Is Some Software Meant to be Secret?

FP for Puffy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:36 · Score: 1, Funny

Caint nobody make first post
Caint nobody mod me down
Oh no
I got to keep on postin

Re:FP for Puffy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:19 · Score: 0

Thank god somebody modded this funny. It's got to be the most hysterical FP I've ever seen!
Re:FP for Puffy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:24 · Score: 0

Caint nobody spell can't?
Re:FP for Puffy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:42 · Score: 0

u got no cred, yo
Re:FP for Puffy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 12:25 · Score: 0

That is SO much older than Puffy.
Re:FP for Puffy by Zorilla · 2004-12-03 20:40 · Score: 1

I thought I told you that we won't post I thought
I told you that we won't post!

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It would be cool if it didn't suck.

What happens when it's not secret anymore? by lordkuri · 2004-12-03 09:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

Just like the issue with MS getting source stolen. How many problems can/will arise from relying on "no one will ever see this" when everyone can see it?

Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

Try asking Coca Cola the same question...

Here are your options:
1. Support software patents, and Microsoft will gladly lay it all out in the open.
2. Don't support software patents, and the only way for Microsoft to protect its IP is through obscurity. ... choose one
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:12 · Score: 0

Why do they need software patents when they already have copyright?
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:22 · Score: 0

3. Support the Open Source Community, Apple, and other more open competitors of Microsoft, spread the word, make MS lose business and die.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by INetEngineer · 2004-12-03 10:40 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why don't we send a clincher message to people that think source code ought to be "secret", by not giving them any comments, ideas, suggestions, and/or replies, because we want to keep them "secret".

"Hey, what do you think of this software?"

"Can I see the source code?"

"No! I need to be able to sell it!"

"Oh... I think nothing of it."

"What?!"

"I'm a consultant, I need to be able to sell my opinions!"

Oh wait... then we would just be propogating the "secrets".

--
--I smoked my sig.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-03 10:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

Software patents are not an inherently bad idea. What makes them bad in practice, and in the way they've been used in our legal system is two things:

1 - Software should NOT be simultaneously closed source and patented. They are two different protection schemes that are incompatable. Patents requires that you make your design and plans public and openly copyable so others can search on the patent archive and see what you're doing (and so that when you right to exclusivity ends, your idea is now in a public registry). In the case of software, that would be the source code, although pseudocode that doesn't actually compile, but merely teaches somoene how to write the software would probably fit the legal requirement (more akin to a blueprint than a cad/cam file)). The practice of allowing people to patent things based on vague fuzzy descriptions of algorithms should never have started.

2 - Patents in general (not just software) should not be allowed for ideas that are already known within the community of inventors (or programmers in this case). The Patent office doesn't bother checking this requirement anymore (or at least if they are attempting to do so they are obviously failing at it). When this isn't done, the owner of an idea ends up being the one with no scruples who decided to usurp ownership of the public idea first, rather than the one that thought of the idea first.

Fix those two problems first, and then you can talk about supporting software patents.

--
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:11 · Score: 0

The "closed source niche is shrinking?"

How is it a "niche" if it's the majority of software? How is it shrinking at all?
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Quattro+Vezina · 2004-12-03 11:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

2. Don't support software patents, and the only way for Microsoft to protect its IP is through obscurity. ... choose one

I'll choose this one, thank you very much. At least this way, some OSS project can always reverse-engineer Microsoft's stuff. Look at Samba, for example--it's actually runs better than Microsoft's own SMB implementation, and if software patents were involved, a higher-quality implementation simply wouldn't exist.

--
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by rzbx · 2004-12-03 12:05 · Score: 1

"Software patents are not an inherently bad idea."

I disagree completely with that statement.
All the problems you have stated are by-products of the patent system. Any system that gives a person or corporation legal control over an idea is simply providing means of maintaining a monopoly with the benefit of not being perceived as one and/or provides a system of corruption and waste. Look at some of the largest industries; automobiles, software, pharmaceuticals, etc. The largest corporations in this industry hold extremely large patent portfolios that could crush any competitor of much smaller size. Yes, there is still some competition in the market place. Yes, one can still enter the market, although with much difficulty in most cases. In the end, the patent system is a failure in its perceived intention. There is one major benefit of the patent system and even this can be accomplished with completely different rules. The benefit is disclosure. Yet even this has been alluded by some. There is far too much corruption in the patent system to even consider a fix. Do you expect those in the system and those benefitting from it to turn around and weaken it? Only if pressured to do so, would they weaken the system. Some changes will be made in the near future, but don't expect too much.

--
Question everything.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by FauxReal · 2004-12-03 12:27 · Score: 1

Just like the issue with MS getting source stolen. How many problems can/will arise from relying on "no one will ever see this" when everyone can see it?

While I think this is a vaild argument I don't think it's that critical of an issue. Mainly because proper coding is proper coding. Anyone who does rely on "no one will ever see this" should suffer the consequences of the market (the way it's supposed to react to bad products) when this happens. Of course we all know this doesn't allways happen.

It's a standards issue to me, I see the stolen source issue as a side affect of the real problem. Why is this and what can be done about it?

--
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Epistax · 2004-12-03 13:12 · Score: 1

Fine, I'll go with #1, with patents expiring in two months time. Being two months ahead of a competitor is more than enough to make an astonishing amount of money. After that, every piece of code is officially unowned, except of course for the legal responsibilities (liabilities) to the creator.

Everyone wins, except bad business.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by AstroDrabb · 2004-12-03 13:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

Um.... I have one for you:
1. You are an idiot
2. You are stupid
...Choose one.
The choose one thingy doesn't always work very well does it.
For item #1, how do you know this? Has Bill G told you this? No. MS has patented _plenty_ of software and where is all the Open stuff from them? Item #2 is just stupid and unfounded. Copyright and/or a license/NDA agreement is _plenty_ to protect a company. How many competitors would get away with copyright violation against MS once they let loose their lawyers?
As was pointed out in the rebuttal (which you probably didn't read), just don't release _any_ source until you get your product with new features X, Y and Z out to market. Once your product is out, then release the code. You already have the head start and it will take a while for competitors to play catch up. Also as the rebuttal pointed out and that I can personally attest to as a senior programmer of 8 years is that is is _far_ easier to implement a feature for scratch then pick up someone else code. The worst projects I get are where I have to pick up someone else code and fix it or add new features.

--
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by steeviant · 2004-12-03 14:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

Because software patents are to protect ideas, not inventions, like real patents.

Copyright already does what patents on real-world inventions do, in that they provide protection against direct plagiarism of someone's work for a period sufficient to commercialise that product.

