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Free Software Day Around The World
depechemodem writes "In a follow-up to Microsoft Leaves U.N. Standards Group, it appears that it may have been in reaction to the UN's sponsorship of the 1st annual Software Freedom Day in which its International Open Source Network (IOSN) will educate Asian users on the benefits
of Free and Open source Software (FOSS). FOSS promotes several high-profile applications including OpenOffice, Mozilla, MySQL, and Apache." An anonymous reader says of the U.N. effort, "Events will be organised in Bangladesh, Brunei, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam on Saturday, August 28th." According to another anonymous reader, "Go Open Source, funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation and HP, expects up to 10,000 visitors at the various Linux install-fests around South Africa this Saturday, says the Mail & Guardian."
Sorry... early morning thought.
What would happen if other things in the world were free? What if budding designers and contractors demostrated their skills by building free pubic buildings?
Musicians and artists already use the free model to start their careers.
AC
The fact that Microsoft hasn't seen the future just shows that they resemble the record industry in the most simple ways. Both MS and the record industry don't want to understand that soon they may have to change their buissness model, so they're trying to fight tooth and nail to keep the old one, they don't care about the cost to consumers or the economy.
Just more proof that if you don't adapt you die.
(PS: First Post)
Isn't it great to see people like Mark Shuttleworth (second space tourist, and the First African in Space) investing in these kinds of worthy programmes?
Now if only someone can convince the SA government that cheap internet is VERY important to the economy. At the moment communication in South Africa is controlled by Telkom, a monopoly. They charge more than R800 (about US$120) per month for ADSL, and they cap your bandwidth to 3 gig a MONTH. There's a good reason for the so called "digital divide" in South Africa, it's the prohibitive cost. There's a great site highlighting the grievances against Telkom, called Hellkom.
It amazes me to no end how many people talk about "Linux apps" and Linux. We have the BSDs (which aren't encumbered by the GPL), we have other OSs like Syllable, NewOS, OpenBeOS, ReactOS. But it's always GNU/Linux that gets all the hype and press notes.
Mike Bouma, Amiga, Inc.
OK, somebody PLEASE tell me how these things are connected. Seriously, this is a pretty pathetic attempt to spin a news story. This is a follow-up how? Are these two events connected in any way? If not, then please just report the stories. Or perhaps the tagline should be changed to "Speculation for Nerds".
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Perhaps I misunderstand, but my impression was that one of the main points behind the whole free (speech) software movement is that most other forms of information already are free.
That is to say: Software is in quite an unusual situation, because the machine instructions are not nearly as useful as the source code from which they were derived. This is not the same as something like a book or a song, because even though there may be copyright restrictions on the distribution, those who do get it can still see and manipulate the actual building blocks of the information once they have it... at the very least for their own personal use.
What the GPL and "free" software movement does among other things is to make sure that if someone distributes the software, then they must distribute the source version at the very least, to ensure that the person getting it has all the same rights and abilities that they would normally have with other types of information.
An architect or builder probably won't build a free building as you've suggested, because a building isn't information in the traditional sense. (At least if they do, we're talking about something on a fundamentally different level.) But if an architect were to design plans for a building and sell them to a developer, the developer would naturally be able to adjust and perhaps continue re-distribute those plans... at which point whoever gets them can continue to do the same. Something like this isn't automatically possible with software, because it can be distributed in a form that can be used but not easily changed.
Similarly, some artists are giving their work away under a variety of free licenses, but those licenses aren't revolutionary to art in the same way that the GPL is revolutionary to software... (although perhaps they are in other ways). With or without those licenses, it's still naturally possible (legal or not) to obtain a song or an artwork, and derive something else from it. This is not so easy with closed source software.
I think the difference is that software information is directly used by computers whereas other blocks of information (at least those that are normally associated with distribution and trading) are directly used by people. You have to understand the words in a book to make use of it, but you don't have to understand the machine instructions in a software application... so the readable edition can be held back. Many software developers/businesses take advantage of the extra control-by-obscurity over the information that this technicality gives them. If we all had logic brains and could easily understand and manipulate the compiled software that was bought off the shelves, it wouldn't be as much of an issue. Among other things, the GPL attempts to remove that technicality and make software like most other types of information.
I'm not exactly a strong advocate of free software besides using it for most things. If anyone thinks I've missed something important, please elaborate.
Sometime in the 1940's, Nestle Corp approach Mrs. Ruth Wakefield, and purchased her famous 'Toll House Cookie' recipe. They named it the 'Nestle TollHouse Cookie."
Even though they paid handsomly for the recipe, they started printing it on the bag of chocolate chips, and giving it away. Why would Nestle do this?
Nestle does not make money by selling cookies, and they do not make money selling cookbooks. they make money by (among other things) selling Chocolate Chips.
By giving away the recipe, people not had a reason to buy their chips. They made money, indirectly, by purchasing that recipe and giving it away.
In a very real sense, they 'open sourced' this recipe. Since recipes are not patentable, all they could do was 'trademark' the name 'TollHouse'. If you look at a bag of Hershey's chips, Ghiardelli chips, etc, they all have the same recipe, just named differently.
You can use this recipe with no obligation... you could break up your own favorite chocolate bar, and not have to buy any chips. You could leave the chips out entirely, and add M&Ms if you want. If you can make your own cookie for about 15 cents, why would you go to a store in a mall about pay a dollar for a cookie (US Currency)? You are paying for convenience, labor, expertise, etc.
This is how Open Source makes money.
Now, information is fundamentally different than tangible property. With tangible property, you don't have it once you give it to someone. Information is not like that. So how does this change the equation?
Lets say I'm building a house. I may have to pay for the bricks and mortar, but how much does that really cost compared to the price of the house? The material for an individual brick is cheap (but not free). BUT, it takes labor, time, and expetrise to move it to where it needs to be, and assemble many of them into a structure. THIS is the majority of the cost. If I were to own the brick factory AND be the bricklayer, it might be 'worth it' for me to give away the bricks in order to charge for my time.
Open Source philosophies are not new... they just seem to be thought of as new because of the impact they are having in a relatively new marketplace.
-db