better than dinner and a movie with a real girl.

      Come on, you're the one named Horny Smurf. :-)

  7. Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by billstr78 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is a very good question. The trend that Open Source software seems to encorage is a gradual but irreversable shift away from propriatary and profiting methods. As stated in the strategy, this is good for the majority (users) and bad for the minority (vendors). The question is wether or not this method of software development is sustainable if it's popularity grew to a point where it was the majority method of development.

    Some would say that it would be great. Everything would be free, innovation would happen at a rapid rate, but what about compensation for the developers. Software written under a GLP type licience, does not leave room for profits from the actual software. Ad-hoc services can only go so far to support an entire development effort. Who pays the developers for thier hard work?

    The question I leave open for disucssion is this: How sustainable do you think Open Source in it's current form is and do you think that varients such as the Apache Licience are an innevatable change necessary for the properity of the community.

    1. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Delphiki · · Score: 1, Interesting

      If Open Source were the only software solution there would become a lack of demand for paid developers. Sure there ar epoeple who make a living developing for open source but they are in the minority. So if the lack of demand for developers went down the people who currently work on open source projects as a hobby who are programmers would largely have to move to another profession to be able to support themselves. This fallout in the demand for software developers would cause a shift away from software development in education. Sure, some people would still study computer science, but many, many less. So the pool of hobbyist developers would grow smaller and drop in skill level. This would most likely cause a great deal of stagnation on open source projects, leaving a wide opening for closed source software to move quickly back into the market by being able to afford the best developers full time, not just as hobbyists. So basically, the way I see it, open source is dependant upon closed source, just as closed source software is dependant on open source software frequently.

      --

      Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".

    2. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by KoalaBear33 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      An important issue...

      My theory is that free software will self-destruct if all programmers lose their jobs. A lot of people who create free software are volunteers. Most of these people have other full-time jobs that pay for their living. My view is that if NO developers were paid for their jobs (doesn't matter what), then the free software movement will collapse. Thes people would instead spend time searching for jobs to make a living.

      What all this means is that what you are saying won't happen (ie. people won't lose jobs). If everyone started losing jobs (I don't think this will happen--other threats like out-sourcing jobs/governments defaulting on debts/currency depreciation/etc will have an impact though), the movement will slow down and die.

      To answer your question, the free software environment will exist forever--or at least as long as the programming profession exists. What I said mainly applies to free software; open-source software, on the other hand, is a slightly different matter.

      KoalaBear33

      --
      ......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
    3. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by pjack76 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Well, my job right now is basically to support my organization's systems. If the accounting system goes wonky, I call the vendor to address it. If our in-house web intranet thingy goes wonky, I fix it. If a WinNT4.0 desktop goes wonky, I explain that we are all powerless to do anything, let's go have a drink.

      My point is that in an all-open-source world, I would still have a job: I'd be answering user's requests and fixing bugs for them. I just wouldn't have to call vendors anymore, and I could actually fix a desktop too.

      --

      Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor

    4. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Yes, system admins would still have jobs.

      But, what about hard core hackers? You know the type of people currently developing the systems you support.

    5. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 2, Interesting
      If Open Source were the only software solution there would become a lack of demand for paid developers Most of the software development happening today is for code that runs in house, so that businesses can handle their accounting, inventory, transportation and personnel needs. This will still be the case down the road, regardless of whether the dominant commercial software model is proprietary, open-source, or public domain.

      They're going to need coders to develop that software, and those coders ain't gonna work for free.

      Granted, this means that there's less work available to develop one-size-fits all solutions for word processing, operating systems, databases, compilers, etc. But, frankly, the market for these items is pretty crowded as it is anyway.

    6. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Quill_28 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You need to re-read the GPL manifesto. You are under the assumption that the GPL is around to help people.

    7. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by pjack76 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Well, yes, there's that. :) Although I guess I should add to my prior post that I do spend a lot of time adding features to our in-house systems (so that, for instance, you can submit Expense Payment Requests via the web intranet thingy and they get imported into the vendor's accounting system).

      So it seems to me that adding features to, say, Open Office would be part of my job too, were we only using it. The process would be something like, "Oh shoot, you can't paste tab-delimited text into Calc, I wonder if anyone's working on this...oh look, someone is...I wonder if I can help..."

      Still, I suppose that there would need to be organizations such as Apache, Mozilla etc that support initial development efforts. But surely these could be nonprofits like they are now?

      --

      Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor

    8. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Delphiki · · Score: 1

      Developing in house solutions is generally a much different type of programming than that which is done for commercially available applications. Typically in house it applications are written in very high level languages such as Java, C#, asp, php, i.e. not C, C++, assembly.. How does that kind of work help one to hack on a kernel or a RDBMS? If this is the only kind of software that is going to be paid for, then the level of hobbyist skill is going to drop considerably. If you don't believe me, take someone you know who thinks their great at VB and sit them down in front of an IDE open to some source code for the linux kernel and give them a bug to fix.

      --

      Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".

    9. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by HermanAB · · Score: 1

      You are totally missing the point. Free software is all about *service* and *support*. All you need to do to be drowning in high paying work up to your ying-yang, is to join a local Business Breakfast Club, Toastmasters, Rotary or whatever.

      The reason being that most small business owners do not know anything about computers and more importantly, do not want to be bothered with it at all and they are very quick to seize on the cost benefits of free software.

      The work is out there Sculley...

      --
      Oh well, what the hell...
    10. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by 73939133 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The trend that Open Source software seems to encorage is a gradual but irreversable shift away from propriatary and profiting methods. As stated in the strategy, this is good for the majority (users) and bad for the minority (vendors). The question is wether or not this method of software development is sustainable if it's popularity grew to a point where it was the majority method of development.

      No, that is not the question. The 40-70% profit margins achieved by vendors are clearly unsustainable--they can't exist in an efficient market. Open source software just happens to be the mechanism by which this market finally starts operating efficiently.

      How sustainable do you think Open Source in it's current form

      You are viewing open source software as some kind of alternative to proprietary development, but it is not. Rather, it is a stage in the evolution of a software market segment.

      Something like the UNIX kernel used to cost lots of money because it provided functionality that was not widely available. But it was natural for it eventually to become open source. Ditto for software like Wordperfect and Microsoft word: initially, people could charge a premium for it because few people offered it (let's not get into the fact that the technology was invented elsewhere), but (absent monopolistic barriers), something like OpenOffice now gives you the same functionality for free.

      You can make a big profit on some innovative piece of software for a few years, but then it gets commoditized and your price will go down from competition. Software is different from other goods there because it really has no physical component; generic drugs, electronics, etc., still have a non-zero cost even if there is no intellectual property. That's why it is ultimately open source programmers, not no-name manufacturers, that are driving software prices down, and in fact are driving them to how much it costs to make another unit of product: zero.

      In short, open source software is sustainable--it's pretty much inevitable in an efficient market. The only thing that can kill it is government interference in the market or monopolistic practices.

    11. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Delphiki · · Score: 1

      This directly contradicts just about every piece of evangelizing about OSS that I've ever heard - that it is more innovative. What you're basically saying, as far as I can tell, is that OSS is inherently lacking in innovation, rather OSS can just copy technology that has already been made and successfully marketed in closed source for a few years?

      --

      Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".

    12. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't disagree with you. Chances are that this type of development will shrink as open source software replaces proprietary software. It will shrink, but it won't die away. Companies that make their living off of selling systems (IBM) or hardware (Intel) will continue to fund open-source develeopment.

    13. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
      According to European and US economic data, a minority of software jobs are connected with retail software. Most software is not written to be sold. Instead, software is a cost-center within a company that does something else for its profit-center. Internal software is often a non-differentiating (doesn't make your company different from the competition) but necessary. This is all perfect for Open Source collaboration.

      So, to the question "will Open Source kill my job?", the answer is generally "no". India will kill your job (well, those of you who are not in India). And I don't know what you should do about that.

      Bruce

    14. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by SashaM · · Score: 1

      Some would say that it would be great. Everything would be free, innovation would happen at a rapid rate, but what about compensation for the developers. Software written under a GLP type licience, does not leave room for profits from the actual software. Ad-hoc services can only go so far to support an entire development effort. Who pays the developers for thier hard work?

      I think it will reach some sort of equilibrium between Open and Proprietary software. Commodity software (Operating Systems, browers, mailers, editors, office suits etc.) will be Open/Free, sustained by services and/or hardware vendors (see IBM). Specialized software for very specific purposes/niches will be proprietary since without high margins, developing that kind of software doesn't make sense. An interesting side effect of widespread adoption of open source software might be that clients will expect/demand to be able to look at the source of and to modify the software they're paying for, even if it's technically proprietary (that is, they can't resell it or give it away - only use it within the company). I think better times are coming :-)

    15. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by __past__ · · Score: 1
      But right now, there are already people doing service and support. There are also people developing shrinkwrap software. The only way that the second group could be absorbed by the first would be if all software would really, really suck, so that people need lots of support ;-)

      If more work will be done without direct compensation, less people will receive direct compensation for their work. It really is that simple.

