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.
To get everyone to release source code, just make the copyright laws do what they were intended to do in the first place: no binary files should have copyrights, only human-understandable information should be copyrighted. The same goes for encrypted or otherwise copy-protected information. Those are protected by trade secrets. The purpose of copyrights is to ensure that the ideas embodied by those works would be available for future generations, which doesn't happen if only the executable binaries are publicly available.
I think that while MS may be somewhat totalitarian in their practices, a better parallel to the Cold War would be capitalist versus socialist ideals. In this scenario, it is obvious that MS is the pinnacle of capitalist practices, while the Linux community is much closer to socialism - shared effort for shared gain, group ownership, etc. Think about that one ...
***
.. MAD factor in?
MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction
I personally don't want to run BSD, do you?
RMS has always distanced himself from the Open Source movement because (he says) we avoid talking about "freedom, about principle, about the rights that computer users are entitled to".
He's right. We do avoid that. But not because we don't care about "freedom", "principle" or "rights". Speaking for myself, I trust that anybody who's ever heard me speak or read my writings on the First or Second Amendments knows that I am quite passionate and vocal about freedom and rights; like RMS, I defend them even when they are unpopular with my audience. Other Open Source advocates don't seem to me to be any slower than I to speak the language of "freedom" and "rights" when they judge it is appropriate.
But "when they judge it is appropriate" is a very important qualifier. There are two different kinds of reasons an open-source advocate might avoid speaking about RMS's `freedom'; either disagreement with his goals, or a judgment that doing so is ineffective, is bad tactics.
The difference is important, and this is where RMS misrepresents what we are about. He would have you believe that the FSF and OSI have diverged over vast matters of principle, when in fact the OSI (and the Open Source movement as a whole) is carefully designed to be able to include people with beliefs like RMS's.
The Open Source Initiative does not have a position for or against RMS's goals. Please don't take my word for this; go look at our advocacy materials on the Open Source website, especially the part in the FAQ where it says "Open Source is a marketing program for free software".
Now it is true that some individuals associated with OSI occasionally argue with some of RMS's goals and principles (and one of those individuals is me). But the OSI is a big-tent organization; we have never condemned RMS's principles, and never will -- because we don't need to!
The real disagreement between OSI and FSF, the real axis of discord between those who speak of "open source" and "free software", is not over principles. It's over tactics and rhetoric. The open-source movement is largely composed not of people who reject RMS's ideals, but rather of people who reject his rhetoric.
Is this justified? Well -- consider the 180-degree turnaround in press and mainstream perception that has taken place in the last fourteen months, since many people in our tribe started pushing the same licenses and the same code we used to call "free software" under the "open source" banner.
Where we used to be ignored and dismissed, we are now praised and respected. The same press that used to dismiss "free software" as a crackpot idea now falls over itself writing laudatory articles about "open source". And the same corporate titans who dismissed RMS as a `communist' are lining up to pour money and effort into open-source development. Our market share and mind share have both zoomed to a level that would have seemed the stuff of delirious fancy as recently as January of last year.
Have all the opinion leaders and executives who have turned around suddenly seen the pure light of the GNU manifesto? No; instead, they point to the work of Open Source advocates to explain their conversion.
OSI's tactics work. That's the easy part of the lesson. The hard part is that the FSF's tactics don't work, and never did. If RMS's rhetoric had been effective outside the hacker community, we'd have gotten where we are now five or ten years sooner and OSI would have been completely unnecessary (and I could be writing code, which I'd much rather be doing than this...).
None of this takes anything away from RMS's prowess as a programmer or his remarkable effectiveness at mobilizing other hackers to do good work. Emacs and gcc and the GNU code base are an absolutely essential part of our toolkit and our cultural inheritance, for which RMS deserves every praise (which is why I led a standing ovation to him at last LinuxWorld after observing that "without RMS, none of us would be here today"). But as an evangelist to the mainstr
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!'
Soviet Union was communism in economy, totalitarism in politics.
US is capitalism in economy, democracy in politics.
Microsoft is capitalism in economy, totalitarism in politics.
Free Software is communism in economy, democracy in politics.
