Slashdot Mirror
Linux & Microsoft as a Cold War?
I confirm writes "The BBC's Bill Thompson summarises the GNU/Linux vs. Microsoft struggle as a "cold war", and in one choice quote says:"It is rather ironic that Microsoft and other closed model companies rather resemble the Stalinist or Maoist model of a command economy with complete centralised control."
I'm not sure I accept Thompson's conclusions, however: "So now would be a good time to start thinking about how we persuade governments that market in software may eventually need to be regulated, just as the market in electricity, water and food is, and that that regulation may well include a statutory duty to disclose source code and allow it to be used elsewhere." "
Regulation is the worst possible scenario for OSS, regardless of any pretense towards open sourcing software. Regulation means bureaucrats, who wield great power, and who will be attractive places for people like Microsoft, who possess vast fortunes, to spend it. For instance, imagine that they mandate open source, but then throw in a requirement that the programmer assume responsibility for its performance, or become liable in other ways. Then, the only people who would be able to participate would be companies with deep pockets. Like Microsoft.
Calling for legislation to step in, is almost always a bad idea. We may be dreaming of an open source friendly regulation, but this is unlikely to happen. We simply don't have the purchasing power that Microsoft and others have with our politicians, so we'll end up having a heavily regulated market with anti-competitive, pro closed-source rules. Remember DMCA?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
nux is a feudal state with Linus as their King, he dictates what people do and has executive powers over the direction linux
goes. sure, you could fork your own state, but the food (developers) and land (users) is limited, and you're likely to be screw
ed over by another state (sco).
yeah, cause analogies are always correct.
btw is slashdot broken, i post like once per week and keep getting 'call it a night cowboy!'
When you say you don't like Microsoft, you really don't like the choices millions of people make. I've been in this business long enough to know an analogy to war is ridiculous. You seem to believe that any choice of Microsoft is illegitimate and that open source can't fight fair in a free market, which is the big joke. Linux is doing great without the government, thank you.
And this committee for patriotic software, should it ever be enacted, will be the downfall of open source. It will be just another control point for power and allow the morality police a central point of control. It will become a do-nothing political body like all the rest.
I am not entirely opposed to regulating software for government use.
See FIPS requirements.
Governments do not relinquish their powers. They always and only expand them.
Sad, but true. And that's exactly the reason why we need to be extra careful when we call for Government's "help."
Frankly, I believe that software is also a way to express opinions, both technical and political. Government control of software would be in direct contradiction of free speech, wouldn't it?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
The reason that regulation of power and water in a free society is that they are what's called natural monopolies. Multiple infrastructures for power, water etc. are just redundant, so there tends to be only one utilities company for a given area. The government regulates them to make sure that they don't charge exorbitant fees and hold vital utilities hostage.
:)...
This of course does not apply to software, where competition is a good thing and is necessary for growth. There is no real R&D in the utilities industry, but just imagine if MS hadn't done R&D since Windows 3.1... they'd be left in the dust by Linux. Not that they haven't been anyhow, though
Only requirement for good karma: be pedantic as much and as often as possible.
Are copyright laws really a good idea for software? Remember, copyright protection lasts for at least 70 (but up to 95) years after the death of the author. Moreover, copyright renewals would extend this period even more. Now tell me any kind of software that would not be utterly obsoleted in, say, 100 to 150 years from now! Software-Copyrights effectively eliminate public dissemination forever. Is this the purpose of copyright, as intended when it was invented?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Could be either side. They both use goverment regs to help what they like and punish what they don't.
The OS community and those who contribute to it are simply the natural evolution of software (or works) in the arena of the marketplace. This allows for innovation and invention which are not limited to the scope of dedicated control of the product but rather the drive for sucess with the solutions that further the drive.