    16. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Insightful
      You are assuming that most software jobs are related to retail software. The fact is that most software is not written to make money, it's written to achieve some internal purpose for a company. These companies could participate in Open Source collaborations and get more and better software for their programmer dollar. Their need for software will never disappear.

      Bruce

    17. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by klk206 · · Score: 1

      The reason being that most small business owners do not know anything about computers and more importantly, do not want to be bothered with it at all and they are very quick to seize on the cost benefits of free software.

      Small businesses that do not want to be bothered with it all just buy shrink-wrapped software from Microsoft and alike.

      "Truths of Life", Truth No 465,478,981,121,324,478.

    18. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Most GPL developers these days are paid.

      There is nothing wrong with India if you live there. But some people are going to be concerned if jobs are moving out of wherever those people are.

      In this particular case I think it is the US own fault because we haven't maintained a strong educational tradition among our own people, our primary schools are underfunded and substandard, and we don't do a good job at keeping our minorities in school, and interested in school.

      But I digress...

      Bruce

    19. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by krisbrowne42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It goes both ways. Some open souce software innovates. Some copies. And some copies an idea and expands it in innovative ways (OpenOffice did XML-based files before M$ started following with Office 2k3.)

    20. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by autechre · · Score: 1

      I would think that in-house programming projects would be less likely to be shipped out to India than retail software. It's a great benefit to have in-house developers physically present, as they need to be able to work with users to assess needs, address problems, train users, etc.

      --
      WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
    21. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by AshtangiMan · · Score: 1

      A bit harsh on the India assessment. I find your comments to be quite intelligent and reasoned, so I figure this isn't a troll, but a point of view. If you have ever been to India you quickly realize that there is so much poverty and death due to poverty there that it can be overwhelming to us privledged westerners. Good for them for getting some jobs.

      I think there is another point of view, and that is when India starts to emerge economically so that they are producing as a country, we will start to benefit and get jobs through them. It always amazes me to see a community that rallies around the ideology of Free and Open Software, completely change their tune and become just as staunchly conservative as the biggest fear mongering FUD dispenser the USA has created.

      We (as a community) need to make sure India gets full support of the Free and Open community, so that they will start to feed into that rather than into the corporate conglomerate that exists. To demonize India is, IMHO, a grave mistake.
      Paul

    22. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      This directly contradicts just about every piece of evangelizing about OSS that I've ever heard - that it is more innovative.

      There are two classes of OSS.

      One class is things like GNU C, Linux, Perl, gawk, OpenOffice, Apache, etc. They don't innovate--they are reimplementations of well-understood technologies. Individuals and companies spend time and money on them for economic reasons: sharing the development costs helps them lower costs.

      Another class is things like X11, Mosix, ghc, Festival, etc. Those are academic research projects that happen to get released as open source for academic reasons. Those don't fit into open source business models or open source advocacy--those projects are usually financed by the government or big research institutes. And their initial development is quite expensive.

      Of course, many commercial entities fail to innovate as well: neither Microsoft, Apple, or Sun has really innovated very much--for the most part, they have been commercializing results and ideas that have come out of academic communities. In fact, they often have taken academic open source software and turned it into commercial closed source software. Later, a new generation of open source developers may pick up the original academic open source software and beat it into shape, or they may just clone the commercial stuff.

      So, there is one class of open source software that innovates--the software coming out of academic research; that will survive as long as research grants are coming, and it isn't under discussion. The other class of open source software is OSS for commercial purposes, and there I'm arguing that it will survive because it is part of an efficient market; that latter class doesn't usually innovate, and it doesn't have to.

    23. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by ansible · · Score: 1

      Well, the GPL is intended to empower software users. It is not as empowering to software developers.

    24. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Empiric · · Score: 1

      I think it's important to look deeper into the viability of free (as in beer) software than to just look at the price tag of the software itself, in evaluating its profitability for developers.

      A decent example is this respect is IE; Microsoft charges nothing for the browser, but has the work been profitable for them? Absolutely.

      Another good example is Red Hat; they lose money on the boxed distro itself, and make money on support.

      There's no better way to be the uber-guru for a piece of popular software than to have written it. Doing Open Source software may change the nature of where the dollars come in, but that doesn't mean it can't be found.

      --
      ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
    25. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by pmz · · Score: 1

      In short, open source software is sustainable--it's pretty much inevitable in an efficient market.

      Score: 10, Understanding why Microsoft's days are numbered :)

      I think the only software products that will continue to hold out as proprietary software in the long term will be CAD/CAM, where the complexity from starting design to performing manufacturing is too complex and expensive to be commoditized, yet. One piece of evidence for this, is that the big CAD software vendors are still pushing features into their products at an impressive rate while dropping prices only modestly.

    26. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by vsprintf · · Score: 1

      Typically in house it applications are written in very high level languages such as Java, C#, asp, php, i.e. not C, C++, assembly..

      I don't suppose you'd care to supply some backup for your claim? First, C, C++, and Java are all 3GLs. Second, the last survey I read showed that C/C++ was still the most often used programming language for in-house applications. I know for sure that it is the most used language at the company I work for (and the last company I worked for, too).

    27. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by vsprintf · · Score: 1

      I would think that in-house programming projects would be less likely to be shipped out to India than retail software. It's a great benefit to have in-house developers physically present, as they need to be able to work with users to assess needs, address problems, train users, etc.

      What you say makes sense, but, unfortunately, it's not true. You need to spend some time at infoworld.com and the other trade-rag sites. When the CEO says the company is offshoring its IT, the stock price jumps and his/her options become profitable. You don't really believe that the company's real needs have anything to do with offshoring, do you? I think the last figures showed over 80% of American companies with IT departments were exploring offshoring "alternatives". Only a small percentage of those companies produce retail software.

    28. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by vsprintf · · Score: 1

      A bit harsh on the India assessment. . . . so I figure this isn't a troll, but a point of view. . . To demonize India is, IMHO, a grave mistake.

      He didn't say anything about India except that jobs are going there. If anyone is trolling, it's you. Companies like Bank of America (ha ha) admit that they are dumping Americans and sending their jobs to India. It's just the plain, unvarnished truth. When did we become so politically correct, that stating the obvious became *demonizing*?

    29. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      Well, I have nothing against tech-literate people in India getting jobs and poor people in India getting fed and housed. And hopefully both will happen.

      Living here in the US and making a living is the immediate concern of a good many people. I don't have much to offer them in the way of advice. That's all I was saying.

      Bruce

    30. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by pyrrho · · Score: 2, Interesting

      they can also start within companies for whome they are crucial. They don't HAVE to be open sourced in that case, do they?

      Don't buy the arrogance that one-size-fits-all early-to-market hackware is the best software engineering that can be done. I've done a lot of hard core original development --- clients for consumer oriented net services, etc. Of course, none of these has been open source, but they were not really "shrink" wrap either in the sense that even when the client software was put in boxes and wrapped in shrinkwrap, you still had to pay for the service.

      Sometimes software engineers forget they make tools, the value is really in the use the tools are put to... which of course is one reason for the terrible quality in software today.

      imnsho.

      --

      -pyrrho

    31. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 1

      Well, the GPL is intended to empower software users. It is not as empowering to software developers.

      It's very empowering to software developers. Gives me a lot more leverage to solve problems. It's great that I don't have to write my own JPEG library. It's just not empowering to the developers of a commerical-software product that does the same thing as a free-software product. Commoditization is a bitch. Commerical-software developers will need to actually start "innovating". Many won't know how. They can go into buggy-whip manufacturing.

    32. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by Malcontent · · Score: 1

      "I think there is another point of view, and that is when India starts to emerge economically so that they are producing as a country, we will start to benefit and get jobs through them."

      I think this is wildly optimistic. As the wages rise in india jobs will move to russia, turkey, nigeria or wherever it's possible to hire people for fifty cents less an hour.

      The standard of living in india will rise a bit then fall as corporations move to cheaper countries. It's a classic boom and bust cycle.

      --

      War is necrophilia.

    33. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by andrewski · · Score: 1

      but what about compensation for the developers

      It's simple - if they don't want to work on a project, they don't. Most open source developers aren't hoping for an eventual paycheck, and the ones who do are deluding themselves.

    34. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by screenrc · · Score: 1
      We are talking about developing for money, not
      just general developing for leisure. If it was
      for leisure, sure, it is beneficial to use
      the JPEG library and build your software on
      top of it. But when developing for money, NO!
      In that case it is best if thousants of developers
      had to keep re-implementing the JPEG library and
      while being paid for it.


      In my opinion, (and nobody on earth can accuse me of
      being anti Free Software) the issue is not
      black and white. It has been a complicated
      issue for me to weight the advantagest to the
      developer against the disadvantages. So far,
      the rise of Free Software might have slightly even
      helped the Free-Softwar developer, but the
      the whole Free buisiness is inherently rigged againsts us. It is
      a matter of time before we stop receiving the
      benefits of the upswing and plung into regular starvation.