Communism is a good thing, unfortunately it appears way too often accompanied by totalitarism which wastes all profit communism could provide, and gives otherwise very good ideals a really bad name.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I am strongly opposed to the idea of regulating software for the general market. Even though certain things like power, water, and transportation may need some kind of regulation, the price we pay for uniformity is inefficiency, bloat, and increased cost. Regulation tends to involve tax advantages for companies in compliance, which tends to stifle innovation by advantaging the status quo.
However, I am not entirely opposed to regulating software for government use. This makes a lot of sense to me, actually. If you want to get the government contract, you should have to meet certain standards, especially security standards. A business could do this, so there's no reason the government couldn't. The possible advantages would be an optional but well recognized standard that companies could meet if they wanted but are capable of declining if they so choose. I do think a open-source clause could be a good thing.
The drawback here is that powerful (read "rich") parties would probably be able to write the regulations so that they are biased towards particular kinds of software, if not particular brands. They could also probably prevent an OSS clause from being adopted, if not actually requiring close source.
Any time we experiment with giving the government more control over anything, we need to be very careful. Governments do not relinquish their powers. They always and only expand them. Regulating software, even in a limited capacity, sounds to me a lot like the proverbial foot in the door.
thats true.
Fair and balanced.
But it's not really a war between opposing sides. It's a war between the furture and the past. And the past is doomed to failure, simply because the technology curve has progressed to the point where large chunks of the software ecology are essentially free. Microsoft and Oracle unhappily sit right in the middle of this territory. Apple, IBM do not. I wrote about this in an editorial last year.
My blog
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.
start thinking about how we persuade governments that market in software may eventually need to be regulated
Bad idea. If it needs to be regulated then I believe that your product is inadequate. If your product is the best, then the market will decide. Think about it for a minute. You have a free operating system with free applications that you claim to be superior to everything else yet, you then want/need government regulation and mandates to require people to use your "better product"? That just doesn't make sense.
I don't care what monopolistic practices Microsoft pulls, short of government mandates requiring Microsoft's use. If the product is truely better it will be chosen over others. The price is already right.
Microsoft would have thousands of nuclear weapons, except they would constantly explode in their own silos. Everyone would have an easy to use rifle (with baby blue color theme), but only a handfull of people will be able to keep the rifle out of enemy hands, everyone else will just leave it lying around outside cause they're too lazy (or stupid) to secure it anywhere.
Linux would have some great weapons but only 20 people would know how to use them, 12 of these people would have them loaded correctly, 5 will accidentally shoot themselves in the face, 2 would use the guns of the people who shot themselves in the face, and continue to shoot those people in the face, and the last person would develop a new loading mechanism and distribute it to everyone so they now have to figure out how to load it all over again.
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.
Subject: Pig iron [Was: Article: Gates memo calls for security focus]
Good, strong point. There is nothing wrong with making your software's source code public to the world, unless you're Microsoft. It'll tag a lot of coders to fix that shit. =/
Just as he said; it's still possible to sell your software and have it open-source. It's actually better for business... because there is always just someone out there who is better than you -- Even if you're God.
"But once we see an open source alternative to Quark Express running on those Linux boxes, or Postgres databases replacing Oracle, and an open source digital music store that challenges iTunes, we can expect to see Adobe, Apple and the rest of the software industry piling in too."
What? iTunes is free. Maybe we can't mess with the code for it, but I don't think a lot of people care. And if it's free music, we have KaZaA of course.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Could be either side. They both use goverment regs to help what they like and punish what they don't.
I disagree strongly that government regulation mandating open-sourcing is the key to solving the issues related to SCO/Linux/Microsoft, and although I agree with the basic points about FUD being the primary weapon of SCO/Microsoft, as well as the potential benefits of open sourcing for large corporations, I find very little in his article to support his assertion that this sort of regulation is the right direction.
Frankly, if open sourcing is going to be key for economic viability in the marketplace, the correct capitalist response would be to let market pressure bury those companies that don't do it, not to impose regulation. I can see regulation protecting open-source companies from FUD assaults, which are inherantly detrimental to a free and open marketplace... but not regulating the production and distribution of software.
Utilities like water and power require regulation because they are infrastructural supplies that aren't optional, nor does there exist (or can there, really) much of a competitive market in them to control excesses. With software, this is not really the case. Even for fundamental software like word processors and database tools, there is a robust marketplace with tons of options.
