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John Terpstra on Challenges to Free Software
Telex4 writes "Anyone who has read John Terpstra's article on Groklaw about Intellectual Property (IP) rights will be interested to read an interview I did recently with John at KDE's World Summit. We talked about what IP means to the free software community, how we can drive GNU/Linux adoption, and how he thinks the IT market will change in coming years. He gives us a lot to think about in terms of what more we should be doing."
He gives us a lot to think about in terms of what more we should be doing.
Are we supposed to impose change on others? Is it just me, or are the most sweeping changes just gradually accepted - especially when current ideas need to be totally re-thought (i.e. Open vs. Closed Source)?
These days IP has spun out of control I think (in the patent office at least). You can get patents for things that are so common sense it's ridiculous. I liked on the Tonight Show when Dave Chapelle said he ran into this rich white guy, and when he asked how he got rich, the guy responded, "My family owns the patent for fire"
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
Terpstra's comparison of FLOSS to the Enlightenment and Reformation and of the negative reaction on the part of parts of the software and media industries to the reaction of the Church is interesting and I think well taken. We should remember that some countries in effect have still to undergo the Englightenment, that even in countries that did, many people remain who hold irrational and antiscientific views, and that in some countries the Counter-reformation was successful. The FLOSS movement is important for freedom and for technological progress, but precisely because it is important, its opponents will work hard to suppress it, and they may succeed.
Don't mod me down, I'm serious ... the warez scene is the biggest contributer making software free (in the financial sense), and it's healthy for the industry. Seriously, what percentage of the apps on your Windows machine did you pay for, inclusing the OS itself? I'm about 50%, mostly games. But more software stimulates the industry, and what we use at home is what we want to use at work - and there's where the real money is, in the corporate world. The software publishers know this too, which is why it is so easy to find keygens for MS and other popular products ... people know Windows and Photoshop because they pirated them at home, and they want to use it at work where businesses won't pirate software. That is also the reason why game software has such annoying copy protection you don't see elsewhere, a "free" copy doesn't help sell 100 corporate licenses. Unless you work someplace where they do install games at every desktop, then please tell me where to send a resume.
Ideas don't pass so much like candle flames as virii. There are sometimes mutations (for better or worse) as they pass from host to host. Current IP law seems pretty messed up in that one can patent a mutation of an already patented idea in such a way that it will prohibit pretty much anyone from making use of it. I don't think that jives with the original laws' intent, but it often has a big impact on free software.
While there is much overlap, at least compared to proprietary, being aware of the significant differences between Free Software, Open Source Software, and Shared Source software.
Sorry mod me down if you must, but I cannot respect anyone who
publishes in his own name, a book that is just the Samba-Unofficial-HOWTO. Did he give the royalties to the samba team that made the howto possible or pocket the cash?
I believe this man also had a long history as a SCO employee and would not be surprised if he still worked for them.
He talks a lot about supporting small and medium sized business. I think that is important too, which is why suso.org is going to be expanding to do OSS support specifically for small and medium sized business. But I think there needs to be a lot more support businesses around the world. Say, at least one for every city bigger than 50k people.
I think that a lot of businesses still want local support and get frustrated with "national based support" and are not making the switch because there is not much local support for Linux.
With the opening up our support business, I'm going to put together some information on how other businesses can get started on this. A central respository for everyone on how to get an OSS/Linux support business going would be really helpful to OSS.
Anyone else interested?
I agree with Mr Terpstra that migration from closed source technology to open source technology should be simplified
How about we start with migration of Win NT domain controllers to Samba domain controllers.
For over 2 years I have held off on upgrading our NT Servers to 2000 or 2003 Servers in hopes that we could migrate to Samba.
But I have yet seen a simplification of these migration path, unless you use roaming profiles. I don't know that many places where roaming profiles are utilized.
And in a small to medium size business where there are 25 to 100 computers, transfering profiles and file permissions can be very time comsuming and expensive.
To take Mr Terpstra's example of an Access database, I would rather do that, Oh wait, I already did that, but it was actually a SQL Server to PostgreSQL.
So I'm still waiting for a reasonable migration path from NT Server to Samba.
Just for your GEEWIZ collection. John worked at SCO while the whole IP lawsuits were going in full swing.