      And if somebody rises to provide links to
      the (propaganda) articles of ESR, or of anyone else, please keep
      in mind that chances are that I read them already.
      In general, No! Free Software works against
      against the monetary benefits of developers in general --
      a little more against the quality developers,
      but slightly less for mediocre developes, although
      both will get screwed anyway.

    35. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by screenrc · · Score: 1
      No doubt, in a Free Software world programmers
      will still have jobs. That is not the point!


      The point is how many jobs, and whether it would
      pay more. I am affraid, programmers will
      have more better-paying jobs when the sourse is secret, so
      so more engineers will be needed when demand is higher.

    36. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by screenrc · · Score: 1
      So now we discover that even the wisest among us,
      might not to be wise at all.



      Bruce, on the 1st approximation, a paid developer does
      not particularly care whether the end product will be sold
      retail, used internally, or simply discarded after it is
      finished. So why do you bring such statistics into the picture?
      I was looking for statistics about whether closed source
      translates to more jobs, not whether the snow is white.



      I have argued in other threads that Free Software
      works against developers because all these company that
      develop for internal might build on top of programs
      and libraries available as Free Software. THAT is not
      good, developers will probably prefer that these
      programs and libraries be re-implements again and again.
      Will all these re-implementations translate to more jobs?
      This is the main issue.

    37. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by jkrise · · Score: 1

      I guess you're trying to back off, after making a very forceful and assertive (though redundant) remark. To quote you:

      1. So, to the question "will Open Source kill my job?", the answer is generally "no".

      followed by:

      2. India will kill your job (well, those of you who are not in India). And I don't know what you should do about that.

      Statement 2 adds nothing to your logical answer to the question on Open Source. Secondly, to assert that India will kill your job, coming from a person of your stature - well, I felt it was a bit disingeneous. It could've been avoided altogether.

      Now, to the parent post:
      1. Well, I have nothing against tech-literate people in India getting jobs and poor people in India getting fed and housed. And hopefully both will happen.

      It's nice to see that you send your good wishes to people of other nations. It might interest you to note that despite the (relatively) poor economic conditions in India, the people have devleoped and advanced tremendously over centuries, and make themselves counted amongst the top. Part of the reason for this, is the strong links to culture, good family values and systems (appreciated by Mr.Bush recently) and an independent outlook. Indians are also generally soft-spoken, mild-mannered and humble, values which are often mistaken as weaknesses; while actually being essential ingredients for long-term success (especially the Open Source Movement, Gandhi as an oft-quoted example here).

      and lastly,

      Living here in the US and making a living is the immediate concern of a good many people. I don't have much to offer them in the way of advice.

      Actually, this was not the question originally asked, but lemme add my perspective here. It is improper to assume that people of the US can make a living only through IT and the computing field. People were prosperous before computers in the US (many would say more so) and one wishes they'd be better off now and in the future.

      Unemployment figures in India are 20 times worse than in the US, and even employed people make only about $150 a month. Thankfully, this amount feeds a family of 4, provides 70 channels of television,incldg. the CNN and BBC, about 1,000 sq ft of housing and about $50 in savings! There is a feeling in India that too many Indians are employed in IT, which is a false economy.

      People all over the world can be happy and live honorable lives if they spend some time planning for their future, and some effort in acquiring the skills required. And yes, staying calm and focussed helps a lot, as any Indian would advise.

      -

      --
      If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
    38. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by LittleJoe · · Score: 1

      Yea - there's terrible poverty there, but the people getting the IT jobs are almost certainly in the upper part of their caste system because of the education it requires. Those weren't the people you saw starving, and just as many of those people are still starving.

      A lot of the difference in rates between here and India and China is the strong US dollar. Factor that in and you'll see that there isn't such a huge advantage they have over workers here in the US price-wise. The dollar has to soon de-value on the world market (it's already starting) and then we'll be on a more even playing field in that respect. There is historical precedence for much of this back in the early '90's.

      Given that, taking US IT jobs away to give to members of the upper class in India's caste system is not what I would neccessarily call a good thing for India and it certainly isn't good for folks here.

    39. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? by LittleJoe · · Score: 1

      I totally disagree that Internal software is non-differentiating. In the age of the Internet where many companies are still looking for ways to take advantage of it to gain a competitive advantage (instead of just playing catch-up), I don't know how you could make such a blanket statement. Not only that, but aggressive adopters of new technology to run their businesses are often the most successful in their respective markets. Take WalMart for example.

      Furthermore, that attitude almost guarantees that OSS will stay in the background because they will be chasing innovations brought about by others. Take some software that could be considered as somewhat non-differentiating - office suites. A lot of the push in the OSS world right now is to replace MS products with OSS, and they are doing so not by coming up with better designed software, but software that uses the same look-and-feel and file formats. Yes, the lower licensing cost is an advantage, but does it really do what software is supposed to do - make people more productive by giving them better access to relavent information? Taken in that light, the licensing cost and the availability of source code pales in comparison of the benefits of more proprietary, but easier to use and customize software. Good and easy to use customization capabilities (eg: scripting) built-into a product are far more valuable than the source code.

      In fact, that very line of thinking is what can make software even more differentiating, because a competitor is certainly out there trying to come up with a system that will help him be more competitive. In other words, if the CIO of company 'A' says "I'll use OSS because it is "good enough" and cheaper. IT really doesn't differentiate us." and then the CIO of company 'B' takes the opposite approach and comes up with some killer BI application for the sales people that allows them to win the deal 80% of the time, well you certainly have a differentiator there. Or let's say that a CIO funds an effort to automate workflow based on Office Suite scripting and this allows them to process twice the number of special customer requests per day, thereby making even the Office Suite (the one with the best scripting capabilities) a differentiator.

      What I'm doing right now is kind-of neat and I think may be a large part of the future of IT in this country. I'm (a 3rd party) part of a team automating business workflow processes for a large Fortune 500 company - but I'm not doing it for the IT dept., I'm doing it directly for the business group completely outside of IT influence (although we use IT infrastructure and work with IT in that regard). In this context, two huge issues of today have been kicked around:
      1) Why not use OSS? Because the same quality of tools aren't there for what we are doing and it is far cheaper for us to license the tools than to re-invent the wheel by modifying OSS tools.
      2) Why not offshore outsource? Because the size of the team would have to be increased to provide the business knowledge and business analyis and even then we couldn't guarantee the same software turn-around capabilities, thereby negating any price advantage and probably harming the quality and usefulness of the software. Also, the IT dept. does use offshore outsourcing... We recently had to integrate some of "our" software with "IT's" software, and they use foreign outsourcing. With the responsibiities (amount of customization) pretty much balanced, our estimate for the customization work was 40 hrs. and theirs was 240. And I suspect that their end of things will encounter more problems during the transition as well, because it involves more people of disparate organizations.

      I think the "non-differentiating" argument is a big mistake, not only for OSS but vendors out there trying to make the same old processes cheaper, when they should be looking to innovation to make the processes better at supporting core businesses. In other words, we are in a race to the bottom right now, which does not support the potential value of IT to an organization.

  8. OSF/1? by emil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Didn't The Open Group do an entire UNIX implementation (the only implementation of which was Digital OSF/1|UNIX|Tru64)?

    If so, how much of this could they open? Anything useful in it?

    1. Re:OSF/1? by homer_ca · · Score: 1

      They're a relic of a different time. Think Open Standards, not Open Source. The term Open Source only dates back to 1998.

  9. Draft strategy is excellent summary of Open Source by Thagg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bruce,

    I think that the opening section of your draft strategy is the best summary of the current state of the world of open-source/closed-source detente. It's exactly right that proprietary solutions are failing, and will fail with increasing rates, as open source proliferates and hardware increasingly becomes a commodity.

    I have two issues with the summary. The first is that it a strategy should be a long-term document, something that might be as valid five or ten years from now as it is today (this compares to a tactical position.) I don't think that the current stated strategy, while appropriate to this time of flux, will be appropriate then.

    Second, I just have a issue with the 'Sorry Vendors' line at the end of the first section -- everything else in the document is straightforward, concise, and emotion-free.

    thad

    --
    I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
  10. start with a name change by b17bmbr · · Score: 5, Funny
    how about,
    • "The now we're open group"
    • "More Open Group"
    • "We haven't been so Open in the past, but we've see the errors of our ways Group"
    • "No longer Not Open group"
    • "Bandwagon Group"
    • "The New and Improved Open Group"
    • "Really Open Group"
    • "This time we mean it Open Group"
    --
    My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
    1. Re:start with a name change by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      The word "Open" in "Open Group" really was meaningful and justified: using open APIs, APIs that anybody could implement, they created competition and already helped drive software prices down. Open source is just a further evolution of the software market, but you shouldn't underestimate the historical importance of open APIs.

    2. Re:start with a name change by greed · · Score: 2, Insightful
      APIs that anybody could implement

      Anybody that could afford the API document could implement. Years ago when I wanted to know what POSIX really said, I just couldn't afford a copy. And I couldn't justify it to get the company to spring for it either. So I got an O'Reilly book instead.