Fundamentally, Marx's critique of unconstrained capitalism wasn't wholly off base. But America isn't unconstrained... consumer protection laws and so forth counter the excesses of capitalism here. The government's role here should be protection laws that preserve an open marketplace (no FUD attacks) and regulation where infrastructure is privatized.
This is what I think, anyway.
If you read some of Bill Thompson's back catalogue, it seems that the man is obsessed with regulation as a cure-all solution (see here, here, or here).
It is a widely-held British viewpoint. Whenever there is some new perceived problem with the internet (a global network), politicans here start publicly calling for new government regulations. They know how pointless it is but want to be seen aligning themselves with the popular stance.
- Brian.
Where does this assumption that anyone has a right to source code come from? If somebody doesn't provide source code, your right is to not use it, don't buy it! It's as simple as that. If open source can't win economically, then using goverment power to force a win is no win at all. (Using OSS to create closed source in violation of licence is a seperate issue.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Last time the DoJ stepped in to deal with Microsoft being a monopoly and engaged in anti-competitive activities ...hmm, yeah, that worked out real well. Glad to see Microsoft no longer has a stranglehold on the market and doesn't have restrictive deals with other players in the tech industry.
Quite frankly, right now this is just a war of attrition, and I think Microsoft realizes they can't win with their current market strategies. If Linux was run by a single company responsible to shareholders, then Microsoft would probably have things back to business as usual, but I still don't think Bill & Steve have figured out just how to really deal with Linux as a competitive force.
The Open Source community has shown the ability to organize and get things done (yes, I know, this isn't the case in all projects, but it has gotten substantially better). And as long as the Open Source movement stays on the current track that it's on it's only a matter of time before the average consumer begins to recognize projects as Mozilla, Open Office, and the Linux OS as something they should look into using over Windows.
The fact that I can get my Mom to recognize how cool Mozilla is compared to IE/Outlook is and that she can get everything done on an install of Mandrake 9.2 is proof that progress is being made.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
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.
This not only affects Linux, but any Open Source application. The last Government contract I worked on, we wanted to deploy an Open Source monitoring agent since the deployment of a "major vendor" product was not going to happen for some time. The response from IA (Information Assurance) basically was "has it passed Common Criteria evaluation and can you show us proof?" The answer was no, so the app was not deployed. We even provided the source code for "review".
I think the tools are already in place within segments of the US Government to stop the deployment of OSS by simply pointing to http://niap.nist.gov and saying "It's not on the Approved List". Most OSS does not have the deep pockets of IBM and Oracle to afford CC evaluation (SuSe and RedHat respectively). Now whether Microsoft had anything to do with this I cannot say, but I think it is not simply a matter of development models, but security models as well. And even in the case of a OSS product sucessfully passing CC evaluation, some agencies are not happy. Read the latest version of the DISA Unix STIG and see what they say about SuSe Linux (they complained that no US (NSA) Protection Profiles were used in the evaluation. So does that mean it is less secure and should not be used?
Some Governments could simply point to the US and say "we won't adopt OSS because the US doesn't". Just a thought
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.
Damn. I sank to the level of the Slashdot editors. Submitted a dupe and then boasted about it... oh, the shame of it.
On the bright side, my six-month old daughter just learnt to say "blehsughhx" and stick her tongue out. I bet that wasn't posted to Slashdot yet.
Your daughter posted it, last Wednesday...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
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.
Think about that: Soviet Union and United States never really fought directly anywhere (well, very few times and most of the public never knew about this). Their playground was Koria, Vietnam (where Soviets were sending in weapons, ammunition and training), Afganistan (where Americans did the same thing). More indirect battles were fought in the central Africa. Countries like Angola changed their eligence style of government there within period of two weeks , of course at the cost of millions of lives of local natives. What about South America? The communist gangs in Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Columbia and others did not just "came out" without support of the old Soviet Union. Nowdays these same gangs are into drugs, robbery, kidnappings and absolute terrorism for money. Now lets take a look at the world of Microsoft vs. Linux. These have never fought their direct battles either. GPL has never been tested against Microsoft EULA (oh I wish there would come a day when such test would be possible). The companies that support and endorse Linux have funded or persued anti-Monopoly lawsuits against Microsoft, and as we recently found out it is Microsoft who funds and persues the lawsuits that came on us from the face of SCO. And think about it too: SCO has not dared to sue Linus or any of the special groups surrounding Linux (OSDL, FSF (GNU), the Open Group, Kernel development team, whoever else). Instead they choose to fight their battles via the third parties and the users, or code contributors. So far the battle is fought on the sidelines. There will be a day when Microsoft and FSF, OSDL and others will be in direct lawsuit against each other.
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
Confusing communism with totalitarism (sic). Yet again.
He is not confusing communism with totalitarianism; he is merely listing historical incidents, which have arisen as a result of attempts to create communist states.
Any attempt at communism, on anything other than a very small scale, regardless of the initial intentions, always leads to totalitarianism. This has proven by history, and is almost certainly guaranteed by human nature.
It is similarly to how shooting someone in the head at point blank range leads to that person's death.
So, to reiterate:
In the same way that shooting someone in the head at point black range --> Death,
Communism --> Totalitarianism
P.S. This is not an example of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
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
Software is already regulated in some fields, such as when it is part of a medical device. See, for instance, FDA-imposed design controls on medical devices "automated with computer software" in 21 CFR 820.30. FDA has stated that "Software must be validated when it is a part of the finished device. FDA believes that this control is always needed, given the unique nature of software, to assure that software will perform as intended and will not impede safe operation by the user." (in their final rule on that "Quality System Regulation"). The regulations call for extensive documented verification and validation activities.
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
Sorry to play devils advocate here, but regulation is needed. My argument lay on a fundamental concept of communications. There is a reason, no matter what phone you purchase, you are able to call any other phone in the world. There's also a reason for federal regulation on phone companies enforcing that their service may at the least have enough bandwidth to carry voice across the lines. Basically, avoiding legal speak, in the event of an emergency, a civilian must be able to contact authorities or medical assistance, via 911 for example, provided they have a phone. Be it a satellite phone, cell phone, AT&T built land-line phone, GSM phone etc.
I argue that any application that can even be used as a form of communications, to imply a listener, be public and open. Such as document formats, which have the intent to be displayed on other computers is a form of communication. Network protocols, all of them need to be open and standard. Web services are especially communications and conformance to standards should be regulated and enforced. Hypothetically, when your local police station may start accepting emergency pleas via their web-page, is it right that their web-page is only supported with Microsoft Internet Explorer?
If the government is to regulate any part of the IT industry, I feel it's crucial they regulate the communications concepts therein. Such regulation shall be restricted to only apply to compatibility and the assurance that all computing devices are able to accurately parse and rely the ideas and intent of said communications.
I don't want the government regulating much of anything else I do want the government to demand that any form for communications, file formats, protocols, specs shall be open and free for all to inspect and implement on any computing device. Further, all forms of communication must be designed for the ability to be implemented on all computing devices and their logical environments. (This will take care of Microsoft saying "OK, We'll do that, but we'll wrap our implementation so deep into our OS that you can't implement it unless you are using Microsoft products.)
Just my feeling on it. Lots seem to fear government regulation. The government isn't that bad, and those that do not trust the government turns a blind eye towards the corruption, abuse and illegal behavious of international corporations. Corporations sole intent is to profit, at any expence, the government is supposed to protect the people. If it weren't for government leglislation we'd all be working 24x7 and with no benefits for 25 cents a day in the most dangerous conditions imaginable.
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.
Bill Thompson has been a technology moron with the BBC for a while now - read his past columns. He has an obsession with regulation in general, particularly governmental control of the Internet; this is part of that.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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
And capitalism is not in the least elitist. The paper boy, the owner/operator of the corner grocery, the local landscpape expert, the software consultant - these are every bit the capitalists that Bill Gates is. Indeed, the ability to produce value efficiently is a wonderful equalizer, constantly raising up the capable and bringing down the arrogant. So many of todays billionaires started with essentially nothing, and so many of tomorrow's billionairies have essentially nothing today.
And so far as socialism being egalitarian, communal, and sharing in the public good? Well, perhaps you could point out a good working example. All I can think of is Stalin and the twenty million Russian corpses he left behind.
Governments have already taken many steps backwards using the power of regulation. Witness extended copyrights, lengthy patent protections, DMCA prohibitions reverse-engineering.
Many of us who believe free and open source software could provide efficiency and productivity increases world wide are becoming cynical of government regulation as it has been as much a force for encumbering as it has for freeing.
"Provided by the management for your protection."