Software patents protect ideas, so that if I come up with the idea of a piece of software that can find dead pixels on a CRT display by filling the screen with blue, green and red respectively, I can patent that idea, and prevent anyone else from using it. The specific implementation of that software is already covered by copyright, but idea of displaying a screenful of solid colour for the purposes of identifying display defects is not, so that's where patents come in.

Neat huh? so in a few years once all the blatantly obvious good ideas are patented, only developers armed with a bevy of lawyers and patents and prepared to grapple with other patent holders will be able to sell software in the U.S.

God bless the rest of the world where freedom is important.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by trewornan · 2004-12-03 14:13 · Score: 1

You pre-suppose that Microsoft has at some time, invented something. There is no evidence that this is the case (patents for rediculous things like clicking a button don't count).

I particularly object to Microsoft whining about IP when the entire company was founded on a CPM rip off.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by trewornan · 2004-12-03 14:24 · Score: 1

Err . . . Niche. a recess in a wall: a suitable or actual position in life or public estimation or the system of nature: a place in the market Not quite sure how prevalence is relevant.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 15:59 · Score: 0

First off patents vs. trade secrets are not a pure trade off - they commonly coexist within the same product. You completely ignore options for software patents other than a continuance of the current broken system. Most creative people recognize the value of protecting the right of a inventor to have sole rights over their invention for a limited time. One problem with software patents at the moment is the total lack of rigor in establishing what is an invention vs. what is a cleverly worded description of an idea commonly known to practitioners of the programmatic arts.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Shimmer · 2004-12-03 16:33 · Score: 1

Software should NOT be simultaneously closed source and patented. They are two different protection schemes that are incompatable.

Excellent point, well made. I agree.

--
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 17:40 · Score: 5, Interesting

Software patents are doomed for one simple reason.

The equivalence of two Turing machines is undecidable. Turing proved this as one of the results of the halting problem. Since turing machines are equivalent to algorithms, which are equivalent to recursive functions, this is a statement in mathematics that as such should be sufficient to disallow software patents on the basis that software is a mathematical function.

Where, then, can software patents stand? By definition, patents cover a method, hence an algorithm. Since there exists no way to determine if an algorithm infringes on a given patent, the patent office must backtrack and declare that algorithms need only be *similar to* a patented algorithm to infringe. But this is also undecidable for the same reason. An incredibly complex algorithm that produces the same output, given the same input, as a patented algorithm will be intractable to compare to the patent.

The reason the patent office is spewing software patents is that it has no method for determining prior art, no method for determining functional equivalence, and no method for reasonably denying every software patent after the courts have incorrectly ruled in favor of them.

Note that if you really wish to infringe on a software patent, it will always be relatively easy.

Given a function F(x) that is patented, do the following.

Create a function G(x,y) where y is meaningless, random, or in some way constructed from x such that applying G to x,y is equivalent to applying F to x. If necessary, encode x as y and apply H to y such that H(y) is equivalent to F(x). No patent court will be able to prove the equivalence. Should they rule that simply because two functions *produce similar (not exact, that is intractable) output, despite being vastly dissimilar*, they will have contradicted the very spirit and letter of patent law. The whole point was to issue patents for *specific* methods and devices, and encourage derivations thereof by other inventors. Such is progress. Owning the result of applying a mathematical function to all possible inputs is not progress, it is the darkest feudalism.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by dryeo · 2004-12-03 18:01 · Score: 1

Oh bullshit, everyone knows that Microsoft was founded when Bill Gates found some basic code in a dumpster. Then Bill did invent something, MINE, as he was bitching about people sharing his software which he stole fair and square.

--
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Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 18:39 · Score: 0

A niche refers to a small subset or section of something. Calling closed source a niche is laughable; closed source is the majority while open source is a very small niche.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by theLOUDroom · 2004-12-03 19:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

2 - Patents in general (not just software) should not be allowed for ideas that are already known within the community of inventors (or programmers in this case). The Patent office doesn't bother checking this requirement anymore (or at least if they are attempting to do so they are obviously failing at it). When this isn't done, the owner of an idea ends up being the one with no scruples who decided to usurp ownership of the public idea first, rather than the one that thought of the idea first.
Fix those two problems first, and then you can talk about supporting software patents.

The trouble is problem #2 isn't fixable.

Maybe when that patent office was created it made sense to have one organization the would claim to understand EVERY TECHNOLOGY ON THE PLANET in enough detail to decide if an invention is novel, but I submit that idea has become totally unworkable.

Instead, the patent office should admit what it has already become, a registry of "I invented this on this date." The presumption that a patent is valid because it has been rubberstamped by the patent office should be ceased immediately.
The validty of specfic patents can then be determined in court, as necessary, where both sides of the issue can call real experts from those fields.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by RoofPig · 2004-12-03 19:44 · Score: 1

A niche doesn't necessarily refer to something small. You just made that up or assumed it from the context you usually hear it in. It pretty much refers to a particular segment of something, not a particular segment just so long as it's a small one.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-03 20:18 · Score: 1

Your complaint isn't about software patents. It's about ALL patents. Would you agree that, in theory, software patents are not any *worse* than other sorts of patents (assuming the two points I mentioned are adressed)?

If so, then I don't see as big a problem as you since I see valid reasons for patents (to allow the little guy a chance - without them if you invent something, the big boys will crush you by just copying your idea in precise detail and using their marketplace leverage to shove you out of business.) The problem stems entirely from the fact that patents are being allowed to have too wide a scope. Instead of patenting one specific way of implementing something, as the patent system was designed to be used they are patenting vague generic concepts, which is an instance of problem #2 that I mentioned above.

--
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by tetabiate · 2004-12-03 23:32 · Score: 1

Software patents are useful in principle but
a very bad idea in practice, the reason is that
people always find legal ways to circumvent their
applicability or to enforce them to fight
competition. It is something like the tenth
commandement. In principle, either if one believes
or not in religion, one should not feel envious
at the goods of others, but in practice, honest
persons succumbe to temptation.
More legal studies on regulations or limitations
of the applicability of patents are needed.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Darren+Winsper · 2004-12-04 01:53 · Score: 1

Patents are meant to cover specific implementations of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 02:06 · Score: 0

Yes. And then, if it was a good consultant, his thoughts would be bought.

What is insightful with this? It's the way things work.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by twalk · 2004-12-04 04:13 · Score: 1

You were alright until you said "determined in court". Court costs are too expensive and land hardest on those fighting the patent. Instead, break the PTO into 2 parts, the first does the rubberstamping, the second only acts with a complaint and does an in depth look at the patent. The advantage is the 2nd stage will be able to get external prior art and help.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by edxwelch · 2004-12-04 06:53 · Score: 1

I followed you up til "Software patents are doomed for one simple reason."
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by theLOUDroom · 2004-12-04 07:25 · Score: 1

You were alright until you said "determined in court". Court costs are too expensive and land hardest on those fighting the patent.

First, the high cost of going to court is really a separate issue. I agree that it's a problem though. The court systems in the US are totally fucked, and a major reason for that is that you're only entitled to representation if someone tries to put you in jail, not if they try to ruin you financially.

Second, the solution I'm suggesting now puts the burden in court on the person that claims to have a valid patent, since it has never been "validated" before.
Right now there's this stupid presumption of validity because your application made it through the process. That forces the burden onto the person trying to defned themself. If they can't *prove* it invalid, they loose.
Without that silly presumption, the plaintiff is going to have to actually hire experts to prove that their claim is valid in the first place.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by JuggleGeek · 2004-12-04 07:44 · Score: 1

Software patents are not an inherently bad idea.
Yes, they are. If software patents had been allowed then, we would still be using VisiCalc - nobody else would be allowed to compete in the spreadsheet market. Lord knows what word processor everyone would be forced to use.
The software world changes very fast when patents don't get in the way. Software patents stifle development.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by rzbx · 2004-12-04 11:21 · Score: 1

There is always a lot of talk about the big corporations stealing the work of a lone inventor. But this happens all the time even with patents. Also, there are few people that could be considered lone inventors. Look around and you will see collaboration among many scientists, researchers, inventors, engineers, marketers, etc. Without a patent system, all that time being wasted fighting in courts, searching the patent databases, discussing infringement, calculating legal risk, filing for patents, consistantly having to go back and check your work against others "legal" versions, etc. Do people not realize all the problems that go along with patents? Even if the patent system was restricted by thsoe two rules you have come up with, most of the problems would still exist. I should point out that there is one good thing about the patent system, and it doesn't involve control. The advantage, as I've stated in the earlier post, is disclosure. The United States may have benefitted from the patent system for this one main advantage, but it is of little value today. One can argue all they want about preventing general concepts from being patented, but who decides what is general and specific? The courts do. The lawyers do. The patent office does. This is where the problem lies. One is forced to go through a legal system of idea control to determine whether their idea is new (patentable) or not. Can the "little guy" afford the legal fees if a competitor decides to pursue legal action? So how does the "little guy" survive? I ask you to take a moment and consider all the worst possible outcomes of having no patent system. If you wish, share them. I've spent a lot of time reading and thinking about this subject (at least 7-8 years now), and if I'm wrong about something, I want to know. I haven't been as active lately, because there is little I can do, but I stll take the time to learn more. Btw, if I'm being a little arrogant when it comes to this topic I'm sorry. Also, yes my argument is about all patents, that includes software patents.

--
Question everything.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 11:43 · Score: 0

Senior Programmer
Clermont, FL

That is all good and dandy. Do you have anything else you wish to complain about before we outsource your job to India?

Thank you! Come again!
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by steeviant · 2004-12-04 13:08 · Score: 1

That's what I thought too, before I heard of software patents.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 16:55 · Score: 0

This is only true in general, there are plenty of restricted but useful cases where you can decide things like whether or not a machine halts. This issue isn't really as hard as you're making it out to be; 2 different ways to add numbers together are, at a practical level, easy enough to distiniguish to a trained observer. It's like the definition of obscenity: "I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it."
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by p3d0 · 2004-12-04 18:59 · Score: 1

The validty of specfic patents can then be determined in court, as necessary, where both sides of the issue can call real experts from those fields.
No way. This just makes the system that much more inaccessible to the individual or small-time operator who can't afford a lawyer.

--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-04 20:09 · Score: 0

I won't bother to read points where people won't do me the courtesy of breaking things up into paragraphs. I don't have the time to waste on reading a long ramble where my eyes keep losing their place.

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Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by theLOUDroom · 2004-12-05 09:42 · Score: 1

No way. This just makes the system that much more inaccessible to the individual or small-time operator who can't afford a lawyer.

How so?
It's already massive expensive to obtain a patent, as opposed to registering copyright and if you're the defendant, you don't have any choice but to go to court now either.
The current system also actually much worse for small business than mine would be.

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by superpulpsicle · 2004-12-05 14:43 · Score: 1

Heh, we should just go one step further. Cause patenting in a capitalist society is even more incompatible. The idea is that someone don't steal the secret recipe, but we all know there is a generic brand to everything after being reverse engineered.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Tim+C · 2004-12-06 05:47 · Score: 1

This is slashdot, where everything that isn't actually a physical object should be free, and time and creative effort mean little or nothing, except for reputation and kudos, not something you can generally live on alone.

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It's official. Most of you are morons.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by p3d0 · 2004-12-06 07:44 · Score: 1

I guess I'm biased against any system that relies on the courts to settle patent issues, because that implies lawyers and legal costs and all kinds of things that weigh in favour of big businesses.
Having a patent issued should be a fairly reliable indicator that it's safe to disclose an idea without having someone else make all the money from it. Otherwise, what is it for? So if the patent office can't give some reasonable assurance that issued patents are valid, then I think they just ought to stop trying.
That basically sums up my point of view on the topic, but I must admit I haven't given it a great deal of deep thought. How does your system help the little guy?

--
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by mikefe · 2004-12-06 13:36 · Score: 1

Open source is where every company programmer, consultant and techie can put their effort into a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts.

The programmers gets to do less work because there are other programmers to spread it out with -- more or less. It typically tends to work out where each programmer/company has their specific areas of interest and you have several of such prople working together to some degree.

You get free QA from others who want to use your software which is invaluable.

Sure many might say that the consultant will try to make it harder to use to keep their client base. But even though there are consultants like that, others will invariably have their own direction to make it easier. What sysadmin or company programmer wouldn't want fewer support calls they have to field?

--
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Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-12 16:43 · Score: 0

Being a programmer for 8 years does not make one senior.

Judging from the IIS error page in the second link by Temporal · 2004-12-03 09:37 · Score: 3, Funny

I think we have a winner.

ahhh by nomadic · 2004-12-03 09:37 · Score: 3, Funny

Come on, that summary doesn't tell us anything. You want us to have to read the article or something?!

Re:ahhh by Eric+Giguere · 2004-12-03 09:47 · Score: 5, Informative

I can't say I'm too interested in the debate -- nothing new here, folks -- but I do like the reference Tim Bray made to Joel Spolsky's essay Things You Should Never Do, Part 1 about the dangers of rewriting code from scratch instead of trying to work with the existing code base. It's an old piece, but I hadn't come across it yet, and I like what he says. Go give it a read, then enjoy your weekend.
Eric
See Wiliam Shatner on my cereal box (soon to be updated)
Re:ahhh by bongoras · 2004-12-03 10:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

The interesting thing about Spolsky's essay -- and I think it's a very good piece -- is that its principle example is what a big mistake Netscape made by deciding to re-write Mozilla from scratch.
In fact, he calls that "the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make."
Excuse me while I piss my pants laughing. Ok... I'm back now.
That statement sheds light on another difference between one sort of software developer and another. It's not necessarily a matter of open vs closed source; it's a matter of intent. Spolsky sees Netscape's decision as disastrous, and from his perspective, he's right -- Netscape's stock went down the toilet and they lost millions.
But from another perspective, it was the perfect decision. They through out a bunch of lousy code that Andreeson wrote as an undergrad and replaced it with a real architecture. As it stands, that architecture has allowed the Mozilla foundation to produce Firefox. There's no doubt in my mind that if they were still working with Andreeson's hacked pile of crap, Firefox wouldn't have happened, IE would be the only web browser for Windows and the rest of us would be using Konqueror. And maybe Netscape's executive would have a few billion bucks more.... more power to them I guess, but speaking for myself, I'm glad they "screwed up!"
What I'm getting at is that if you think that the reason to develop software is to make a shitload of money, there are times when closed source is the best way to go. But if you think that the reason to develop software is to make the best software you can for joy or fame or the betterment of your fellow humans, then open source is almost always the right way to do it.
Re:ahhh by chromatic · 2004-12-03 10:38 · Score: 1

I think you're making Spolsky's point more specific than he intended it.

Sure, the result of the Mozilla rewrite is better now, but would Mozilla 1.0 still have taken over four years to come out if Netscape hadn't thrown away the entire codebase? Going from a project (barely) worth using to absolutely nothing for at least three years is a stupid decision no matter whether you're doing it for profit.

Mozilla was exceedingly lucky, not smart. I can't think of any other consumer-level software product that could survive for four years between releases.

--
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Re:ahhh by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:54 · Score: 0

The interesting thing about Spolsky's essay -- and I think it's a very good piece -- is that its principle example is what a big mistake Netscape made by deciding to re-write Mozilla from scratch.

In fact, he calls that "the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make."

Excuse me while I piss my pants laughing. Ok... I'm back now.

Excuse me? From a user's, and from an ISP's point of view, Netscape was essentially a dead duck for a matter of years. In the same time period, Microsoft released several new versions of Internet Explorer. Netscape went from being the default install on the majority of ISP install disks - basically the best possible position against the default installation of Internet Explorer - to being near obsolete software that no ISP bothered giving to their customers.

Being out of the market for such a long period of time was, in my opinion, the second-most important cause of the death of Netscape-the-company, right next to Microsoft's anticompetitive illegal actions. It lost them virtually all the goodwill and installed userbase that they had and lost them the most important tool they had to fight Microsoft with - the support of ISPs.

But from another perspective, it was the perfect decision.

That perspective isn't the perspective of a software company. The software company mentioned in the statement you are laughing at. It's the perspective of somebody who wants to build a high-quality piece of software when they don't have to worry about making money. It's not the perspective of a company that had an established business model, an established user-base, and a mature, if inflexible, codebase. Basically, what you are doing is taking the original statement, changing it so that it doesn't apply to the original scenario, and then laughing at the result. It's a straw-man attack.
Re:ahhh by slamb · 2004-12-03 11:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

There's no doubt in my mind that if they were still working with Andreeson's hacked pile of crap, Firefox wouldn't have happened, IE would be the only web browser for Windows and the rest of us would be using Konqueror.
Dude, you've got to read the whole article. Particularly this paragraph:
First, there are architectural problems. The code is not factored correctly. The networking code is popping up its own dialog boxes from the middle of nowhere; this should have been handled in the UI code. These problems can be solved, one at a time, by carefully moving code, refactoring, changing interfaces. They can be done by one programmer working carefully and checking in his changes all at once, so that nobody else is disrupted. Even fairly major architectural changes can be done without throwing away the code. On the Juno project we spent several months rearchitecting at one point: just moving things around, cleaning them up, creating base classes that made sense, and creating sharp interfaces between the modules. But we did it carefully, with our existing code base, and we didn't introduce new bugs or throw away working code.

He is most certainly not saying that once you've made a poor architectural decision, you are stuck with it for the lifetime of the project. Instead, he's saying that it is possible to change these things without discarding everything. (Throwing the baby out with the bathwater.)
There are also lessons here for when you are writing the first version. Here's one: if your code to open a window needs a lot of new workaround code, add a comment, for the love of God. Version control logs are often enough for fixing existing code, but a big block of code that only is important on one platform really should have a comment in front of it. And, if you have a test machine of the type needing the workaround, add a unit test. (And if you don't, maybe you should get one.) You should never get into that situation where you have that two-page long function for a tiny task and no idea what all that code does. If you do, someone will inevitably rip it out without realizing they've introduced a bug on a platform they're not using.
Then you can avoid problems like this one:
I laughed heartily as I got questions from one of my former employees about FTP code the he was rewriting. It had taken 3 years of tuning to get code that could read the 60 different types of FTP servers, those 5000 lines of code may have looked ugly, but at least they worked.

In which you're afraid to touch those 5,000 lines of code because there are so many odd situations. If you have tests for them, this isn't a problem. Can you get ahold of all 60 types of server? Maybe, maybe not. But you can at least get a good chunk of them for integration tests. And you can certainly write mocks for the behavior noted as problematic for the others.
Re:ahhh by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:09 · Score: 0

Mozilla is awesome, I agree.

But IE is still dominant.

If Netscape (the browser) was re-factored, could we have had a better alternative sooner? Maybe not perfect, but still better?

Joel says it so. I think the same. Six years is a lot of time. In this situation, you justified the end with the means. And I bet a lot of money is spent circumventing Internet Explorer's flaws.
Re:ahhh by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:10 · Score: 0

Netscape's stock went down the toilet and they lost millions.

Millions? Individual people lost that amount on the stock

But from another perspective, it was the perfect decision. They through out a bunch of lousy code that Andreeson wrote as an undergrad and replaced it with a real architecture.

They did it in the wrong way though. In the easy Joel explains why code gets all convoluted over time -- as it has to evolve to fix minor bugs. No amount of re-architecturing will get you around that some webpages offer up non-standard HTML and you have to fix it.

And what happens when you throw out old code? Well those bugs come back into the system. People download your software and it blows up with a "this page isn't bless as holy XHTML so I ain't going to display it" and then Joe User scratches his head and said "what's XHTML?"
Re:ahhh by imsabbel · 2004-12-03 11:21 · Score: 1

Even milestone 12 or 13 were lightyears ahead of the damn piece of shit that was netscape v4.7x
I was actually HAPPY to be able to use IE5 at university after a year of that...
And i guess that Mozilla would have been even better if they hadnt only scrapped the rendering engine, but everything else, too. konquerer with khmtl is a great example that rewriting something really broken isnt any faster or better then a completly clean start.