      Mind you, this is exactly why a famous "POSIX work-alike" system is able to do exactly that. Get a copy of the spec, start coding.

    3. Re:start with a name change by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      Years ago when I wanted to know what POSIX really said, I just couldn't afford a copy. And I couldn't justify it to get the company to spring for it either. So I got an O'Reilly book instead.

      That's fine: the author of the O'Reilly book looked at the POSIX spec and shared the results with you. The effect of POSIX was still to set an open standard that many people knew, understood, and were using, whether they had looked at the original standards documents or not.

  11. Re:Bruce's Spin by BoneFlower · · Score: 1

    Agreed, that should be in there.

    Don't flame him for neglect, this is a draft. Its bound to have many small and some large omissions by the nature of the document. Drafts are like a JPEG with 99% compression- looks crappy but gives a solid idea of what it is supposed to be.

  12. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  13. Open for business. by ratfynk · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There does need to be a business community developed among Open Source, and the very idea free not as in free beer. To go about bashing (even if you are a born again basher) those who seriously try to make a living with technology is just stupid.

    The best possible way to accomplish this is to set a model of co-operative enterprise that todays over-blown corporate despots cannot compete with. If you study nature co-operative systems invariably will out compete when up against closed single modeled systems. The fundamentals of this are already in the GPL which will go down in history as one of the great documents of our time. Along with other human social documents like the Magna Carta. RMS really is a visionary.

    --
    OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
    1. Re:Open for business. by ratfynk · · Score: 1

      Go and try to include the image of an RCMP in dress costume on a flick. Then tell me about the lack of importance of the GPL, it is a total replacement for those who want to protect their creation and contribution to knowledge and art in perpetuity. Better still go to some of the worlds great art museums and try to get authorisation to display some great art on line. Then you will get the picture of what is really happening!

      --
      OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
  14. Open Source Strategy by y77 · · Score: 1

    I can see the position to share it but irreversable shift away from propriatary and will be used in the greatest (and other open source OS that meets the developers get along just fine with Flash animations and PowerPoint slides.) The Open Source Strategy GNU is the majority method of their name to add one forces you care about your draft strategy is today (this compares to further his own career.) I trust you won't believe they're serious until they will fail meaning I won't believe they're serious until they will fail with the success of Motif, which remained proprietary software with others that did.

  15. Re:Viral by Clippy · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, no. Not Open Source = Viral, Open Source == Viral

    --


    My Karma is bad. May I take you out for a drink? It's on me...
  16. I just glad you didn't suggest ... by sbowles · · Score: 1

    "The Wide Open Group"

    I couldn't stand getting suckered into clicking on a link to the Goatse guy again.

    --
    You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
  17. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  18. Well, I guess... by Dog+and+Pony · · Score: 1

    ... "The Group formerly known as Open" doesn't really have the right associations for this move... ;-)

    Ah well, it didn't work for Prince either.

  19. Re:michael rushed this out due to timothy's failur by Uber+Banker · · Score: 1

    OMG! I don't usually look at book reviews but glad i did... that was mayhem! Not one serious comment.

    Hell, I mainly read comments for the good trolls anyway...

  20. Re:My attention span is about 5 minutes by Eric+Ass+Raymond · · Score: 1

    Couldn't they summarize it all using three bullet-points?

  21. Re:My attention span is about 5 minutes by Mr_Silver · · Score: 2, Informative
    what is PHB?

    Pointy Haired Boss - as found in Dilbert.

    Generally used to indicate the archetypal half-witted middle-management type.

    --
    Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
  22. Re:My attention span is about 5 minutes by tomstdenis · · Score: 1

    pointy-haired boss. From Dilbert.

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  23. Too complex/too little time? by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To me these issues are quite complex, and a draft like this need a follow up here at Slashdot soonish. Perhaps within a week to get a good brainstorming settle.

    Unfortunately all good remarks will come very late to this message, when people have had time to read it carefully. Then, there are already more than 500 comments, of less value and people don't really care any longer.

    My suggestion, in cases like these, would be to use the Slashdot forum as a forum with delay - as is done before an upcoming interview. A short notice in advance and a more indepth follow later. Let people have a few days to think it over and get a refreshener then. Perhaps overdoing it? Whatever.

    1. Re:Too complex/too little time? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Informative
      There's a mailing list associated with the draft.

      Thanks

      Bruce

  24. Re:Emacs people: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I think it is an old-timey way of denoting a Boolean check. I'm not an Emacs person nor a Lisp person but I heard that somewhere.

  25. Comments? Hah! by batkins · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, wait, he expects the Slashdot readers to read a draft and comment on it? Ha! Read the article - that's a good one, Bruce.

  26. The OpenGroup is the Cathedral and irrelevant by GGardner · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Open Group has been pretty much irrelevant for the last 5 years, not because they have been closed source, but because they are a Cathedral style closed source. Both Gnome and KDE have become far, far superior to Motif in a far shorter amount of time. What role is there to play for a centralized standards-blessing body in the world of the distributed, bazaar-style development?

    1. Re:The OpenGroup is the Cathedral and irrelevant by kflowers · · Score: 2, Informative
      I was on the Motif team at OSF (I can't bring myself to call it The Open Group). I agree OSF was the Cathedral. I bet you are also right that KDE and Gnome are better than Motif in a shorter amount of time. Be careful though about how you attribute this. And also be careful about the value of this distinction.

      Both Gnome and KDE were able to leverage the design work that went into Motif and the other widget sets that came before them. Motif was better than Athena for the same reason. Most of the hard work goes into the design.

      As for the value - When Motif was around and strong, it was clear to Unix developers what widget set and style to use. Working in industry now, I never hear about Gnome or KDE. They may be better, but they are irrelevant to my company.

    2. Re:The OpenGroup is the Cathedral and irrelevant by jonabbey · · Score: 1

      As for the value - When Motif was around and strong, it was clear to Unix developers what widget set and style to use.

      Yeah, Athena, because it was the only one affordable/approachable for a scratch-an-itch, non-commercial project. There were no free X projects of any significance around that had any kind of decent interface, except for those folks who invented their own widget sets, like the author of Xv, and the GIMP team.

      UNIX GUI development on X Windows was a ghetto for a very long time because the cost threshold for developing usable software for it was higher than could be sustained by most UNIX-loving hackers, and because the industry (and OSF) tried to do revenue capture on every developer who might have helped make UNIX systems competitive on the desktop in any way.

      If OSF had done 12 years ago what Trolltech is doing now with Qt, the world might have turned out a very different place.. and OSF would have wound up with more money in the bank, not less.

    3. Re:The OpenGroup is the Cathedral and irrelevant by GGardner · · Score: 1
      Both Gnome and KDE were able to leverage the design work that went into Motif and the other widget sets that came before them. Motif was better than Athena for the same reason. Most of the hard work goes into the design.

      Can you cite an example, as I don't think this is true. Motif sits atop of libXt, which turned out to be a huge mistake in retrospect. Neither KDE/QT nor Gnome use the X toolkit. QT was designed to work with a preprocessed C++, whereas Motif is pure C.

      The real reason that Motif is better than the Athena widgets is that a lot more people worked on Motif than Athena. An even greater amount of resources are put into both Gnome and KDE. A big part of this is the bazaar approach, which they both use.

    4. Re:The OpenGroup is the Cathedral and irrelevant by GGardner · · Score: 1
      Too many people seem to have either forgotten this or choose to ignore it. 'Cathederal style open source' is a common reality

      Exactly. But the OpenGroup's charter, to develop open standards, is inherently Cathedral-y. To take Motif as an example, just open sourcing it, and maintaining it in a Cathedral way isn't going to help any. What role could the OpenGroup have in a bazaar world?

    5. Re:The OpenGroup is the Cathedral and irrelevant by kflowers · · Score: 1

      My intention was not to imply code use, but only idea use.

  27. If Bruce says it doesn't exist, it probably doesn' by gokubi · · Score: 1

    When attorneys new to Open Source have access to another attorney who is experienced with Open Source licensing, especially the GPL, the process goes much more smoothly. One way we can help is to produce a reference for attorneys, or programs for attorneys at our meetings.

    Does anyone know of a reference quide or set of resources that might help IP attorneys start thinking about the GPL and open source?

    I'm working on building a cross-corporation (non profits) knowledge sharing network that will likely rely heavily on GPL like language. I expect the legal conversations to be less than fun. Any resources for convincing IP lawyers that there are other ways to do things would be much appreciated.

    --
    I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
  28. Ramblings about the draft.... by flynns · · Score: 1

    Sadly, I haven't been around the *NIX/'open source community' long enough to know about the Open Group's misdealings with Motif.

    However, this draft thingy looks pretty good; there are a couple things I'd look at in closer detail. For instance, observe the three distinctions between the various 'manifestations' of things "open source". Open Source Methods, for instance, bear little resemblence(sp?) to the concept of open source software licensing.

    Notice that there is no "Key Point" under the second 'open source manifestation', open source licensing. Odd, that.