Let's keep in mind that patents are in place to keep lawyers employed and keep them litigating. -CatGrep
While government and legislation power can be wielded in a bad way, most modern democratic states would be able to wield it in the favour of the people - at least a lot more in favour of the people than the board of Microsoft would! I think the slashdot crowd is extremely black or white on this one: Either you have extreme liberalism (as of today), or you have complete stalinist regulation (as of.. soviet russia). What about regulations like "every government system has to be open source" or "government funded schools have to use open source" or "every government-funded computer program has to be released under the GPL" or even "the government does not trust any closed source app"? That's also regulation. And it is good (tm).
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Of course, for this to work, copyright terms need to be returned to something reasonable, but that's a different problem.
The problem with OSS, like the free market, is that it it requires inefficiencies. In a free market we may have 10 companies producing a product that only requires 2, or things being produced that are of no value at all. Sure, eventually the free market will sort out the inefficiencies, but the command economy tends to not have them at all. We see this now with companies refusing to hire anyone. New employees are sort of needed, but they would still represent an inefficiency. So no one is hiring. With MS and SCO, they can control development and focus efforts and consumer attention on a single product. Closed source companies do not have four competing GUIs and three competing APIs.
I personally find the free market, and by extension OSS, to be exciting and wonderfully innovative. However, it is easy to see how the Mr. Tators of the corporations would find such a free for all of ideas and strategies to be as disturbing as a bunch of upstart, uneducated, uncultured colonialist believing they were anything other than agents to be used a the King wished.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It is rather ironic that Microsoft and other closed model companies rather resemble the Stalinist or Maoist model of a command economy with complete centralised control."
Centralized control is not so unique to communist political structures. Fascism has a pyramidal hierarchy. And when legislators listen to corporations first, that is also a command economy.
So it is not ironic at all.
I don't think you can really compare M$ vs. Linux as capitalism vs. communism/socialism or any other ism. It's really not the same thing.
Sure Microsoft has the monopolistic dictatorship qualities. They don't care about the people, only about themselves. Security is an afterthought and they run things. No one is going to take them down. However, they are capitolistic in some sense because they are a company providing a service. However, if you look at their practices, they are anything but competitive. If someone releases a better product, they release theirs as free and tightly integrate it into their OS. They then send some goons to muscle suppliers (like dell, compaq, etc...) to not install the competitors product. This is very anti-competitive.
Now let's look at linux. Aside from being free (as in speech... something this country was founded upon) it is all about choice. It is also all about producing a better product. It's also about choices. If you don't like the way a product is going, you can take the source and code it the way you want. (or hire someone to do it for you) There are also many companies that use linux to make money (in a very capitolistic sense). RedHat is the perfect example of this. They use their reputation and hard work to get where they are.
However the biggest fact is that software developers have no control over what you do in terms of religion, and every other aspect of life. Americans have it ingrained in them that communism is a bad thing so everyone tried to relate what they don't like to communism. In fact most people that say this, don't even know what communism is. I'm also not supporting communism... I don't think it would ever work and it's more of a throwback to a dictatorship but that's besides the point. I don't think communism is necessarily "evil" but rather what people choose to do with is could be evil.
I'm just tired of people trying to use the "all (linux|Microsoft) users are just like communists." I think there is room for both to survive. I've been a Linux user for about 9-10 years now so I know how to use it. I haven't used a M$ product in about 2-3 years now. (Not word, office, that crappy media player, etc...) So I must be against closed source right? Wrong... I have an apple PowerBook G4 with OS X. Sure it's got an open source component (and I have open office, emacs and a bunch of otherr free GNU tools from fink) but it also has a very closed proprietary part which is definately not free.
Should all software be open source? It doesn't matter because it never will. There will always be a niche that needs customized software for their needs and people always like choice and if you can offer something better than open source can offer, you stand to make a lot of money. I think they can live side by side but M$ needs to stop their anti-competitive practices!
I utterly hate the analogy that FOSS is communistic. First of all, last time I checked, FOSS hadn't killed hundreds of millions of people as communism had. Second, it doesn't work on a philosophical level.