--
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Re:ahhh by d'fim · 2004-12-03 11:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

Mozilla was not "exceedingly lucky", it was open source.

Yet another example of the inherent strength of open source is the fact that Mozilla didn't *have* to release a product within a certain time frame in order to survive.

--
Adherence to the truth is a form of disloyalty.
Re:ahhh by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 13:43 · Score: 0

From the essay: That LoadLibrary call is ugly but it makes the code work on old versions of Windows 95.

At some moment you no longer have to support Windows 95 so why waste your time maintaining this code?

There are other reasons new code can be better than the old one. You can switch from C to C++ (with all this object-oriented stuff and exceptions and STL and all). You can pass around and store information in XML. There were many more major technologies in the recent years (and not so recent years) that affected programming. Some of them are easier to introduce when you rewrite an old system.

You can take some old code that worked well though. But is it a rewrite then? I guess it depends on how much is borrowed from old and how much is new...
Re:ahhh by rujholla · 2004-12-03 15:08 · Score: 0

However Tim Bray quoted that as a maxim saying that it is indeed harder to read code that write it. Spolsky was arguing the exact opposite point.

yes is good for companies by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:37 · Score: 0

But for people the best software is El Software Libre

Re:yes is good for companies by blackdragon7777 · 2004-12-03 23:48 · Score: 1

No for the best software for people is the software that works and does what it wants whether it costs money, is open source, etc.
Software should not be politicized. It's just software. It's not going to end your life if you use a program that you have to pay for.
Re:yes is good for companies by blackdragon7777 · 2004-12-03 23:50 · Score: 1

*does what they want rather than what it wants. Posting at 7 am isn't very easy when you haven't slept yet.

LOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:38 · Score: 0

Micro$oft wishes the bugs in their software would remain secret. ROLF.

Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:43 · Score: 3, Insightful

If the floor is laughing, you might want to stop rolling on it
Re:LOL by Mike+Savior · 2004-12-03 09:48 · Score: 1

You're right they want to keep their bugs secret, that way they can charge people $300 every few years for a whole box full of them.

--
space is pretty cool.
Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

And amazingly that comment is insightful.

Lets watch this one be also, I will never understand some mods.
Re:LOL by Couldn'tCareLess · 2004-12-03 10:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's the funniest thing I've read in a long time.
That it's been modded insightful... well, the carpet and I can't stop giggling.
Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:31 · Score: 0

Are you still bitching about this comment?

Get over it already, it was several months ago.

ROLF
Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 16:35 · Score: 0

I conclude I am a slashdot physcic. The mods who make dumb moderations come back and do it to the replys also.

Yes by killmenow · 2004-12-03 09:38 · Score: 5, Funny

My code is meant to be secret. If anyone ever saw it, I'd be ridiculed for my terrible coding style and lack of programming prowess. I don't think I could survive the shame.

Re:Yes by lucabrasi999 · 2004-12-03 09:40 · Score: 2, Funny

My code is meant to be secret. If anyone ever saw it, I'd be ridiculed for my terrible coding style and lack of programming prowess. I don't think I could survive the shame.
Is that you, Mister Gates?
Re:Yes by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:13 · Score: 0

I'm in the same boat. I'm a self-taught amateur. My code is ugly, non-reusable and generally monolithic. But it usually does what I want it to.

If I were to become proficient enough that I'd feel proud to have someone look at my code, I'd release it as open source. But until then, I'll keep the covers on.
Re:Yes by dprust · 2004-12-03 10:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

You can write your code in any style, it doesn't matter; some jerk will flame you for it because it isn't his style and he thinks he is god. It is particularly funny when that "god's" software is buggy and yours never crashes, is portable, and easy to read. Oh, they hate easy to read -- plain spoken code means that you just don't have the intelligence to write code that is hard to understand! It never occurs to them that communicating effectively is more intelligent than obsfucating to try to make yourself look smart. These people are hard to ignore, I'll admit, but we gotta do so. They're the kind of people where they're sitting behind their computer, afraid, and frustrated. They get off by hurting others smarter than them like the bullies that surely must have beat the crap out of them in grade school. And when that smarter person makes a mistake, like all people do, watch out! I had a collection of code I tried to port to the Amiga once that used all kinds of obscure features of GNU C++ that made it hard to port. Because I didn't know what one of them did and tried to work around it, you'd think I was dumber than a box of hair based on the flames I got back. I also treat warnings as errors -- OMG, how awful! It means I can't write optimized code (and of course, these warnings are the reason it didn't port!) Of course, to avoid it, I should have never tried, which is what they want because then they don't feel threatened.

The better your code is, the more angry they'll be. Have pity for them. They'd never talk that way to your face because they know they'd deserve a fist buried deep. And don't expect them to know context -- like putting simple example code on a posting to show a concept instead of being complete. Oh man, watch-out - it's self-worship time^2 when that happens!

PS: The more you do, the more you'll get this kind of flack, so you can turn it around and use it for a guage of just how hoopy a frood you are! After all, useless people who do nothing never gain the attention born from resentment!
Re:Yes by grioghar · 2004-12-03 10:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

Exactly.

My code for all my websites are RIDICULOUSLY horrible, but the function is there. I never claim to be efficient, but if anyone with a CS degree ever saw my Perl/PHP, I'd be laughed off the web...

now where's my php.ini file again? I need to go turn on global variables for this hack I'm workin' on...

--
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
Re:Yes by matrix0f8h · 2004-12-03 10:52 · Score: 2, Funny

Heh. You think that people with CS Degrees know how to code? How cute...
Re:Yes by matrix0f8h · 2004-12-03 11:06 · Score: 1

Troll. That is funny too as I have a CS degree.
Re:Yes by legirons · 2004-12-03 11:27 · Score: 2, Funny

"My code is meant to be secret. If anyone ever saw it, I'd be ridiculed for my terrible coding style and lack of programming prowess. I don't think I could survive the shame.
-- Is that you, Mister Gates?"

No, he said that he created some software...
Re:Yes by grioghar · 2004-12-03 11:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

heh, modded Troll.

I was trying to be complimentary, but I just had my friend who graduated with a CS degree as me the procedure to setup a wireless network in their house.

He, however, is a classic example of getting into the market for the money, but no love of the technology.

C'est la vie. He still compliments my websites I've worked on, but I think if anyone who considers code poetry saw my work, they'd gag.

--
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
Re:Yes by ben_rh · 2004-12-03 14:37 · Score: 1

It's OK Bill, we're a forgiving bunch...
Re:Yes by Lodragandraoidh · 2004-12-03 16:49 · Score: 1

You can have my keyboard when you pry my dead fingers from it...

--

Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Re:Yes by mrchaotica · 2004-12-03 17:35 · Score: 1

Couldn't be. Bill Gates has no shame.

--
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Re:Yes by DarkSarin · 2004-12-04 02:52 · Score: 1

Honestly, I think that there are a lot of us in the exact same boat here. I write mostly PHP code. I *have* written c/c++, and some javascript (blech!). But I still prefer php due to familiarity.

I think most of my code is ugly and hackish, but I always test to make sure errors are not going to creep up and bite me, and that the code is fairly stable.

Would my code EVER meet the beauty standards that some people seem to have? I doubt it, but that's okay.

--
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Re:Yes by tepples · 2004-12-04 06:19 · Score: 1

I want to point out that writing optimized code does not mean going beyond the boundaries of C89/C99.

It does when your GNU compiler is far from optimal, and you have to use the asm volatile keyword to rewrite the inner loop of your project's rasterizer, audio mixer, compression code, etc. in assembly language in order to get it to run in real time.
Re:Yes by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 16:42 · Score: 0

My code is meant to be secret. If anyone ever saw it, I'd be ridiculed for my terrible coding style and lack of programming prowess. I don't think I could survive the shame.

Nah, you've got it backwards. Look at Linus: instead of shame, the guy gets worship.

I think the point has been made. . . by Betelgeuse · 2004-12-03 09:38 · Score: 3, Funny

Ha! Tim's page (the open-source advocate) is easily reachable, and is having no problems, but Joe's page seems to be experiencing a sounds slashdoting.

Excellent.

--
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.

Re:I think the point has been made. . . by imess · 2004-12-03 09:41 · Score: 3, Funny

because it's supposed to be "closed."
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by BitwiseX · 2004-12-03 09:42 · Score: 1, Funny

The point that open source = more bandwidth and better servers? Slashdot effect. Proof positive that open source is better!
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by killmenow · 2004-12-03 09:49 · Score: 3, Funny

Yes, that's it! I bet the routers moving those packets between you and Tim's web site are all XORP. And all those routers between you and Joe's site are Cisco...That proves it!
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by wildwood · 2004-12-03 10:01 · Score: 3, Funny

"All right, where is the answer? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you click and we both serve pages, and find out who is right, and who is slashdotted."

--
normal(adj)- people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots [DECS]
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by ad0gg · 2004-12-03 10:04 · Score: 4, Funny

Its not getting a slashdotting. He's running win2K workstation instead of server and is only allowed 5 connections on IIS. Thats why IIS error message is very responsive and says forbidden and not a Server 500 error.

--
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:07 · Score: 0

With open source software, arbitrary limits on use (such as number of http clients connected at once) dont (and cant, feasibly) exist.
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by ndogg · 2004-12-03 10:09 · Score: 1

I think Joe has gone to such an extreme that he even wants his opinions to be secret!

--
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by UnknowingFool · 2004-12-03 10:26 · Score: 1

FYI:
www.tbray.org
Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Debian GNU/Linux PHP/4.1.2 mod_jk/1.1.0
www.joemarini.com
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Both of them use PHP as a scripting language so you can draw your own conclusions.

--
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by MWelchUK · 2004-12-03 10:44 · Score: 1

He's running win2K workstation instead of server and is only allowed 5 connections on IIS.
Ahh and there in lies the problem of paying in the order of £70 (OEM) for the workstation version rather than £680 (5 CAL) for the server version. Or of course, £50 for SUSE 9.2 Professional.
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by fatjesus · 2004-12-03 10:46 · Score: 1

Ha! Not only is Tim's site winning, but it's getting approximately twice the load (2 articles vs 1).
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by ad0gg · 2004-12-03 11:14 · Score: 1

Its not £680 for the server version of an IIS server. Try £170 for Windows Server 2003 web edition.

--
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by Mmm+coffee · 2004-12-03 11:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

Please note that the 2K Workstation's EULA states that you can not have more than five network connections to your machine at once. Failure to do so voids the EULA, and thus makes your paid for version as illegal as a copy downloaded off p2p.

All Free Software/Proprietary Software discussions aside, the Freedom aspects of Free Software alone makes it more valuable to me than closed software. At least I can do what I want with my hardware and still be legal.
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by MWelchUK · 2004-12-03 11:41 · Score: 1

Appologies, I was looking for 2000, not 2003 and a quick glance on a few sites lead me to prices in the order of £680.

Still I think my point still remains that both versions of windows are more than the £50 for SUSE 9.2 Professional, A high price to pay for something that could quite easily be done with debian or other distro for free!
Re:I think the point has been made. . . by ModMeFlamebait · 2004-12-04 03:41 · Score: 1

The point that open source = more bandwidth and better servers? Slashdot effect. Proof positive that open source is better!

He probably couldn't afford more bandwidth after paying for all those software licences :P

--
Pavlov. Does this name ring a bell?

Open/Closed by yetdog · 2004-12-03 09:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

I am a huge proponent of open-source, but... Writing code isn't a trivial process. Writing good code is extremely difficult, and I feel is a skill that should be well compensated for.

Re:Open/Closed by Camel+Pilot · 2004-12-03 09:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

Indeed however let the coding individual who has rights to their the code determine the means they wish to be compensated
Re:Open/Closed by 0racle · 2004-12-03 09:50 · Score: 1

Are you suggesting that they don't?

--
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Re:Open/Closed by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:50 · Score: 0

In most successful companies, the people who code don't own the code, it's owned by the company. The coders just get a salary or hourly wage or some other similar compensation. So the final decision often isn't in the coders' hands. Which isn't necessarily bad since coders are good at coding, but not necessarily good at business.
Re:Open/Closed by cmowire · 2004-12-03 09:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

True.

There's some responses to that, however.

First, most of the bigger open-source projects have some sort of funding and support structure. People pay for somebody to do things that *they* want to do and pay for the ability to have somebody come over and fix stuff.

In a sense, if there's enough people who need the same thing, they can cooperate in much the same way as standards are constructed. Remember, open source projects don't have many of the expenses as a pre-packaged concern.

But, also, I think there's a fine line between open-source and you-get-the-source that people sometimes skip over. Meaning, there's not necessarily as much harm in QuarkXPress's source code being on the CD that you purchase as people would like to think.

--
Gentoo Sucks
Re:Open/Closed by Apathetic1 · 2004-12-03 10:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

I've written a few contracts. I'm not a professional developer by any means (I'm a student at the moment) but when I sell software, the code is included. I don't license under the GPL but I do stipulate that they can use it, modify it and distribute it internally as they see fit, making it clear that they can only expect free support if they are using an unmodified version. My customers were happy because they could make changes if they needed to and I was happy because I've still been well compensated.

It's not Open Source in terms of OSI or FSF but it's better than giving them nothing but a black-box binary.