    Note one of the recommended projects:

    "Establish an "OpenForge" portal for The Open Group, where all of the various Open Group projects that are available in Open Source will reside. This portal could also be expanded to host deserving Open Source projects on the outside."

    Sort of like a non-public, corporate-funded SourceForge? Hm.

    Keep in mind, of course, that this is a draft.
    ---

    "Jonas Miller. He's a nightcrawler. We all started out in the same lab, but Jonas went out and got himself some corporate sponsors. He's in it for the money, not the science!" -Twister

    --
    'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'
  29. Re:My attention span is about 5 minutes by The+Phantom+Buffalo · · Score: 2, Funny
    Piping Hot Bitches

    But I fail to see what attractive women have to do with this.

  30. Re:Emacs people: by krog · · Score: 1

    the -p stands for 'predicate'. it denotes something that returns true or false (T or NIL).

  31. Re:Bruce's Spin by FatAssBastard · · Score: 1

    Notice how Bruce neglects to point that out.

    It's a draft, sir. Please feel free to comment directly to Bruce, since that is what he requested.

    GPLed code however cannot be put into BSD code w/o the BSD code loosing its far more open nature.

    Depends on your definition of open, I guess. I prefer open code to remain open. If it can be taken closed and proprietary, then that makes it less open, IMO.

    --
    /.: why the hell am I here?
  32. Re:Viral by 73939133 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No. Open source licenses like BSD impose almost no restrictions on you and don't affect any of your own source code.

    Free software licenses like GPL might be described as "viral". But if the GPL is viral, many commercial software licenses are even more "viral".

    If you care about your IP, you have to be careful no matter what license you agree to, whether it is the GPL or a Microsoft EULA. And it certainly isn't hard to preserve your IP and still use GPL'ed software if you spend the same amount of effort on it as you do on a commercial license.

  33. mk (as in mkLinux) by crow · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, OSF (later The Open Group after they merged with X/Open) created OSF/1, which was originally going to be the Unix for all the member companies. I think that included DEC, HP, and IBM, but not Sun. In the end, only DEC moved away from using their own home-grown system, so it could be considered a failure based on the original goals.

    Later, The Open Group developed mk, based on the Mach 3 microkernel. While the Unix personality for the kernel was tainted with AT&T code, the microkernel was able to be released for free. The free mk was released with a Linux-based server, with the package known as mkLinux. Some (most?) of the funding for mk came from Apple, and I believe that it is the basis for OS X.

    There was a little-known project called mk++, which was a complete re-write of the Mach microkernel interfaces using C++. There was a plan to release a book on mk++ along with a CD containing mk++Linux. Unfortunately, a month or so before it was to be sent off, all development efforts were shut down, and The Open Group became a Unix branding organization.

    NOTE: I worked briefly at The Open Group, doing work on mk and mk++.

    1. Re:mk (as in mkLinux) by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      Preston,

      If you know of code that they could/should release, this would be a good time to agitate for that.

      Bruce

    2. Re:mk (as in mkLinux) by dukerobillard · · Score: 2, Informative
      I think that included DEC, HP, and IBM, but not Sun.

      Indeed...OSF was founded in response to Sun and AT&T getting together to work on System V Release 4. This scared the other UNIX vendors, and they wanted to make sure they had a UNIX to sell, too. The joke was the "OSF" stood for "Oppose Sun Forever."

      Fujitsu, Bull, and Siemens were the other major original members. There were lots of other companies that were sort of "associate" members.

    3. Re:mk (as in mkLinux) by Art+Tatum · · Score: 1
      Some (most?) of the funding for mk came from Apple, and I believe that it is the basis for OS X.

      Just as an FYI thing, the OS X kernel is actually derived from a marriage of FreeBSD and the NeXT codebase (which is another Mach-based kernel, with some differences from OSF/1). They killed the Objective-C DriverKit, added some new classes to OpenStep, updated some userland things, did general fiddling that didn't need to be done, and voila: Mac OS X.

    4. Re:mk (as in mkLinux) by flawed · · Score: 1

      Siemens a major original member of OSF?
      This is odd, considering that SINIX, Siemens' own UNIX, has always been rather plain System V.

    5. Re:mk (as in mkLinux) by dukerobillard · · Score: 1
      I went and checked, and I did mess-up; it wasn't Fujitsu, it was Hitachi. But it was Siemens. And Apollo wasn't part of HP at the beginning.

      My Googling came up with original member list as Apollo, DEC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Bull, Nixdorf, Philips, Siemens and Hitachi, but I don't remember Nixdorf or Philips from when I worked there briefly in the early 90s. They say the memory is the 2nd thing to go.

  34. Open Source = Free? by jj00 · · Score: 2


    Does Open Source always equal free? I know it is nice to have the source code, but I must admit I have never really looked at it for the apps I use. In some ways, I really could care less.

    But if I wanted a application that I knew needed some maintence, support, etc - I don't see any reason not to pay the money. Examples being mySQL, StarOffice, a Linux distro, etc.

    I think Open Source's biggest gain is that it has a "nice to know" feature - the source code. Suppose someone offered a product for $50 dollars, and it came with the source code. You may never need it, but it's nice to know that it is there.

    1. Re:Open Source = Free? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Informative

      There are proprietary forms of software with disclosed source code but without Open Source licensing. Microsoft calls this Shared Source, Sun calls it Community Source, I just call it "Disclosed Source-Code". It's important to note that Open Source relates to the rights attached to the code, not just the presence of source code.

  35. Open Source, a form of Social Darwinism? by Homology · · Score: 1
    The marketing mechanism of global Open Source community is best described as a massively parallel drunkards walk, filtered by a Darwinistic process. This looks more like research than conventionally driven development.

    Social darwinism, joined with a "market mechanism" mumbo-jumbo, to describe how Open Source, and research functions/works? I am, to put it mildly, astonished that Perens has written this!

    I was sort of hoping that social darwinism to describe social structure was a relic of the last century, and best left that way.

    Please ignore the drunkards walk part of the article, it's just a distraction from the real point.

    1. Re:Open Source, a form of Social Darwinism? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      Naaah, you've got to be a troll.

      Social Darwinism is the misapplication of a vulgarized form of Darwinian theory to race. Evolution is a fact in biological and scientific contexts, but its application to race is hogwash. And the same goes for Shockley's theories about race. None of this has anything to do with the selection that software goes through when people choose to aggregate a community around it, or choose not to.

      Bruce

    2. Re:Open Source, a form of Social Darwinism? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
      Well, there's this game on Slashdot where people try to bait some well-known person into responding to a troll. And this game is pursued intensively against yours truly. So, I've become somewhat sensitive to it.

      I would have treated him better if there was the slightest chance that anyone who had actually looked up what social Darwinism is could have sincerely linked it to my argument. But no, there is no chance of that.

      Bruce

    3. Re:Open Source, a form of Social Darwinism? by Homology · · Score: 1
      Well, there's this game on Slashdot where people try to bait some well-known person into responding to a troll. And this game is pursued intensively against yours truly. So, I've become somewhat sensitive to it.

      I don't do this.

    4. Re:Open Source, a form of Social Darwinism? by Homology · · Score: 1

      Social Darwinism today is a misapplication of Darwinian theory to human society. Restricting it's scope to race alone, is too narrow today.

      Darwinian evolution fits very well in biology, but the theory applied to other fields is suspect. And the theory has been used to justify all kinds of social injustice and abuse.

      Reducing the scientific field to some kind of Darwinian evolution or process, is just as much hogwash as applying it to race. The same goes for trying to describe the Open Source community the same way.

  36. Deutsche Democratic Republic by SimHacker · · Score: 1
    The Open Group announcing that they're interested in Open Source Software is like the Deutsche Democratic Republic announcing they're interested in becoming a democratic republic.

    DDR (Deutsche Democratic Republic) was the name of East Germany during the time it was a Communist, non-democratic non-republic, which was as ironic as the Open Group calling themselves an open group.

    To bring it into the present: It's as ironic as George Bush announcing he's finally going to pay attention to military intelligence, instead of fabricating his own.

    -Don

    --
    Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
    1. Re:Deutsche Democratic Republic by SimHacker · · Score: 1
      Why do you assume that I hate America and our freedom, because I question the integrity of our leaders? You're the unpatriotic one. It's people like you that enabled Hitler to come to power. Bugger off.

      -Don

      --
      Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
  37. Re:Thank God it is you Bruce by Jimithing+DMB · · Score: 1

    :-) That really needs to be modded up. So true.

  38. Re:Bruce's Spin by mark_lybarger · · Score: 1

    i would say that open code that must remain open is less open. if someone can't make a propriatary derivitive, that seems more closed than code that does allow people to make derivitives. the open code for a BSD ish license will always remain open. a BSD style license also doesn't close the option for a company to sell propriatary extensions.

  39. Interesting ramifications by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

    Interesting. It seems to me that the computer software industry is being commoditized into basic tools for jobs, and your write up seems to agree with this view.

