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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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