--
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
Re:Open/Closed by Linux-based-robots · 2004-12-03 10:15 · Score: 1

I hope you're not implying that the only way to fund software is by restricting people with draconian copyright measures. I think the OSS model has proven that is completely unnecessary.
Re:Open/Closed by Camel+Pilot · 2004-12-03 10:28 · Score: 4, Informative

sorry I was terse and not clear.

McBride wanted to somehow classify the GPL as anti-copyright since there is no payment exchange or financial gain by the holders. Of course a monkey could see thru McBides twisted logic.

Linus adroitly pointed out that the term 'financial gain' that is used in us copyright includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works. this means that some coders prefer to be compensated by getting access to a larger body of code in exchange for contributing their code.
Re:Open/Closed by RealAlaskan · 2004-12-03 10:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

Writing code isn't a trivial process. ... I feel is a skill that should be well compensated for.
True. I can think of two replies.
First:
Given that you've written a useful program for which you should be compensated, why would you assume that open source licensing would prevent that? Most programmers (everyone says) work for companies which use their work internally. Only a small minority work for companies which sell shrinkwrapped software, and some of those companies are selling (among other things) shrinkwrapped GPLed software, e.g., Novel, Suse, Mandrake, IBM and RedHat.
So, even if the GPL were the only legal way to distribute software, most programmers would keep on getting compensated about the same way they are now. The others would probably wind up getting compensated in a different way for the same work.
Second:
I just dug a hole in your yard. I worked very hard. Pay me.
The point? Hard work isn't enough to justify compensation: it has to be useful. Of course, you knew that already. I just wanted to make that point because that other guy who's reading this post hadn't thought that part through.

--
See what I've been reading.
Re:Open/Closed by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:00 · Score: 0

Yes ! That's why when i buy a laptop, i have to compensate Microsoft for the work done by Linux writers
Re:Open/Closed by dark_requiem · 2004-12-03 11:30 · Score: 1

I'm rather new to the world of open source, but I have a couple of initial impressions, and this seems like the right time/place to see if they are right. Let me start off by saying I do favor open source, but I also believe that one should ALWAYS have the option of keeping their code proprietary. I've been reading the various Open Source licences, and if I understand them correctly, I much prefer the BSD-style licence to the GPL. If I am understanding it correctly, if code is GPL'd, and I want to use it even partially as the basis for a derivative work, no matter how trivial the GPL'd code, I would have to release all my code under the GPL, which would prevent me from having any proprietary code. With BSD (again, if I understand this correctly) licencing, I can keep my code proprietary, so long as I acknowledge the author of the open source code I used. Because of this, the GPL severely inhibits the ability to keep proprietary code, and I don't think a company can produce a long-term sustainable business model based soley on OSS.

I know that last sentence has some of you reaching for your flamethrowers and loading up the napalm, but wait! If a business model is based soley on OSS, then the only money they can really make is money from service and support. The product itself can always be obtained free of charge, so someone would only pay for it if they get things like printed manuals, tech support, or training. With Linux distributors, this is currently working well. But what happens if Linux becomes a very common OS? There would gradually be more and more people with a working knowledge of Linux, so its use would require less training and there would be less of a demand for tech support. Those businesses relying exclusively on profits from support, without having a proprietary codebase that brings them a profit, would start to see their business falter. Because of this, I believe that a sustainable business model needs to incorporate OSS into the proprietary model. This would enable companies to have the profit of their proprietary programs, while still supporting OSS (and gaining from its use, I don't believe in giving something for nothing). The circumstances where this presents problems are obvious: a little company called Microsoft. Why? Because the best candidate for an Open Source project is a complete operating system. And what brings most of MS's profit? Their operating system. For Microsoft to begin supporting OSS would destroy their existing business. The winners of the OSS/Proprietary integration would be those companies producing highly specialized software. As the parent poster pointed out, some code is far from trivial to produce. Such programs can be sold at substantial profit, and if it is unlikely that there are many people in the OSS community to produce an OSS equivalent, it only makes sense to keep such code proprietary to profit from it. At the same time, said company could continue to contribute to such Open Source projects as they find useful and would like to see developed further. In this situation, everyone wins: OSS is advanced, while proprietary code is maintained.
Re:Open/Closed by LO0G · 2004-12-03 11:58 · Score: 1

There are times when openness works just fine.

But instead of asking what happens if Adobe picks up on how Quark implemented some feature in Quark, what stops Adobe from shipping "Quark Express, by Adobe"? It's open source - most open source licenses (not all) don't restrict someone else from selling the open sourced code as their own.

It IS possible to license the source code in such a manner that precludes someone else from producing a commercial product based on your source code (that allows you to meet your obligations). In that case, you have an option - you can sue the offending company (assuming they're in a country that abides by US laws).

On the other hand, if a corporation tried to release their code under a restricted license (say one that retains their patent rights), they get roasted by the GPL zealots for not following the spirit of open source (which is free as in air as opposed to free as in beer like the first option).

And there's just about no way for a corporation to GPL (or BSD) their source code. If you're a corporation, you have a fiduciary responsiblity to your shareholders to maximize your profits. When you're a corporation, you need to use today's profits to finance tomorrow's engineering costs (or the loans that you took out to for the development costs of the current product). It doesn't matter if you're Quark or Microsoft, or Adobe, or Oracle, or Joe's software, new code costs money, and you have a legal obligation to your stockholders to make back the money you spent on that development and to maximize the ruturn on their investment. If you don't do that, you can literally go to jail (ask the Rigas family about that sometime). If you were to open source the products you make money from, unless you have an alternative strategy for making money off those products, open sourcing the products abrogates your fiduciary responsibilities, and once again, you can find yourself in jail or at least in lawsuits up to your eyeballs that will suck off all the profits you once had.

Now it IS possible to make money off of GPL products. You do that not by selling the products, but by selling intangables related to the products like the servicing and support of those products. Anyone can produce the exact same product you did, but they can't provide the intangables in the same way. You also have an added benefit to working with open source products - you can in effect completely outsource your product development - you don't have to spend those millions of dollars developing a cool new product, instead, you can take the products that the open source community makes and sell those instead. But if you're developing product using this model, then openness works just fine - since you're not going to be making money from your development staff, you can be as open as you want. On the other hand, the work that your development staff does isn't going to be of strategic value to your company - your product can't have an advantage over its competitors, since the competitors are running exactly the same code that your product is. The billable hours that you have as you service and support the open source products can be quite profitable to a service-oriented company, but that is a totally separate part of the organization from the areas that do product development from a financial standpoint. Of course, the service and support divisions don't care (mostly anyways) whether they are servicing and supporting an open-source product or a close-source product; they still write code and support people who use the CD tray as a coffee holder. The billable hours might be a bit more on open-source since the company can charge each hour of product development to "customize" the open-source, but from the larger perspective, that detail becomes irrelevant to the bottom line.