    In other words, companies need X and Y tools, and they need someone to provide them. Anyone will do, and the labor of the installation of X and Y is mainly what is paid over the cost of X and Y. It seems similar to, say, the furniture industry, where you have a Lazy Boy sofa, which you can get from anyone. The difference between the sofa providers is that some will deliver for you, but they charge more for the sofa, while others do not deliver, and they charge less. Etc.

    --
    ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  40. Re:Draft strategy is excellent summary of Open Sou by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Informative
    Nice to hear from you, Thad.

    No, this is a get them going document. Once their membership gets more deeply into Open Source, they should be able to determine their own direction - although I will be around if they need help.

    Regarding the "Sorry vendors", there are a few more inflamatory lines in there to keep people awake. The one about having to change their name, and I pretty much blast strategic marketing in tech companies.

    Bruce

  41. Ask the experts by philipx · · Score: 1
    Helllooooo?!?!

    Well darling, when you have a large mass of experts in anything from Rocket Science to Loosing Weight, why not making good use of them?!

    Here's the link that could help you:
    Renown IANA* Expert Group

    --
    __________
    Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace!
  42. Re:Deutsche Democratic Republik by sulli · · Score: 1

    The irony about the DDR, of course, is that once they did become a democratic republic (in 1990) the Volkskammer promptly voted to dissolve the DDR and join the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD). Perhaps the same thing will happen to the Open Group?

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
  43. Re:Thank God it is you Bruce by sulli · · Score: 1

    Make sure you're referring to the real Bruce Perens

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
  44. Re:Thank God it is you Bruce by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1

    This really made my day. Thanks!

  45. Re:Draft strategy is excellent summary of Open Sou by JanneM · · Score: 1

    I too reacted specifically to the "hello vendors" thing - not becuse it is inflammatory (that's fine) but because the language in those sentences differ so markedly from the rest of the document. It feels like a late, beer-fueled addition two minutes before deadline. Maybe just clean it up stilistically?

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  46. I doubt it will ever be a complete shift. by autechre · · Score: 1

    There are certain applications that require far more than just great software skills to develop. One example is tax software; you need accountants to keep up with all of the federal, state, and local taxes, and those change every year.

    Also, you have software where the setup/service part of it counts almost as much as the code. The physical plant at my university (where I work) is currently looking at facilities management software, and the process of the company people coming in and assisting in the massive job of populating/configuring the software for each site is probably much of the value; the software itself needs to be properly designed, but won't be Earth-shattering.

    Finally, many companies sell hardware which needs its own special software, and while opening the code for inspection may "win points" and actually be beneficial, I think they'll still have their own staff of programmers.

    --
    WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
  47. Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? No. by atripp · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The key section is titled "Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members?", and from my reading of that
    section, the answer is "no".

    You say how a "nonrivalrous public good" is good
    for the general population, but generally bad for
    vendors. Well, the Open Group members are those
    vendors, they are not the "general population"
    or even "users".

    You talk about reduced vendor margins and how vendors
    must shift to services and make other "uncomfortable changes". But you never make any case
    that Open Source is good for vendors. In fact,
    you seem to be saying that it is *not* good for vendors.

    You talk about HP's 40% profit margin and say that
    those good times are over. That may be good for
    consumers and the industry overall, but it certainly isn't good for HP.

    If you really think that Open Source is good for
    HP, Sun, IBM, and the others, then you need to
    spell out the reasons much more clearly and
    concisely. That section right now sounds like you're
    saying "Open Source isn't as bad for us as you might think".

    Andy

    1. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? No. by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Informative
      Hi Andy,

      Did I really say it was HP's 40% profit margin?

      The Open Group is a mixed vendor-and-customer organization, and one that I can't see is dominated by the vendors.

      I think you need to remember that vendors exist to serve customers. If they don't do that as well as possible, they should fail and go out of business. That is what capitalism is about.

      Bruce

    2. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? No. by PhilTR · · Score: 1

      What most don't seem to grasp is the fact that Bruce's plan is but another variation of MicroSoft's "extend and embrace" (not encompass as I used in another post...bad philtr) Only in this senario the flow of benifit is from the Open Source community and to the Open Group and not visa versa.

      The Open Group will take what it can from Open Source, patent it and/or copyright it and then turn around bust the Open Source community in the chops and inform it that it can non longer do what it does because of patent violations and copyright infringment.

      Lets face it open source is better and cheaper software than the product produced by closed source, hands down.

      A good example is can be found at IBM. Perry Hartswick, IBM Manager of 300mm Systems, reports that, "we set up three machines communicating to three pieces of equipment, using the same tool communication application on Red Hat 7.2 Linux and Windows NT/2000. We used the same setup for all six applications, and then we began a planned 90 day test. The plan was to run the applications and look at errors, performance degradation, maintenance requirements, and any other issue that might pop up."

      He goes on to say, "The results were striking. The best run we had with the Windows machines was approximately six to seven days before we began to see noticeable performance degradation, and in about ten days we had a service interruption."

      He also says, "The Linux servers, on the other hand, ran without incident for the full 90 days. There were no performance degradations, interrupts or required maintenance. In fact, just for fun, we kept the Linux experiment running to see what would happen. We finally shut it off after 5 months, and it was still running like a clock."

      No wonder IBM is excited about Linux, Nuff said.

    3. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? No. by Pittspilot · · Score: 1

      Would you like to share your thinking on what you think the benefit to the members of The open Group in doing as you suggest? >Only in this senario the flow of benifit is >from the Open Source community and to the Open >Group and not visa versa. >The Open Group will take what it can from Open >Source, patent it and/or copyright it and then >turn around bust the Open Source community in >the chops and inform it that it can non longer >do what it does because of patent violations >and copyright infringment.

    4. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? No. by PhilTR · · Score: 1

      To set the backdrop, consider Signature Financial Corporation.(1998) I put a snippit blow which I cut-n-pasted from an article by Eric Vance entitled "Patenting Business Practices," written for PrarieLaw.com which will demonstrate the fesability.

      " Signature Financial Corporation, which provided financial custodial services, sought patent protection for a computer program that allowed the bank to perform currency conversions of various equity investments and provide a daily report that calculated the share price. The Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) issued the patent, which State Street Bank, a competing bank, subsequently challenged.

      The trial court invalidated the patent, as many had expected, but a federal appeals court eventually upheld it. The appellate court's recognition of the patent set off a stampede of entrepreneurs seeking to patent their proprietary business methods, including many computer programs that, like Signature Financial's, produced a "tangible output." "


      Now consider open source program development as a business practice/model. As the open source community is structured now it's not very amenable to for-profit business entities as it is nearly impossible to make money selling open source software but, it does it produce a "tangible output."

      Companies like RedHat use this tangible output to sell services by adding some window dressing and then forcing commercial users to purchase a "service agreement" with each copy they run. You could strip their deal out of the code but, they remind you that the program probably won't work if you do, so you can't really copy and distribute the product.

      Many programmers use their open source work as a 'business card' to leverage good employment situations. They'll never likely, however, ever become the next Bill Gates tyring to sell the software they develop.

      That being said however, open source 'makes very, very good software.' The methods, practices, approaches, techniques the community uses are legendary. I'll not go into how as Perrens and Ray and others shed sufficient light on the matter. But how do you get your arms around the monster and how do you make it proprietary? Extend and embrace.

      Enter Bruce and his buddies at Open Group. Create pseudo-OpenForge, mimic SourceForge, use free open source talant to make it work, hope SourceForge goes under and the community surrounding it fragments, and then once profitable call it a business practice and patent it. Open source talant no longer needed, thank you. Oh, and by the way your infringing on *my* patent and I want royalties and all the rest. So stop what you're dong.

      The rest will be a very sad tale unless the community politicises itself and is willing to flex its muscle.

    5. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? No. by Pittspilot · · Score: 1

      I understand what patenting is, (and in general would prefer to see it outlawed for software and processes). You don't address the question of what is in it for the members of the open group. The Open Group is a member organziation and it take paranoia of a high order to imagine user organizations (or even vendors) coming together to usurp open source in the way you imply.

    6. Re:Is Open Source Good for All of Our Members? No. by PhilTR · · Score: 1

      Well to begin with Open Source represents competition. Not only straight forward competition as with other proprietary products but, particularly with prducts that much can't be done with to get them out of the way. Open source programs can't be bought and burried as Symantic did with Tiny Software. It can't be bought and integrated, in part or in whole, with an existing proprietary software because of licensing issues. Even with BSD code there are irritating strings attached.

      Worst of all open source software is superior in many if not most cases. It's also taking up market share that previously was the domaine of the proprietary shop.

      But there is another aspect of open source development that will motivate closed shops to come together to develop open source techniques. That is the power of sheer numbers to develop and work the bugs out of a product, quickly and efficiently. To thoroughly vet the code in minimal time so as to get it out on the market as soon as possible and yet achieve max customer satisfaction.

