Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Spreads Beyond Software
B'Trey writes "Britain's Prospect Magazine is running an article entitled 'The Microsoft Killers.' The article covers the success of Open Source software in particular but also looks at how the methods and practices of Open Source are moving outside the software environment."
..I think the idea is extremely novel! however, i don't think it will work simply because of the measurability of "good things". ie. in software we can always pick, and recommend, Mozilla over IE., not only cos it is open source, but because it is better security wise. however how do you tell someone that "OpenCoke" is better than Coca-cola, can this be done? if it tasted as good and didn't rot your teeth i guess so.. heh, but i dont think prices can be cut - and freeness is one of the big drawing factors to OS/GPL products... what do you think?
by the way, i'm allergic to flames!
Tim
tim
A little premature for such a title maybe. F/OSS needs to concentrate on the details.. God is in the details, and this is where MIcrosoft excels. Sure, they have their shortcoming, but they Human Interface designs are uniform at least..
Been sitting on lame puns for too long?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Open Source human being!
If you want to add something, just clone said person and away you go, just make sure you have a copy of Gray's Anatomy attached to the subject.
Just make sure my name is in the comments somewhere...
whoever said there's no such thing as a free meal must be kicking themselves now
or at least, if not a meal, a free beer
The GPL is based on using copyright as a shield against those who would use copyright as a weapon. The underlying situation is one that is often reflected in the physical world and often noted in literature: the knife cuts both ways.
The Creative Commons licenses could eventually have an even greater impact on the world than the GPL although the latter's impacts have only begun to be felt.
A Good example is the movement against EU software patents. A similar style is used as in huge open source development projects. Different sites such as FFII.org, the AEL Wiki, Vrijschrift, Eurolinux Petition are used. There are many core activists that contribute to email communication on different lists, monitor the net, take part in events, speakers for events and many supportes 8around 50 000 registered of FFII or 300 000 Eurolinux signatures). Registered supporters can be contacted in cases of urgent action. There is no strict organisation structure, contributions count and create a personal karma. Participants in the debate act as individuals, not as objects of an organisational ideology. If you don't like something, contribute. If you are not pleased with the organisation or action of FFII join another group in the debate and contribute in a different style.
Participants were able to convince the EU parliament by massive protests. FFII and the other groups of the network created a kind of watchgroup for IP policy issues. They were able to put light in dark backyard where patent attorneys and servants of the DoJ decide what may be beneficial for the information society.
I think in europe we were able to show: "Hacking politics works."
If you haven't tried out Open Source software yet (shame on you, why are you reading slashdot then) then its time to try some.
Start off by trying an open source web browser, such as firefox. I have personally installed it on several machines, and it works wonders.
Then try some more software, Such as Gimp, OpenOffice, 7Zip.
If you liked that software, then you may Like to try e Linux, the Open Source Operating System! It even works on Macs too! See how easy to use and reliable open source is. Try Mandrake or Fedora as they are both good versions of Linux.
found here
http://www.opensourcejudaism.com/
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I would suspect that Open Source is limited to particular categories of work. Labor intensive, but not capital intensive, activities are ideal for open source. With capital intensive endevours, the people that own the money want to own the output. Fortunatly, the captial required for many activities is dropping. With the low cost and ubiquity of technlogy, many formly expensive activities can be done by amateurs on an open source basis (software, indie films, encyclopedias/wikis, helpdesk/help forums, etc.).
For bigger open source projects, the problem is monetization -- converting the fruits of open source into money that goes to pay the burgeoning and unavoidable expenses of a large project. The free-software, expensive service model (RedHat) or free software, expensive hardware & service model (IBM) seems popular.
But there are limits. I doubt we will ever see open source retail stores, hardware factories, or apartment buildings (except on an unusual donation basis). Probably the only capital-intensive forms of "open source" is university science -- the scientists provide the labor, release there findngs to the public, and the government provides the money for the equipment (even here, university IP people try to own the fruits of the academic labors).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Please don't take this as flaimbait, but ... this article tells me nothing new. Its a great one to pass on to my boss .. but come on.One more summary of the open source movement article and i'll puke.
I mean no disrespect to the author. it was written very well. There is no News for Nerds here. I don't mean to be negative. I enjoy the community and most of the articles are really good. But I just can't take another ... history of open source software/anti microsoft article for the world to cut its teeth on.
I'm sorry to sound critical but I wonder how many others here feel the same way.
"They say travel broadens the mind, so I went over the falls in a barrel." -Thomas Dolby
One of the best technology magazines on the web, Slashdot, has only a few members of staff who post short articles and allow readers to comment and elaborate: most of the site content comes from readers.
Sic ! Now I think I wonder what those magazines of lesser quality are alike.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
[From Google's cached page]
Introduction:
Contained hereunder is a HOW-TO for brewing up kitchen-sink OpenCola. Amazingly enough, every soft-drink vendor we spoke to acted like the preparation of cola was some kind of deep, dark trade-seekrut(TM). With much reverse-engineering and creative shopping, the research kitchens at OpenCola have coopered together the following makefile for brewing up The Black Waters of Corporate Imperialism(TM) in the privacy of your own home.
The basis for the whole thing is the 7X, Top-Seekrut(TM) formula. Our sources tell us that 7X is the internal Coca-Cola codename for their syrup. You'll note that the 7X formula contains eight ingredients: still more evidence of the deviousness of the Soda Gnomes.