Communism is based on a centralized command system in which the state controls the means of production in the name of the people. Of course, this never works out as only a fool would automatically presume the interests of the state and the interests of the people are exactly the same.
In software development, this is closer to the closed source model - the state (ie Microsoft) orders that a task be done and the apparatchiks do it. Granted, Microsoft doesn't kill those that fail, and Microsoft is nowhere near as corrupt as the former Soviet Union, but the overal concept of centralization remains the same.
FOSS development is more like anarchocapitalism than anyone else. No one is forced to open their code, but programmers like myself do so because that's how we rationally get the most benefits. Granted, I could sell my products and perhaps make some money, but I couldn't recoup the costs of development without putting as much time into marketing as I do programming - and I don't care to do that.
The essence of capitalism is free exchange - which is why capitalism requires a free society in order to function well. Without the concept of the right of property, the GPL or other FOSS licenses would be meaningless. If I can't "own" my code, I can't dictate the license terms, and we're back to the state of nature. In the state of nature, everything is free for the taking - so long as you're cunning enough to take it. The whole reason government exists is to prevent that from happening by creating the social contract. (Which is why the statement that sacrificing liberty for security is wrong - that's the whole point of government itself, but I digress.)
FOSS devlopers give out their code because it provides them with the greatest rational benefit, not because some centralized authority tells them they must. That isn't communism, that's capitalism, and that's why the FOSS development model is doing exactly what capitalist economies do to state-planned economies - dynamically growing faster and more agile with each passing day.
That's not a problem with copyrighting software, but with copyrights in general. They shouldn't (imho) last anything like as long as they currently do.
Copyrights are meant to be an incentive to authors, etc to create more works. Tell me - if I (somehow) manage to create a wildly popular work, and am able to live comfortably on the royalties for as long as it is protected by copyright, what incentive is there to me to produce more if that protection extends beyond my death? Yes, I realise that that's a somewhat (okay, very) unlikely situation, but hopefully you see my point.
Software-Copyrights effectively eliminate public dissemination forever
They also underpin the GPL and similar licences. Abolish copyright on software, and there's nothing to stop people and companies from taking source and incorporating it into closed source products. Sure, you could do that with closed source stuff too, to an extent, but decompiling a binary to produce meaningful source code is somewhat harder than just downloading the source in the first place.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
How about beefing up liability for closed source applications -- in a manner that users cannot "opt out of" by shrink wrapper -- but leaving open source applications with effective immunity? The argument being, that effective 3rd party oversight protects the open source user.
There are two kinds of communism. The first is the one you know well, everybody gets one dictator and what he says goes. The second was only practiced by the ancient greeks. A pure democracy where everyone was a part of the goverment. You had to vote, it was law. You had to take part in your town, city, and State. You had to do millatary service, but you also had to take care of the goverment. Capitalism was practiced, and encouraged, but everyone was also an active member of the goverment. The USA is a rebulic like Rome. we have a central leader, and a group of people to represant the population. And like Rome our leaders is getting to be pushy and controlling.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I'm not quite sure I understand your post, but I think that you need to RTFA.
It actually implies that MS is the one that parallels the Communists, while
Linux parallels the American system.
Honestly, RTFA would be a good thing to do before calling something irrational.
Ending the confusion.
Communism is a subset of totalitarism, just like Coca-Cola is a subset of soft drinks.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Essentially, US exports of tangible goods are in decline, and it seems ludicrous to think that providing a management layer for organizations that actually exist overseas can last forever. Do we actually believe that workers in India will not someday discover that if they managed their own companies, then they would not need the US at all? Perhaps this is a bit of an oversimplification, but I think that the point resonates in the hearts and minds of people concerned about economic sustainability for the US. So we're going to support Microsoft, dammit, because OSS is the way to seal America's fate as the country that contributes only intellectual property to the world and gets essentially no compensation in return.