      The fact that there are sometimes hundreds and even thousands of users *using* a program in real world environments give open source an unsurmountable edge over closed source development approaches. Not only are other developers using the program but also there are many more like me who do not participate in development but who use the programs providing feedback.

      The open source development environment can't even be matched by Microsoft but, a consortium like Open Group could if they can over come their secretive natures and their natural unwillingness to share resources. And, yes, their manic desire diferentiate where no difference exists.

      There are other reasons why Open Group will come toghther and 'deal' with the open source threat. Self preservation is the main one. Controlling the development environment and even putting open source off the stage would be most strategic. I have absolutely no doubt that that will be the eventual goal of Open Group.

      Then again there is SCO Group. They think they've worked out the legal approach to get their arms around open source first.

      May they live in interesting times.

  48. not even close by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Discriminating against bad code for demonstratably valid reasons is not equivalent to descriminating against people based on arbitrary social standards.

  49. Re:Bruce's Spin by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
    Notice how Bruce neglects to point that out.

    Actually, I did point it out. Or at least imply it. In this text:

    Establishment of a small set of licenses that are all compatible with each other, so that projects can be mixed.

    Identification of a range of licenses within this set, roughly from least to most restrictive, that implement a range of Open Source business plans.

    Standardization within the Open Group membership on this range of licenses, so that all Open Source work done by our members has compatible licensing, across all of our various companies.

    Compatibility with a broad range of existing Open Source projects, so that our members can take part in work under most or all of the existing Open Source projects while complying with our standards.

    The licenses I recommend, from similar work for HP's GELATO consortium, would be:

    A BSD-like license.

    Least restrictive, can be integrated into proprietary software with impunity.

    A LGPL-like license.

    Can be integrated into proprietary software, the Open Source component maintains its "free" status while not placing restrictions upon the proprietary elements.

    A GPL-like license.

    Embodies the share-and-share-alike quid-pro-quo of the GPL. Can be used to protect revenues from a parallel proprietary licensing track. Keeps your competition from running away with your product in a proprietary form that you can't match.

    These licenses need not be identical to the BSD, LGPL, and GPL, but should be compatible with them in their terms.

    Bruce

  50. *Yawn* by finkployd · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'll be impressed when they actually release the source code to DCE 1.22 under the LGPL like they have been saying they are going to do for about a year now. Until then it is just a well written paper by Bruce Perens. The Open Group so far has a horrible track record grasping the concept of "open"

    Finkployd

    1. Re:*Yawn* by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Informative
      It's not Open Group holding this up. It's one of the copyright holders, a big tech company.

      Bruce

    2. Re:*Yawn* by finkployd · · Score: 1

      *sigh* I suspected as much. Wouldn't be the same company that discontinued support for DCE/DFS and screwed over a bunch of Universities and businesses that rely on it now would it be?

      Finkployd

  51. Yet Another Damn Open License by RevMike · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I've given a lot of thought to the balance of proprietary and open code.

    I'd like to suggest a "mixed open" license. I envision this kind of interaction between open and proprietary code.

    • The origianl owner would release software (binary and source code) under the "mixed open" license.
    • Others would be free to run, modify, and redistribute the software. Distributors may not charge a fee for the software, except for costs associated with distribution. Binary distributors would be required to also offer for free or for distribution cost the source code. Distributors can sell support or value added services.
    • The original owner, or his proprietary licensees, can develop and sell proprietary versions of the code.
    • Proprietary distributors can integrate enhancements and big fixes made by the community royalty free, but must respect the following conditions in doing so...
    • Proprietary distributors must contribute further enhancements and bug fixes to community contributed code back to the community.
    • Proprietary distributors must provide integrated community code in source code form, such that the user can modify said code and relink it with proprietary code in object form. Users could not be prevented from linking in one program proprietary modules from multiple sources.
    The goal here is to have the maximum number of developers, both open and proprietary, developing and enhancing the same codebase. Once a piece of code is open, it must remain open, but open code can be mixed with proprietary code.

    Imagine that AT&T/USL had open-sourced SVR4 under this model many years ago.

    First, it would have preempted the development of BSD and Linux, since the goals of those development communities could have been met within the framework of the AT&T code.

    Second, hardware vendors could produce versions customized to their hardware by licensing SVR4 directly from USL. In attempting to maximize ROI, they are likely to keep in lock step with the community version except for those drivers needed for their specific hardware. They would not have to fear loss of the trade secrets in their hardware or drivers.

    In the long term, there would be one common open code base, available free, designed to work with generic or common hardware. There would then be small subsets of code, perhaps available for a price, designed to take advantage of specific hardware or do very customized tasks.

    So Intel would license a SVR4 distribution that was 99% open, but has a few custom modules designed to take advantage of special features in their Dual-XEON configuration. They would sell or more likely offer it free to their hardware customers. Meanwhile NVidia sells a distirbution customized for their video cards. The end user takes some modules from each and links them with his own customized kernel.

    1. Re:Yet Another Damn Open License by ajs318 · · Score: 1

      But isn't that pretty much what the GPL says? It doesn't preclude parallel releases under an alternative licence. Look at MySQL, for example. It is available either under the GPL, or on a proprietary licence. As successive versions of Ghostscript are released on proprietary licence, the old version gets GPL'ed.

      I'd actually be all for closed source software being illegal, simple as that. You write code and you let everybody use and modify it, or you keep it to yourself and nobody uses it {though maybe I'd make a concession that you can install the software on a server machine under your control and allow others to make use of it remotely by means of client software on their machines}. No need for lawyers, either - everyone can understand what no means. So what if it puts people out of business? The abolition of slavery put people out of business, and I defy anyone to tell me that was a bad thing. The abolition of closed source software could well be the next socio-technological revolution. Wake up, people! If they won't let you look at the source code, then what the f**k are they trying to hide from you?

      --
      Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
  52. Re:Viral by wo1verin3 · · Score: 1

    >> That sounds eerily familiar like how junkies
    >> and drug addicts think. They want to "share"
    >> their love with someone else.

    If your mentality is one which leads you to compare open source vs drugs, then you're really not worth our time.

  53. To challenge Bruce's "engineering over marketing" by Ilan+Volow · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The reason why Open Source user interfaces are so bad is because the entire Open Source movement is engineer-centric, and most engineers (especially Open Source ones) are incredibly clueless when it comes to understanding and being empathic with the non-technical users who are using their software.

    For years people in the HCI field been screaming at open source engineers to design the UI before the code is written, because there are things that pop up in the UI design process that have lower-level ramifications that engineers don't usually consider when they go the code-first approach. If these issues aren't taken care of immediately and much code is written, the engineers will be loathe to change something just because it makes the software more usable, and the result is that you've got usability problems that take years to fix (if they ever are).

    The response we typically get when we tell the engineers they need to come up with the user interaction before major code is written: "You obviously don't understand the Open Source method".

    While I am all for OSS, I fail to see how giving engineers even more power will make the situation any better.

    --
    Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
  54. Re:No, it depends if you can read or not. by FatAssBastard · · Score: 1

    If you will go back and read my post, you'll notice that nowhere did I use the word "freedom", I said "open". While an argument can certainly be made that they are related, they are definitely not synonymous.

    And it's interesting that you seem to feel that I "hate" one particular company or another. How did you come by this assumption?

    Finally, if someone takes some open BSD code and takes it closed/proprietary, that code is no longer open. Yes, the original code is still open, but now we have multiple versions, not all of which have their source code available. GPL'd code will always be open, no matter what changes are made to it. This makes it more 'open', IMO.

    --
    /.: why the hell am I here?
  55. Re:Bruce's Spin by Xtifr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    i would say that open code that must remain open is less open.

    I would say that people who can't enslave and torture their neighbors are less free than people who can. :)

    Freedom is inherently paradoxical -- if you have the freedom to lose your freedom, then you're potentially not free (once you lose your freedom), but if you don't have the freedom to lose your freedom, then that's clearly a freedom you don't have, so you're not absolutely free. Or to put it another way, you can't have both the freedom to swing your fist wherever you like and the freedom to have an unbroken nose. (Unless you're the only one with freedom -- but we usually call that situation "dictatorship").

    Anyway, I'm not going to get into the GPL is/isn't "truly" free. I'm just pointing out that absolute freedom is a myth, so any argument that relies on ideals of absolute freedom is flawed. Beyond a certain point (and I think the GPL is well within those bounds), I think it's all good, and I really don't care. I'm able to sympathize with both the BSDL advocates and the GPL advocates without necessarily agreeing with either side. And that's because I have the freedom to form my own opinions, or even reserve judgement, if I want. :)

  56. Extend and encompass by PhilTR · · Score: 1

    My first impression of Bruce's draft is that it's merely another version of MicroSoft's strategy of extend and encompass.

    Bruce seems to fail to understand that Open Group needs Open Source more than Open Source needes Open Group.

    I never realized Bruce was so arrogant.

  57. Re:Draft strategy is excellent summary of Open Sou by Pittspilot · · Score: 1

    ... and there was me thinking that it was me you were referring to Bruce :-))

  58. contrarianism within by pyrrho · · Score: 1

    actually, I'd say there are fewER companies trying to turn it into shrinkwrap software because in the past it was public domain code and now it tends to be GPL. It only seemed fewer in the past because you wouldn't find out about the use.