As it turns out, mixing up a batch of cola's pretty easy. Finding the ingredients is damned hard. Most of this file is about finding and handling ingredients so as to produce a tasty bevvy without blowing up your kitchen, melting your flesh off your bones, or poisoning yourself. As with all undertakings of great moment, read and understand the instructions before attempting to commit cola on your own. Pay special attention to the "Warnings" section.
This recipe is licensed under the GNU General Public license. It is "Open Source" Cola, or, if you prefer, "Free" Cola. That means you're free to use this recipe to make your own cola, or to make derivative colas. If you distribute derivative colas, you're expected to send email to the recipe's author, Amanda Foubister (amanda@opencola.com) with your updates. In the future, we expect to have a CVS server up to handle additions, bug-reports, etc.
The Formula
7X (Top SeekrutTM) flavoring formula:
3.50 ml orange oil
1.00 ml lemon oil
1.00 ml nutmeg oil
1.25 ml cassia oil
0.25 ml coriander oil
0.25 ml neroli oil
2.75 ml lime oil
0.25 ml lavender oil
10.0 g gum arabic
3.00 ml water
OpenCola syrup:
2.00 tsp. 7X formula
3.50 tsp. 75% phosphoric acid or citric acid
2.28 l water
2.36 kg plain granulated white table sugar
0.50 tsp. caffeine (optional)
30.0 ml caramel color
Preparation
7X Flavoring:
Mix oils together in a cup. Add gum arabic, mix with a spoon. Add water and mix well. I used my trusty Braun mixer for this step, mixing for 4-5 minutes. You can also transfer to a blender for this step. Can be kept in a sealed glass jar in the fridge or at room temperature.
Please note that this mixture will separate. The Gum Arabic is essential to this part of the recipe, as you are mixing oil and water.
Syrup:
In a one gallon container (I used the Rubbermaid Servin' Saver Dry Food Keeper, 1.3 US Gal/4.92 l), take 5 mls of the 7X formula, add the 75% phosphoric or citric acid. Add the water, then the sugar. While mixing, add the caffeine, if desired. Make sure the caffeine is completely dissolved. Then add the caramel color. Mix thoroughly.
Cola:
To finish drink, take one part syrup and add 5 parts carbonated water.
Scavenging and Handling Ingredients
7X flavor:
Measurement: I used a dropper purchased at a Shoppers Drug Mart (normally used to measure infant portions of medicine, I believe).
Oils: Oils can cause skin irritation. Wear latex food-prep or surgical gloves. If oils come in contact with skin, wash with soap and water.
I purchased all oils from health food stores and the herbalist store, Thuna's (see notes on gum arabic).
Everything could have come from the herbalist's. Try for 100 percent pure, undiluted oils. I used oils from the following companies:
CK Solutions, Ft. Wayne, IN 46825
Aura Cacia Oils, Weaverville, CA 96093
Aromaforce Essential Oils
Frontier Natural Flavors, www.frontiercoop.com
Karooch, Peterborough, ONT K9J 7Y8
When I purchased the oils, I specifically asked whether they were food grade or not.
Open Music anyone?
;)
My only concern is, is it free for the idea of freedom or because nobody would pay for it anyway?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"Oracle's dominance in databases is coming under attack from MySQL..."
Please. Oracle's supposed dominance in databases is under far more threat from Microsoft and IBM than it is from MySQL **at this point in time.** IBM earns more database revenue than Oracle, so it's not even fair to say that Oracle dominates.
Then thos Macintoshes I was administering back then in 1991 were a figment of my imagination.
Back then, as now, people with a clues where using Macs or OS/2 which were technically and from a usability point of view immensely superior to Windows.
In the UNIX side of things Sun was offering OpenView that was pretty good and X already existed.
MS was a success because they understood that software exelency is not all, but you can't make a living out of mediocrity forever, eventually people will realize that the emperoro has no clothes.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The guy just got married. From his website:
:)
"Until Feb 25th, I am going to be extremely busy with my wedding and honeymoon. I will be slow replying to non-wedding related emails during this time so please accept my apologies in advance. I expect to have a backlog of mail when I return so give me a few days to respond to these (probably by early March)."
Now, I hope his honeymoon was short, not his marriage. Perhaps they have an OpenMarriage though
Forget /. exists. Remove it form your bookmarks, never come back.
Why if you have the solution you pretend that it is up to others to do something about your likes and dislikes?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Stop buying hardware which is not supported properly on the system of your choice. That way you'll fix two things: 1. your hardware will work 100 %, 2. the manufacturers will start supporting non-Windows computers more, since they're losing money to a competitor perhaps.
The source code is free, but you'll notice that most distros now are charging people. Suse, Redhat, Lindows, and Xandros all have what amount to premium only distros and they aren't the cheapest things on the market. Linux may be free, but invariably there will always be costs involved. The interesting thing is that all of this software was written to be free, but all of these companies have no problem charging people for it. I guess the new business plan is convince everyone that open source is the way to go, get them to write your software for you, bundle it all up, give it away free for a few years, then switch over to charging people $80 for it. Note that I have nothing against linux at all, I just don't agree with what most of the major distros are doing these days.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
A good example of open-source spreading beyond software is the Linux Professional Institute. They take suggestions on what should be on their certification exams, questions, and they make available the detailed process of the examination.
thisnukes4u.net
As you recognized towards the end of your post, the small details are being addressed at many levels. Stay tuned for a Linux distribution near you.
In fact, your specific example has been dealt with by Mandrake and Suse for the past 2/3 years. Where have you been?
And how do they do it? Better than Windows, most times.
No driver CD necessary. If it's supported, plug in the camera and it shows up on your desktop. Click on it and get your pictures. Now that was easy, wasn't it.
I am not impervious to criticism and there are tons of things that need improvement, but they are coming. Anyone who has used Linux for the past five years cannot be blind to the huge improvements in ease-of-use and consistency that have been made.
Finally, the community aspect of Linux is not to be dismissed. When I set somebody up with Linux, I make sure that his/her every whim is satisfied so that the experience is more positive than it was with their prior OS.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
LALL!. the hardware worked fine in the end. It works perfectly.
You have things typically backwards. I have a computer and wish to try Linux. I try a good linux distro on it and there's some very frustrating parts to getting simple things done. You come along and say I should buy better supported hardware. As Joe Average, I say to you "Oh well, It works on windows" and boot back into windows, and continue getting work done.
THOSE are the little differences that make the difference between averageman considering an OS as a useful tool, and considering it a liability. Making excuses for the OS deficiencies by saying it's a hardware problem when another OS works just fine with it is passing the buck
communism in it's (purest?) best form.
Life is not for the lazy.
It is important to observe that OS is different from FS. I think that the main idea behind Open Cola relies in the Free Software, since this movement cares more about Freedom (inside the software environment and outisde of it too).
r eedom.html for more information.
Please check http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-f
Open marriage may have it's merits... if you're in to that sort of thing.
What is this about Nokie the article mentions? All Google gave me was a SDK and a seemingly long dead prototype set-top box... would it be this Embedded Linux Targets Telecom Infrastructure?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
And the site was just updated nearly two years ago...
I'm looking for some awesome ass Linux theme music and Magic Mushrooms just doesn't do it for me anymore.
As a gimic a software company did this with soda. They 'open sourced' the instructions to make the stuff. I think the company blew up in the dot com bust, but it was a cute idea.
The open source movement eschews proprietary controls and its software is usually produced not by firms, but by networks of volunteers who look after different pieces of an application."
Groklaw is an example of this exact method, even though it is not involved in software development. It is a legal site that encourages anyone to join in, the results are not produced by law firms, but by networks of volunteers who look after different pieces of the legal brief. It started as one woman's personal blog and then took off when the FOSS community saw the usefulness of having a subject matter expert in law commenting on cases that mattered to the community. So the community joined in and now it's a distributed project on the exact model of an Open Source programming project.
So these principles work for more than just programming. It's a useful model for any community project. The power of the community made manifest. We're stronger when we work together.
RTFA. It starts with this thing.
Shhhh! You don't want to dash the myth that is John Lennon. All the open source hippies still think that he rejected the bourgeois life.
You really dont want to click the link to n00bz.net, its to an image file and its truly terrible Goatse, all is forgiven. Why does nobody check links for this before modding up?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Well, it almost is.
ZeD
What Link? I dont see any n00bz.net links
Forget Soviet Union and all the evil that lived there. Learn about the original ideas of communism.
Read Stanislaw Lem's "Magellan Cloud" (or something like this, I don't know how they translated the title) - it depicts a world in which people were responsible enough for communism to succeed - a world in which one likes to live. No propaganda, slogans, terror, stiff norms. Just "open source" in all domains of life.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I doubt we will ever see open source retail stores, hardware factories, or apartment buildings
Actually it would be very hard to find "closed source" varients of the same. Imagine that if you shop at WallMart you couln't even look at Target. Imagine you couldn't check out competing apartments to the one you live in.
As for capital intensive, seems like bridges, dams, tunnels, skyscrapers are all pretty much open source.
Basically, open source benefits the industry at maybe a bit of cost to the individual corporation whereas closed source benefits the individual corporation at the expense of the industry. If "reinventing the wheel" is perceived as a loss, closed source is a good way to ensure the perpetuity of that loss.
BTW, open source does not mean free (as in beer) or cheap. Methinks open source may actually wind up more expensive than closed because it is sufficiently more effective that things will be done using open source that would never be attempted with closed source.
There was a similar, and very good, article in Wired last November, Open Source Everywhere Software is just the beginning ... open source is doing for mass innovation what the assembly line did for mass production. Get ready for the era when collaboration replaces the corporation.
Switching to Linux can be an adventure!
If you believe that open-source is causing unemployment due to a lack of a marketable product, then you are completely wrong. Open-source will, and is creating employment as programmers are being hired by small companies to tailor their software to their needs. It's just not as pervalent, as open-source is only just breaking into the SME market.
Small business can pay as well as big business, but you have to wear at least one other hat, and you don't get stock options.
Okay first of all - yes there will always be cost associated. Cost of the machine, cost of electricity, cost of your internet connection possibly and so on.
The Free as in speech bit is the important bit. Anyone with access to a machine and internet connection can download debian etc, modify any part of GB's of code, and so on.
There's no problem in distro's charging for their service. After all you can download redhat (well thread anyway), debian, and a few other major distro's 'free of charge'.
Wikicola was going so well until someone changed the recipe to include anthrax.
One time the beatles were going somewhere in a limo and were spotted by a croud of girls who surrounded the limo and only wanted to see them, rather than just let them go where they were going. They got angry and started kicking the limo, breaking blinker lights and stuff like that. The driver asked what to do about the fans, and John Lennon just said to let them do what they want to the limo, since they paid for it.
At least thats what the guy on the radio said.
become some sort of revolutionary act?
I always thought of it as the standard model.
Even when it comes to making Cola that secret has been out of the bag for over 100 years and thousands of little bottling plants around the world churn out psuedo "Coke" by the billions of gallons. If you think there's really some deep dark secret to it you've been reading marketing as nonfiction.
It's flavored sugar water. You play around with the flavorings until you get it right. When you make your own you even get to use real sugar in your sugar water.
You don't really think that KFC's spices are a secret, do you? You can taste them. Any decent cook could figure them out if he really wanted to. In fact, here's a list. Make your own:
KFC's "Secret" recipe
When commercial entities and large sums of money are at stake comapanies even employ chemists to analyze ingredients of competitors products. You can't hide physical reality. It isn't like code, and even code can be reverse engineered as soon as you know what it does.
I'm all for open distribution of knowledge, but to claim that Open Source invented it is a bit daft. The libraries are full of the stuff.
Ok, let the monogram bashing begin.
KFG
TISATAAFLBYHTHPTIACI -- There Is Such A Thing As A Free Lunch, But You Have To Help Provide The Ingredients And Cook It.
Oracle's dominance in databases is coming under threat from MySQL, whose software was downloaded over the internet around 10m times last year.
The only people who can afford Oracle aren't going to jump to MS Sql, Postgres or MySql. The biggest threat Mysql has is on Microsoft Sql Server. The reason is because the price point of SqlServer. Oracle, DB2 and Sybase are very expensive. People buy expensive database servers for proven scalability and reliability. Microsoft Sql Server has neither, therefore they are the ones who are going to get his the worse.
Put it another way, Oracle and DB2 are moving towards grid databases, which not only will open source provide a good option to MS Sql Server, the big boys are now directly hammering Microsoft. By Microsoft's own account, their clustering doesn't work right and is only applicable in limited situations. Sql Server is still about 10 yrs behind Oracle and Db2 when it comes to clustering, grid, shared memory and real-time sync.
Real programmers do both and see the pros/cons. Slowly OSS will gain more momentum, but lets get real. MySql and Postgres will not scale like Oracle or DB2. Even with ObjectWeb's CJDBC driver, having an reliable and robust clustering solution is not easy to achieve.
The systems are defined by methods of sharing goods.
Capitalism: As much as you can take.
Socialism: As much as you deserve.
Communism: As much as you need.
It has pretty much nothing in common with politics and policy of achieving the above, and even less with any kind of breaches in the systems that spoil the above rules.
The basic idea behind Socialism is that if you did a lot of good but for some reason didn't get much personal profit from it, you deserve support. Even if you did nothing, you have the right to live and so you should be granted conditions to live. But if you i.e. were a good surgeon but lost your eyes, you can't work anymore, but you deserve something better for what you did.
It is some kind of inequality, but adequate to what people do. No situations when you are sentenced to live in slums because you were born in slums, or you don't need to move a finger because you inherited a fortune of your grandfather or cheated your partner out of business.
The basic idea of communism is that everyone is equal and thus gets equal share of goods - plus what's necessary for their work. No matter if you are a famous poet or a poor farmer, you don't get any extra resources for what you do, except as a poet you may get an extra box of pens and vacations in mountains (for inspiration), and as a farmer - a tractor and supply of seed grain. You are supposed to work as much as it's needed and even more, because this way you contribute to the country as a whole - and if everyone does good work, everyone gets equal share of its results - but as an individual, you won't get anything better for working harder than your neighbour - it's your own faith in justice of the system that is supposed to keep you going, not individual prizes for what you do. As expected result, people should get to the level when production ballances consumption, and everyone is happy, working not too much and getting all they want.
It's based on assumption of honesty and responsibility of all the people involved. Everyone works for better living of everyone, nobody steals or breaks, people willingly improve the overall condition of the country, therefore gradually improving their own.
How badly that assumption failed and backfired, I don't have to tell.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
To be somewhat on topic, the OpenCola idea is great and I'd like to buy a case and pass it around to give a little shove to folks who don't get what open source is and what it isn't.
My sig (if you have sigs off);
Specifically: Open source is mainly a plan not a good. Closed source is mainly a good not a plan. That said, give me a good plan -- or a well planned good (closed or open) -- and I'll take it.
From that: Linux does not matter, GCC does not matter, Windows does not matter, Office -- Open or MS -- do not matter. Who is interested -- who is motivated -- is the only thing that matters.
People are motivated when they are interested. Motivated interest that comes from personal interest -- not externally imposed by mild or excessive force -- tends to be most effective over time since the person is not running away from the motivator but is cheerfully compelled to act.
In general, open source and closed source -- commercially driven or not -- have different built-in motivators. None of these are absolutes, though they do pull people in different directions;
Open source motivators;
Transparency (corillary: Look if you want)
Process over products (corillary: harder to 'buy')
'Natural' growth;
Closed source motivators;
Secret formula (corillary: Joe Isuzu "Trust me!")
Products not projects (soft goods)
Action imposed by past or likely sales;
I don't care if you use open souce, though the built-in motivators alone are what make it strong. The goods -- the soft-wares -- are entirely secondary.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
And they bought them because to save money on PC clones. Get your facts straight... :-)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The BSA assumes three patently false notions:
1. That competition is good and is to be encouraged. This is nonsense. Competition fosters only an attitude of winning at all costs. That is why you have illegal drug use in sports and 85% of all CEOs who think that their books are cooked. Comepition is an objective moral evil.
2. That innovation is best accomplished in a proprietary environment. Well, that old canard has been laid to rest long ago. Innovation is best accomplished in an open and free environment. The best that a closed environment can ever hope to accomplish is to create a better mousetrap. The vision to create the original mousetrap came from outside the crippling corporate environment. It takes vision to get to the stars, and corporatists have proved time and again that they simply do not have that kind of vision.
3. That barrier free trade is good. This is the greatest falacy of them all. The only thing that free trade has accomplished is a lower standard of living for all. Corporatists flog free trade because it is good for them, but corporatists have their loyalties only to their corporations and not to their community or nation. Corporatists, and the corporations they run, are traitors. The same goes for the politicians that support them.
If you accept these things are true, you too are a corporate shill. Stand up and think for yourself and stop swollowing the corporatist propaganda.
Microsoft is running an adwords on Google for if you search on "Linux Development Grants". I imagine it costs them $1 a click or so....
This is my sig.
...it would seem natural that using the open source philosophy in many other fields would be beneficial to those fields. After all, if you take a look at something like the Christian Bible (just an example, I'm not religious myself), it was essentially open source especially when you consider that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all essentially tell most of the same stories, but in slightly different ways. I'll bet that they regularly exchanged their views of the experiences they were trying to document and probably even disagreed on certain approaches in documenting them. And look at how long this book has been around now and still has people violently disagreeing about what it means and (compared to other "holy books") which book is better or "the truth".
So, I expect that the open source approach will help many fields, but will always have it's opponents. Most of the opponents coming from one of two biases: Power control based in the "cathedral" vs. power control for the individual.
I try to be fu
Well i think that Open Source is the futur.. I mean, we(humans..;) need to learn to help one another. As long as we will try to make a profit from others, there will always be some evil company or organisation trying to rule the world...
Another instance of opensource-like license . The Simputer General Public License
Highlights of SGPL
* Any individual or company can download the hardware specification, PCB layout details, the bill of materials, etc., henceforth called "Specifications" free of charge. The act of doing so binds the individual or company to the SGPL.
* Any derivative work has to come back to the Trust to allow for further dissemination. To allow the commercial exploitation of the derived work, a one year delay in putting back the derived work is permitted. This does not however preclude others from independently engineering a similar derivative work during this period.
* Any derivative work is subsumed as Specifications and hence, they are also governed by this same license.
* The word "Simputer(TM)" is trademarked and cannot be used without the permission of the Trust. If an individual or company is interested in using the word "Simputer(TM)" in conjunction with their products, they can do so only if their product conforms to certain rules that will be put up on the trust website (and which may undergo periodic revision). The product has to provide a visual clue to attest it being a Simputer by way of displaying a logo issued by the Trust.
* While recognizing the possibility of using the Specifications in application other than as a Simputer, the License deems that such derived work be called "Simputerized" products. The product description should state that the product is "Simputerized" and provide a visual clue on the product by way of displaying a logo issued by the Trust.
* Any commercial exploitation of the Specifications (whether Simputer or Simputerized) involves a nominal one time payment to the Trust. The payment will be $25,000 for developing countries and $250,000 for developed countries.
Science as a way of life.
I'm still waiting on OSS-Open source steel, when I can run a blast furnace in my garage, I will be a very happy panda!
This is my basic concern--that if they succeed in wiping out the remaining competition, there will be nothing to embrace/extend/extinguish and OS technology will freeze. If they can kill off the rest of the industry, there will be zero need to innovate...computing will enter a dark age.
This happened to the American auto industry in the seventies--and that was with three big competitors--there was no way for a small company to break in or innovate. Then cam the oil crisis and foreign cars, and America had no choice but to follow the leaders.
Of course, an OS is a lot different. It's possible to hide all your "IP" below an access layer (think PS/2) and that's that--only the hardcore hackers will be able to get to it, and you can charge a pretty penny for the right to modify it...which is pretty much how IBM and the other big iron computer companies treated their customers until recently. It's tough for anyone to compete with that.
There is a war between the MS controlled corporate desktop and the internet going on right now.
Lately I've seen "free computer classes" and "free developer training" popping up in the papers, and these classes are hilarious. The first five minutes is like a religious event--the speaker intones about his years as a professor, his years as an engineer, and how he loves computers, and how great they are...and then starts talking about how much innovation MS solutions provide and what a fantastic company they are. Then he starts in with the discussion of this fantastic MS-only solution.
Although they hate to admit it, I got one "professor" to admit he was being paid by a company that was taking a beating from open source, a company that sells only MS products, and he was just repeating the messages in the documentation kit they sent him. In other words, he's claiming to be an authority, but he's really a used car salesman, an infomercial "talking head". It's a shame, because he really had an impressive resume and career.
Funny thing is, he had that engineering career and professorship because he could go to libraries, universities, read books about all the math underlying enginneering, and he didn't have to get certs or attend corporate training sessions to do all of that. He has forgotten what freedom of information and technology did for him, and is now working to deny it from others. He doesn't even realize it, all he knows is the nice company is paying him to promote their product, and that product looks impressive to him, and that's about all he knows. He's retired, etc.
A lot of people in the audience were buying it. His credentials, like that of a priest, made his opinion mean something. And he is right to a certain extent...MS runs the corporate desktop. But there was no mention of the internet, open standards, other huge success stories (ebay, google) that use open source happily and succcessfully.
So which way will it go? Will the internet technologies work their way into the corporations, or will MS bust out of the corporations and creep into the internet? It will be a mix; many internet companies can't afford to lose a sale because a browser failed with their website. Thus they have to work to the lowest common denominator. They won't budge from that, and if people outside the corps use free software, that's the only real way to stop MS, prevent them from locking technology.
The problem is raising the lowest common technology level is a free way, and MS can't do it. They want to use pseudo open standards and then break them subtly when the time is ripe, and then blame the failures on non-standard platforms.
They've done it before, and that's their true goal with these patents and opening up of the C# bytecodes, etc...get people using a partially free implementation and lock it down. Ximian is betting they can come up with a free platform that will end up on MS boxes, but who knows?
Well, I'll be the first person to admit to being baffled as to why a link which was present in the "parent" posting to my reply is now absent.
It was my understanding that Slashot postings cant be edited after the fact, however as you can see a comment about ME has been added to the posting
How did he do that? BTW re allegations of trolling, check my profile and past postings - I may not be technically knowledgeable in the standards of some who post here but ne'er a trollish word has slipped my lips.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Its just occurred to me that the link I objected to could have been the guys signature text not an actual part of the posting, which would (?) enable him/her to change it after the fact, to a sig that attacks me instead
Either way it doesn't matter now. It's gone. Problem solved.
I just have to erase the memory from my mind with the help of copious amounts of chemicals
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Actually Coca-Cola's recipe is no secret. They just do it better than everyone else. Here is real Coke's "highly guarded secret recipe"
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Yep. It's the new kind of trolling. Moderation trolling. Get modded up, do something disruptive like changing your sig, let others point out said disruption, clean up after yourself, then ridicule the posters. Here's a journal entry which describes the method.
"Why do people keep associating OSS with anti-Microsoft? "
It's because so many people hate Microsoft that's why. They hate MS so much that they project that hatred out to the people writing OSS and presume that the authors of OSS software must hate MS even more then they do. This goes for journalists too.
Of course nobody can blame them for hating MS. They are a sleazy company and they have made lying, cheating and stealing a core part of their business plan. If MS was a person they would be diagnosed as being psychotically anti-social and a danger to themselves and others.
It's OK to hate unethical companies but if you want to get back at them don't project your hate to other people or look to somebody else to "save" you. You should immediately stop using MS products (all of them including hardware) and then convince everyone you know to do the same. Until that happens MS will not reform.
War is necrophilia.
The revolutionary thing isn't that it's open, but that it's willfully open.
This has been going on for 2-3 years with Wizards of the Coast. Called the Open Game License, it's not the same as the GPL, but it's easy to see that they got the idea from it.
The OGL boils down to: if it's designated open game content in a book, it can be reprinted in another book freely as long as credit is given. This includes incorporating someone's open content rules into another, different rules book, and various other stuff a non-rpger couldn't care less about.
Amusingly enough, many rpgers are mystified by the OGL and don't understand that they can still use closed content in their own games. But there's hope for them: I'm willing to sell them closed content openers at very reasonable prices, and I'm honest enough to tell them that they're not allowed to republish closed content material. ;-)
To summarize, the basic OSS idea is indeed catching on, albeit slowly, and in rather surprising places.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
I don't think I've ever seen anything as stupid as that before.
It has been many, many years since since Martin Luther nailed his challange to the church door. Before that time were others who promoted free and open exchange of information.
No, it isn't the people who seek to willfully distribute open knowledge who are the revolutionaries. It is the people who seek to hold it private.
KFG
The ironic thing about your post is that most of the people here will agree with you. Communism and open source go hand-in-hand and most linux zealots have no problem with that at all. It actually gives them something to be proud about.
So who's paying for the service and product?
I realize you were only kidding, but GNU has nothing to do with the open source movement. GNU was started over a decade before the open source movement began. The start of the GNU project marks the beginning of the free software movement. The free software movement and the open source movement are different movements within the same community and, ironically (emphasis mine):
This quote was from an article RMS posted to the GCC mailing list.
Digital Citizen
...Open Source Toys?
Get it to spread into other languages in addition to Japanese, and add some open source electronic and mechanical toy designs and it might take off.
On a related note, I see O'Reilly and Associates is putting out a "Hardware Hacks for Geeks" book as part of their excellent "Hacks" series - possibly a starting point?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
You can take ideas from religions freely and to form your own religion.
I think the historical cases where this happened peacably are the exceptions, rather than the rule. There's almost always anger and political fighting, and often actual violence, all the way up to outright war.
Since most religions view their picture of the universe as The One True Path, it's typically more of a "freely distributable; do not modify under pain of eternal damnation" sort of license.
I think it's very appropriate to compare the universe of software development, or even business to an ecosystem.
I spent years in the environmental world, and to this day every time I walk in the woods I see examples of cutthroat competition and stunning examples of cooperation. I think the rise of free software/open source in a sense mirrors this property of complex systems of individual agents to have cooperation emerge as a major form of interaction. It is a restoring of a natural equillibrium that was disrupted by a decade or so of exponential growth. Closed operating systems and software that performs other, nearly universal functions are like weeds that prosper by being able to use the resources freed by the disruption to colonize new niches. Cooperative models can't self assemble quickly enough at first to compete.
In the long term the equillibrium will swing the other way, although not totally because cooperation is not a natural model in many situations. For example in vertical markets, the disincentives of cooperations outweigh the benefits. In that case internally developed systems make sense, and closed "black box" COT software is an acceptible compromise which maintains at least a level playing field.
I think cooperative models of production will always exist as long as the contract doesn't become the sole form of human relationship. But it will always coexist with competition as a pardigm. Speculation: as long as world population grows exponentially, and the world economy grows exponentially with it, competition will remain the dominant form of human economic interaction. It's interesting to speculate what will happen if world population stabilizes and growth switches from exponential to linear growth or steady state.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I have to agree. Unless there is a way to do it semi-commercially, as in Open Source projects that sell some kind of output, projects will be limited to what average people can afford. Even with real enthusiasts, the equipment should fit into a garage and cost not more than, say, $10,000.
Desktop computers are obviously cheaper and make a good environment for hobby projects. Small hardware engineering projects seem possible, but here you will run into limitations fast because you cannot have too sophisticated machinery as a prerequisite.
An example for a rather hopeless project would be mass production of state-of-the-art computer chips. A fab for these wil cost a few hundred million dollars
C - the footgun of programming languages
How about Co-oP stores? (Or, as they are sometimes called, Hammer and Sickle Stores, or Commu-Mart). The idea behind them is that instead of a large corporation acting as a middle man for profit, enough people get together so as to get bulk discounts directly from the manufacturers and producers. That's the theory. They basically work the same was as a regular store. Except that instead of points for stuff from a catalog, you get a yearly cheque for your share of the profits. (Your share size is determined by how much you bought) The result is, although the Co-oP gas bar may charge the same as every other gas station, at the end of the year you get a fair bit of it back. Enough that the gas is effectivly 5-10 cents cheaper per liter.
I don't know if that would be considered an open source store...
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
It's called COMMUNISM -- Karl Marx, not the Lenin variation.
but open source, when applied to the rest of the world, is really just communism. mccarthy is rolling over in his grave right now.
in bed.
The sequel to "The Replacement Killers"!
Coming to a deCSS^H^H^H^H^H theater near you!
Watch as Chow Yun-Fat makes the desperate decision to switch to Linux and is forced to outrun a horde of crazed
Or are we just jacking off? (Ooops, wrong movie.)
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
A bit of lecturing first.
;-)" who play their games by using magical methods to compensate for their weaknesses (pick-upers who use NLP methods for seduction make one good example of that).
Most people can't separate three distinct parts of religion (that is also called spirituality in modern speak) from each other. These parts are beliefs, morals and mysticism. There can be myriad systems of beliefs and morals, but most of the mystical systems have a lot in common. And "properly" can be related to the mysticism, but only barely. Most of the properness stuff is usually related to the beliefs or morals.
Beliefs are "Jesus is Lord", "No God but Allah", "Reincarnation exists/does not exist" or even "Communism is our future", "Human rights are mandatory" and "Corporations are evil". Ja, ja, communism as well as modern leftists' views are both religions that only pretend to be spiritual since they are not based on the mysticism. The essence of beliefs is "The world is the way I think it is, and it is supposed to be the way I want to see it".
Morals are based on beliefs, and describe one's interactions with the world in the form of "In this situation I should behave like that", "I need to strive for this" and "This is acceptable, that is not".
Mysticism is the way of getting to know your true self and transforming your body and mind. It is based on one fundamental axiom that states "Everything that happens with you happens because you need it on one level or another". This cause brings the effect "If you want to change your life and the world, change yourself". I can talk about mechanism of this process in details, but the condensed version will state that you have a lot of different motivations inside you, and they are competing for the resources of your mind and shaping your life according to their often simplistic desires. So, Guilt will form events where you either feel guilty or manifest it some other way; Judgement will make you lock the horns with others, demand proof or even send you on the barricades or Crusade; Victim or Abuser will make you play these roles et al.
Mystic gradually learns to recognize and shut off these "incorrect" motivations thus freeing the resources of his/her mind and redirecting the energy into further self-improvement and creative work. He untangles and unwinds the true source of his beliefs and morals in order to forge and shape the true foundation that will stay with him for the length of his life. And it is sometimes not up to him to decide what will become the part of it. This process will also move him beyond many of his beliefs and restrictions or looseness of some of his initial morals. At some point he will be ready for the next stage that can be called spiritual development versus the psychotherapy of the first stage.
That process also resolves most bottlenecks within you and eliminates situations where you "hang", i.e. you learn to operate even in uncomfortable situations where you have no control at all. I know how hard it can be to achieve, and how ugly can certain situations get, but the result is IMHO worth it. Also go away pain of the past and most insecurities. They certainly still exist in reduced form, but they no longer affect your decision making process.
The next stage of mysticism really starts only after your intention is clear, your motivation is proper and strong enough, your soul and spirit receive enough of your energy and you know how to stay yourself even while inside a stampeding crowd. I know that in the modern world "only after" does not always happen this way, and it often spawns "immature enchanters", "closet warlocks" and "psycho therapists
This second stage allows you to get or strengthen all kind of gifts and achieve enlightenment.
Now returning to the Open Source.
One can open beliefs and morals (and they are usually open), but with mysticism you can't do that. Information needs to be given gradually, by stages, and only when a student is ready for it. Otherwise
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
if, and possibly only if, everyone does this, will it be time for the great revolutions akin to that fortold by marx. Capitalism will have outlived it's use
(honestly, how many people are involved in 'overhead' jobs these days? how many lawyers, bankers, financial analysts, and so on and so forth) and it will be time for "everyone" to get together, overthrow the current regieme and live in relative utopian bliss. mabye no revolution will be necessarry, and it will be a democratic process. due to the election-rigging and media control lately i don't see this as likely, but hey, it's possible.
the next step will be convincing the outsourced labour to not be our slaves, and not to try to enslave us. but that's just a suggestion.
i'm exactly who you are talking bout, by the way. when i graduate from university, i know i'm not going to be able to get a job in my feild. i'm probably going to be deliverring papers and or flipping burgers for my entire life...which is starting to sink in because this weekend i found what could be someone worth marrying...and i can't raise a family on less-than-minnimum-wage, period. know what the worst part about this situation is? that i refuse to charge to help people with their computers. i know a few of people who basically make a living either a) making websites and b) reparing/doing service on peoples' home computers, and i see this as sick. even if only in virtue of being in kult, i refuse to charge for such service if i can help them with it. i think it's sick that people take their knowledge and then profit on it, when they could be helping people.
if you want to help a multinational corporation, go hard, charge them through the teeth...but these are human beings. people who are just trying to live their lives. if enough people help other people for free, the others will be *forced* to have sane pricing standards by sheer competition.
i remember living at home with my family, getting my computer infected with spyware, and screwing the winsock up... and while i was willing to install the operating system(win98) over again, the place we got our computers told us not to because they had the drivers and they didn't give us the drivers... so we had them to a routine os reinstall..they charged us like 150$. 150$?!! for a fucking re-install of fucking windows? i've installed windows a good 4 dozen times, and linux at least twice that many, and i'm not even really good at this sort of thing. if me and my collective of peers can do something there is no fucking way you are justified in charging a family 150$ for it. that's just sick, and greedy. but they get away with this, and they make their livings like this. and i will live the rest of my life now trying to put them out of business.
want to learn how to play the piano? have some spare time for me to teach you in? if i can get enough money together on my own to fix my piano, i'll teach you for free, if you let me. computer borked? i'll fix it, if i can. for free.
to keep this on topic, has anyone thought of music?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
>with anti-Microsoft?
Cathedral / Bazaar
I have no numbers to back me up, but I think that most OSS folks also reject ThatCelibateGuy@Vatican.com telling them how to run their lives.
gewg_
Now we all get to compile our own burgers at Burger King.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
Marriage is actually a propritary bind.
Basically two throw away their freedom to do certain things, except with theirselves.
This sucks! There's lots of alternatives! I'm not talking about public domain, hookers. But why not GPL yourself? As long as you get love back, you give it to others. Who knows who you're gonna meet in the next few years? You'll never know what you're gonna get!
Marriage is a fake too. One swears (s)he'll be honest till the end, but how does one know for sure that (s)he'll do that?
I'd rather promise: "i'll keep on loving/hugging/kissing/fucking those i love most" and just see if that remains the same one's. I'm not so sure about that. I am sure i'll keep on doing it to those i love most, unless i get a car accident, ofcourse.
PS: I kinda like you Ricin. Got MSN?
First, i don't want to sound like an Old Father or something (this AC is only 21 :). That said, i'd like to point out this style where people (try to) achieve something in an open way by collabration is nothing new. The internet is relatively new, yes.
Remember the 70's and 80's? Vietnam protests? Activists? Punks? Anarchists? Hippies? Squatters? Autonomes? I'm not sure which collectives were world wide very known these days but i can name some "subcultures". They still exist, just in less majorities.
Humanity has done this before those 70's and 80's. Remember how a mammoth got caught in what is currently known as "the Ice Age"? By collaboration. Earlier method weas just all throwing the spear, or stone. Eventually a few humans would die, but there would at least be a lot dinners. Humans got a bit more intelligent. A few humans tricked the animal to walk to a specific way. Then there, a net would fall down, or from safe positions stones and spears would be thrown. Isn't that that same together we defeat this huge beast?
Right now, flowing from the 70's / 80's activist era certain "action sites" have popped up on the WWW lately. One which is widely known, is Indymedia. I myself colaborate at Indymedia.nl and recognize a lot similarities between the news which is posted by activists, summaries and translations which are put together by volunteers, etc -- and the collaboration between programmers. Our joint efforts happen via IRC, mailing lists, Wiki, IRL and the outcome on WWW is mainly presented on a CMS.
Anyone who is attracted by these "development styles" i can recommend to remember one thing: "the greatest enemy of the Left is the Left itself"; there's always rotten apples. Self-criticism is a must. I'd also like to recommend Kantian Ethics by Emannuel Kant, especially the text "What is enlightenment" and "Temporary Autonomous Zone" by Hakim Bey.
I spoke about rotten apples. The media, especially some in particulair, can influence the public opinion which doesn't know and therefore not understand certain things. Extremely dangerous for a movement; fight BACK! It scared me when i became aware what Microsoft is after...
For example take the SCO thing. All FLOSS people are terrorists who DDoS? . Come on. Now take 80's. All activists are unemployed, lazy crusts? Or terrorists, like Rote Armee Fraktion? Come on. When these stereotypes, which are only true for a minority, are accepted as status quo by those who are not enlightened you as group are all fried, most likely by the group in power (politicians and upper class / rich) who may not like you anyway.
Stereotypes is also the reason why i refuse to call a complete OS just "Linux" and comment every time i see it. Linux is just a kernel; it misses specifications, like "which distribution" and "which version of it".
(Please note this post unfortunately is quite full with stereotypes)
Comparing rotten teeth?