As a supporter of OSS, this notion frightens me. But I have yet to hear an argument that this is not as serious as I fear.
Clearly written by someone who doesn't work in the industry. While there is control from the top and heirarchy, it definitely is not always a "command economy". In my experience and reading, many companies have project teams that come up with ideas, that are then built into products via a competetive process, not a "command" process.
Seems to me someone had their OSS hat on too tight--there are certainly benefits and advantages of OSS, but statements like this take it too far and destroy any credibility you might have to talk about the real issues.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Just like coca cola is subset of drink containers.
Nope. Cola is subset of drinks.
A dirty ugly mug is subset of drink containers.
Communism is about economy.
Totalitarism is about politics.
If you drink Cola from a dirty mug, with hairs and dirt and pieces of pasta, it's sure you will dislike it. That's about what totalitarian governments were serving by forcing people to accept communism.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Well, it's a little bit of an oversimplification to contrast "centrally designed" software with OSS. Centralized control is bad for an economy, because an economy is made up of people with varying goals. But when there is a common goal, centralized control can be a good thing. Think military, sports teams, etc. Or designing a huge application.
But.... IP law, even though it's perceived as "pro-business," is a broadly socialist concept; the government grants arbirary privileges that a copyright owner could not enforce by themselves. In this sense, government already regulates the software market. The failures of the current scheme should not be used to justify extending government control.
The emergence of Free Software is a market response to overpriced proprietary software, to API's designed to generate consumer and developer lock-in, and to the anti-consumer license provisions that it leads to.
Free Software and proprietary between them cover the market well, and it's probably the best compromise we can come up with. In other words, don't expect commercial software to ever be as nice as you want it to be. Just make sure that Free remains Free.
The FSF position is far more concerned with money. "Is my code being exploited for money?" My code is free, and anything containing it must be free as well.
Take a look at any discussion here where it comes up. The two positions are quite clear. I don't get why the two sides seem to have such a probelm with the others position. They are not incompatible, just different.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
A Communist economy can't exist without a Totalitarin government to enforce it's economic decrees.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Note, it was always done in similar ways. Revolution, bloodshed, murdering the enemies. Totalitarism was there before communism.
It was never attempted by evolutionary ways... before FSF.
Lead by example, not by force. "Join us, follow us, if you want - leave, share your goods freely and don't try to steal others' free goods for your own".
Firstly it succeeded because it's about software. Easy to copy, once you have one, everyone can have one at marginal cost. Implementing communism in this environment is very easy - you give a cake but you don't lose a cake. Nobody else tried to introduce communism slowly, gently, in a responsible, reasonable way yet.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Miles per gallon is important to consumers. A car that cannot be driven 300 miles on one tank will not sell. Most cars are just under 30 miles to the gallon, so a 12-16 gallon tank is sufficient. Buyers of sports cars and large vehicles (trucks, SUVs) expect 16 mpg, and the large vehicles have large tanks to maintain the 300 mile criteria. [My sports car can reach 300 miles on highways. City driving uses much more gas.]
Emissions were regulated. Most people do not want a cloud of black smoke, but it required legislation to make a difference. The States made it as a profit center by charging for extra stesting and stickers. Citizens were aware of the issue because of the extra stickers, and because they were responsible for more money if their car did not pass. So the manufacturers had to satisfy the buyers.
Regulating software would need to be done the same way. It is not enough to penalize the manufacturers; the users must feel the penalties. The laws would need to penalize a user for having a PC that spams or is used for a DOS attack. Unfortunately, it is difficult to verify the packets originated at a specific IP Address. What if you happened to check sco.com on the day of a DOS? Were you part of the attack, or just wondering if the website survived?