    --

    -pyrrho

  59. your assumption by pyrrho · · Score: 1

    and you are evidently under the assumption that all programmers and software engineers work for shrink wrap software companies.

    the GPL shifts power back from shrink wrap one-size-fits-all programmers to custom in house developers who can profitably collaborate and provide better custom solutions in their own work.

    payback's a bitch.

    --

    -pyrrho

    1. Re:your assumption by screenrc · · Score: 1
      Sure, Free Software did open the market for
      customization. But still, there is more
      money for developers if they closed the
      source to the customization business so that
      others will be forced to keep re-implementing
      the same code over, and over again. More jobs,
      means more money. You can get more jobs when
      the source is closed so others will be forced
      to buy the product from you for expensive dollars,
      or hire others to re-implement it.


      Let there be no doubt that Free Software benefits
      society, the problem is that we the programers
      will be sacrifical lamps.

    2. Re:your assumption by Magic+Thread · · Score: 1
      Wan't to make a GPL program from a BSD program? sure, easy. Want to make non-gpl program from a gpl program? I haven't seen it done.
      Want to make a closed-source program from a BSD program? Sure, easy. Want to make a BSD program from a closed-source program? You won't be seeing it done.

      To suggest that it's okay for non-free programs to stay non-free but not okay for free programs to stay free shows that you are against free software in general. Stop looking at open-source programs as raw material to be refined into proprietary software, and start looking at them as finished products in their own right. Then you will see why the GPL is a good thing.
  60. The Question by pyrrho · · Score: 1

    Is Bruce Perens a Troll... is Bruce Perens a Troll, a deep and complex question, certainly.

    If he is, he's a good Troll, and he lives on top of the bridge, and fishes for sharks.

    --

    -pyrrho

  61. Re:Bruce's Spin by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
    Hi Brett,

    I would happily apply the BSD license to my work when someone else is paying me to do so. I don't expect that I'd do so very often otherwise, because my goal in creating Open Source on my own time is not to facilitate proprietary software. Anyone who wants to make proprietary use of code I make on my own time is welcome to contact me for a commercial license.

    This seems fair and logical to me.

    It's never been clear to me why some BSD proponents feel that any license except the GPL is OK to be applied to derived works of BSD code, when most proprietary licenses would fit your definition of "open" more poorly than the GPL.

    In the case of the strategy I have recommended to the Open Group, there is a range of licenses that fits multiple business purposes. I acklowledged in the discussion that BSD was an appropriate license for some purposes, and went on to imply that LGPL and GPL fit other business purposes better than BSD does. If you want to restrain your competition from making proprietary use of your code, GPL is a good license for that. And there's the LGPL in between.

    I don't see that this is not supporting Open Source in all of its forms.

    Bruce

  62. OSDL... by bryam · · Score: 1

    That's mean that the OpenGroup could be join to Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) like sponsor?

  63. OpenForge?? by bryam · · Score: 1

    "Establish an "OpenForge" portal for The Open Group, where all of the various Open Group projects that are available in Open Source will reside. This portal could also be expanded to host deserving Open Source projects on the outside.

    One problem that the Open Source community is presently facing is that the owner of SourceForge is having financial problems, and there's no guarantee that whoever eventually purchases it will be viewed well by the community. Thus, an organization-hosted portal similar to SourceForge would be appreciated."

    Time to create one SF.net Foundation or pass the SF control to OSDL?

  64. Ok, this is off topic by Eminor · · Score: 1

    Ya this is off topic, but i think this is important to Open Source.

    How does one go about getting Tux models?

    I have started a project on sourceforge called Sound Orgy. I am rendering the logo in povray. I was wonder if there were any povray models of tux out there that I could use in my logo? (while my project is cross-platform, i'd like to promote the fact that it is developed for Linux).

  65. Open Source coinage by wiredlogic · · Score: 1

    You are soooo wrong.

    You must be one of ESRs lackeys. He has credited himself with coining the term "open source" for a while now. It's in his jargon file.

    A simple search of Google groups shows otherwise. There are 85 occurrences of "'open source' software" from 1981 to 1995. Most of these are relevent hits. Well in advance of when ESR claims to have coined the term.

    There are another 648 hits from between 1995 and Feb. 28, 1998. This is just before Mozilla was released.

    From Mar. 1, 1998 to Dec. 31, 1998 there are 9,670 hits. Clearly Mozilla had an impact on spreading the phrase but the evidence shows that ESR didn't start it as he claims.

    --
    I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
    1. Re:Open Source coinage by homer_ca · · Score: 1

      Well, you'd think that with the egos involved someone else would have complained by now. Still, the rest is true. The "Open" in Open Group is for open standards. While not as open as Open Source, it's still better than the alternative of a vendor-proprietary mess.

  66. POSIX by KidSock · · Score: 1

    You know it was Richard Stallman that suggested the term "POSIX" which is now the official name of some important Open Group standards.

  67. Re:To challenge Bruce's "engineering over marketin by dvdeug · · Score: 1

    The reason why Open Source user interfaces are so bad

    Open Source user interfaces usually trade ease of use for power. Many of them aren't bad, they're merely built to different design specifications.

    One of my few projects is a program which has a mpg123-like UI, but handles a wide variety of music files. I'm sure if UI engineers designed it, they would come up with something like WinAMP or Windows Media Player; but mine works from a batch file or console, and works easier for me.

    For years people in the HCI field been screaming at open source engineers to design the UI before the code is written

    What ever happened to talking to people, or actually doing some work yourself? Screaming at people, especially volunteers, is not the best solution.

  68. Re:Deutsche Democratic Republik by SimHacker · · Score: 1

    As long as they stop promoting Motif, I will be happy. Print it out and burn it.

    --
    Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
  69. My suggestion for TOG's open strategy by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 1

    Here's my simple, humble suggestion:

    The Open Group should waive the fees for Free operating system with regard to Unix branding.

    That way, operating systems such as Linux, GNU/Linux, and assortedBSD can truly, officially, be called Unix in name as well as in spirit.

    --
    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
  70. I'll believe it when I see it, Bruce. by pb · · Score: 1

    I think The Open Group should choose a name that reflects their long history with the Unix (not to be confused with UNIX--the registered trademark of The Open Group and you'd be stupid to use it in a sentence without their permission) community. For example:

    "The Please-Pay-Us-Money-To-Call-That-UNIX Group"
    "The We'll-Sue-Your-Sorry-Open-Source-Ass Group"
    "The Everything-Is-Open-Except-For-Our-Trademarks Group"
    "The Please-Buy-Closed-Source-Motif Group"
    "The Never-Has-Been-Never-Will-Be Open Group"

    Failing that, perhaps a more modern name that reflects their traditional outlook would be more appropriate:

    "The goatse.cx Group"
    "The Open-As-In-Gaping-Asshole Group"

    * all copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents, or other IP including but not limited to
    Motif, UNIX, and The Open Group are probably property of The Open Group; any others mentioned are property of their respective owners.

    --
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
  71. Re:Bruce's Spin by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
    The whole idea of free software is to help your neighbour. BSL does that.

    So, I guess your problem is that I would rather spend my own time to help only the neighbors who want to help me in a similar way.

    Bruce

  72. Re:GPL and BSDL are NOT compatible by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1
    That's not how I read the BSD license. As far as I can tell, there is essentially total freedom to relicense, with GPL or proprietary or any license, with only the requirement for attribution in the actual source code. The source code and its attribution need not be shown to anyone by the relicensor (at least without a court order). You might not like this, but as far as I can tell BSD licensing was explicitly designed to allow it.

    Sorry, I really like the "share and share alike" aspect of the GPL and will continue to promote it.

    Thanks

    Bruce

  73. Re:Berkeley UNIX by Pittspilot · · Score: 1

    How stringent do you think they are? The UNIX certification program was put in place (in 1994, and it remains so to this day) with a 50% discount for the UNIX fees for low cost ($1500 I seem to recall) software shipped without hardware. The reality we see today WAS forseen when the program was put together. Now you can argue whetehr the absolute numbers are to your liking :-))

  74. sacraficial lands by pyrrho · · Score: 1

    the sort of price support you imply leading to more jobs does not lead to more jobs. It leads to more IT going abroad. It leads to underselling. Solved problems evolve toward commodity status because they have to become comodities to become ubiquitous infrastructure.

    Programs that are really unique and ahead of their time will remain commercial, can be shrink wrapped it there is a large enough market. However, something like an OS is a solved problem. Basic word processing: solved. To think you can stretch out the number of jobs by fighting this trend is misquided imnsho because there is so much more interesting work to be done.

    But also, in general, I would want to see some sort of quantitative argument that this results in lost jobs. It may lead to less stock-option millionaires, and that was nice, but which phenomenon leads to less IT jobs is a matter of debate.

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    -pyrrho

  75. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion