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..
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."
http://www.opensourcejudaism.com/
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
If they're reading Slashdot then they've tried Open Source Software.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.