Once these issues are resolved, and the users feel the penalties, then they will demand that their software protects them. Software like MSWindows, where it is impossible to load a firewall before loading the network drivers, would disappear.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
This is a bunch of BS! As much as I hate Microsoft, to liken them with a "stalinist" system is total crap. Nobody is making anyone buy Microsoft products - maybe in the communist Great Britain, where the government runs every aspect of society that may be the case, but for a brit to take the stage and teach us americans about free market economics...that's just ridiculous! I mean look who is speaking....a BBC employee!
I don't hold that idea true - the "free market" is filled with thousands of products which were better than their competition but failed due to external factors; timing (VHS vs. Beta), initial impressions (internal combustion vs. steam engines in the first automobiles), deceptive marketing, etc. etc. The truth is that in today's free market, the advantage will always tilt toward the organization with a larger supporting infrastructure. The ability to make slick advertisements, bundling deals with OEM's, etc can overcome functional disadvantages such as reliability and security. Coupled with the idea ingrained in humans that "expensive = better", and it suddenly becomes very difficult for OSS to compete on a level playing field (notice I didn't say impossible, only more difficult). That being said, regulation almost always causes more problems than it solves. I won't argue whether regulation would help or hurt software in general - however it would be difficult to argue against the point that regulation rarely works as intended. Thank you for listening to my soap box stump.
Author was way off*. Open source software is closer to socialism than anything, while proprietary software is pretty much capitalism. If you don't think so, look at the philsophies underpinning both of these:
--Socialism--
Egalitarian
Communal
Sharing/common good
--Capitalism--
Elitist
Driven by profits
No such thing as a common good
If you look at these traits, you would find that open-source software is closer to socialism and proprietary software is closer to capitalism. That's economics.
If you look at the political dimension, you would find that both open-source software and proprietary software are libertarian (to a large degree).
So to sum up, open-source software would be libertarian+socialism** while proprietary software (as exemplified by Microsoft) would be libertarian+capitalism. This basically means that, under the political compass two dimensional system, open-source software would be near the bottom left, while the proprietary one would be the bottom right.
(* The confusion over proprietary software and capitalism arises because Microsoft is thought to be a monopoly by some. Because of that, some people (namely capitalists) don't consider MS to be capitalist. These capitalists would argue that capitalism needs free markets and perfect competition. My theory is that free markets lead to monopolies or oligopolies and if this is true then these capitalists' reasoning is baseless. This is exactly what happened in the case of MS. MS was a small company competing under perfect competition at one time. It simply monopolized the market like all businesses attempt to. Therefore, one CAN consider MS to be capitalist, even though it has monopolize many of its markets)).
(** When I say libertarian+socialism, I'm not talking about libertarian socialism (which is anarchism), although it is close. Open-source software is not anarchist because there are rules (the existence of copyrights means that the person who wrote the software has more power than someone who did not. Under anarchism, you wouldn't have this situation because copyrights do not generally exist under many anarchist systems. If open-source software had no copyrights (i.e. author who wrote it has no more rights than someone who did not write it), then open-source software can be considered anarchist. From my view, public domain software is basically anarchist)).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
You have a choice to use another browser, so long as you don't try to access a website created used by Microsoft's products (which can result in minor glitches, to not being able to access links). You can use another operating system, so long as unreliable access to your documents from work is okay with you. You can choose to build and sell computers with another OS on them, so long as you don't think you're going to be able to provide compatibility with legacy applications by dual booting Windows. You can use another product to remotely control your Windows box, so long as -- oh wait, you can't. You can write software to interoperate with Windows for use on another OS, so long as you license your software how Microsoft wants.
It's nice to see that you're such a big defender of your buddy Bill's individual rights. It's a shame he doesn't appear to agree with your philosophies.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
"Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole -- that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.
Moreover, since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement -- in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.
In fact, the abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry -- and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand."
The Principles of Communism
Frederick Engels
October-November 1847
Now maybe you have a clue about what Communism is, so tell me how you can have this kind of control without a totalitarian group backing it up.
Just How are you going to do this witjout power?
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est