So if you're a corporation making money from GPLed open source code, you don't gain a tangible financial benefit from your development efforts. You do gain intangible benefits, and they shouldn't be underestimate
Re:Open/Closed by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 13:18 · Score: 1

Meaning, there's not necessarily as much harm in QuarkXPress's source code being on the CD that you purchase as people would like to think.
True. But the fact that that douchebag worked (as a manager? many engineers there are/were good; many managers not) at Quark nicely explains his opinions about closedness.
If you think Microsoft is bad, be glad you don't know Quark. Here's a company that deliberately added incompatibilities to its file format (including both encrypting AND obfuscating content... obviously encryption is kind of obfuscation, since key is already contained in the file), just to try to prevent "big bad Adobe" from implementing import. It was a statement saying Quark (and Xpress by extension) can not compete on its own merits, but only by abusing its market leader position. And saddest thing is, even some engineers were excited about such stunts. :-/
The company went downhill, when its geekish founder left to focus on snowboarding, and left Quark for the moneywhoring mini-Hitler that fully owns it now.
Re:Open/Closed by lowe0 · 2004-12-03 13:44 · Score: 1

Hey, that's the free market. If you don't like it, there are vendors you can buy non-MS laptops from... my laptop shipped without Windows.
Re:Open/Closed by nathanh · 2004-12-03 17:57 · Score: 1

I am a huge proponent of open-source, but... Writing code isn't a trivial process. Writing good code is extremely difficult, and I feel is a skill that should be well compensated for.

I agree. But trade secrets (for that's what closed source is all about) aren't the only way to ensure you are compensated. Many products in the marketplace are there without the benefits of trade secrets, yet their companies are profitable.
Re:Open/Closed by ClosedSource · 2004-12-03 20:30 · Score: 1

There seems to be a common misconception on Slashdot that software is either shrinkwrapped or developed in-house for internal use.

There is also custom software developed by 3rd parties and a mountain of embedded code that fall in neither category.

Even in those cases where the code is developed in-house for the company's own use, there's no particular reason why the company would want their competitors to have the source.

If there's some GPL'd code available that does everything a company needs, then they can just reduce the programming staff. If not, why would they GPL their own internal development so that their competitors can save money on their own staff?

The idea that a world where all software is licensed under the GPL is not going to negatively impact the economics of the programming profession is very difficult to believe.
Re:Open/Closed by danila · 2004-12-04 00:18 · Score: 1

Well, that's why programmers have salaries, even though who work for OSS companies. This has no relation to whether the code should be eventually released.

--
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Re:Open/Closed by cduffy · 2004-12-06 02:06 · Score: 1

If there's some GPL'd code available that does everything a company needs, then they can just reduce the programming staff.
Yup. Most people consider reducing cost centers to be a Good Thing.
If not, why would they GPL their own internal development so that their competitors can save money on their own staff?
So that they can save money on maintenanace, of course. My company uses a GPLed, 3rd-party VPN solution, and some GPLed 3rd-party software to make it easier to use. We made our own modifications. If we wanted, we could have kept those to ourselves (since the GPL only requires us to distribute our modified source to the people we distribute the binaries to, and the source stays internal). That would be stupid, though: It'd mean that every time a new upstream version came out, we'd need to port our patches up to play with it. That gets expensive -- especially if you're hiring someone like Timesys to do it for you. (Additionally, since we submitted our patches upstream [except for some very small changes we're keeping in-house] we've had 3rd-party bugfixes and improvements submitted; if we'd kept our patches to ourselves, we'd still have these bugs).
The idea that a world where all software is licensed under the GPL is not going to negatively impact the economics of the programming profession is very difficult to believe.
The idea that the economics of the programming profession aren't going to change dramatically anyhow is pretty damn hard to believe, too.
I loved the Demotivators poster on consulting: "If you aren't part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem". Sure, that money spent prolonging the problem (of expensive maintenance of internal infrastructure code) is going to go away in part -- but I'm part of the solution, thank you much, and screw 'yall if you can't keep up.
Re:Open/Closed by ClosedSource · 2004-12-08 09:05 · Score: 1

"So that they can save money on maintenanace, of course"

In your example, you've made some tweaks to software that was largely written by others, so your release of modified code has little impact on competitors who could get most of the functionality without your help. There's a lot of code, however, that doesn't fall in to this class.

"The idea that the economics of the programming profession aren't going to change dramatically anyhow is pretty damn hard to believe, too."

Interesting, but not relevent to my argument.

"but I'm part of the solution, thank you much, and screw 'yall if you can't keep up"

I don't know if the major problem of the profession is "expensive maintenance of internal infrastructure code" or not (perhaps because I've never been involved in "internal infrastructure" development), but don't you have to be ahead before the others need to catch up?
Re:Open/Closed by cduffy · 2004-12-08 11:08 · Score: 1

In your example, you've made some tweaks to software that was largely written by others, so your release of modified code has little impact on competitors who could get most of the functionality without your help. There's a lot of code, however, that doesn't fall in to this class.
Yup, and whether that software should have its source released depends on the circumstances. Go read ESR for a discussion of the economic considerations involved in making said decision.
...don't you have to be ahead before the others need to catch up?
Quite so.

Beautyfull... by Zx-man · 2004-12-03 09:39 · Score: 1

...after just several post's the article is already slashdotted... Or, perhaps,it meens we've been given a worng link ?!

Re:Beautyfull... by somethinghollow · 2004-12-03 09:47 · Score: 1

I thought I had the worng link but then realized it might be the wrong linkg. At which point I navigated to the root, and then realized it was, in fact, a 403 error (not a 404). That means /. not bad URL.

God, I hope I didn't spell anything wrong (except the word I meant to)...
Re:Beautyfull... by Moofie · 2004-12-03 10:48 · Score: 2, Funny

linkg

BALEETED.

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!

Windows ME by lateralus_1024 · 2004-12-03 09:39 · Score: 0

Proof that some Operating Systems were meant to be secret.

--
If you think /. comments are bad, check out Digg.

Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:40 · Score: 1, Funny

I would tell you, bet then I'd have to kill you.

Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by winkydink · 2004-12-03 09:49 · Score: 1, Insightful

This is Slashdot.
Apple GOOD
Microsoft BAD
We don't need more open source, we need more open minds.

--
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by saintp · 2004-12-03 09:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think the difference between Quark and iChat -- which, I agree, was not very well stated -- is that iChat contains some magic that no one has figured out yet. When a new version of Quark is released, competitors might sit up and say: "Hey, that's a neat feature. Let's duplicate it!" There's essentially no advantage to closing the source, since people will clone it anyway.
When iChat was demoed at MacWorld, competitors sat up and said: "J.C. on a pony. How the fuck did they do that?!?" They can't clone it, because there's too much black-box magic, which is maintained by the fact of being closed.
That's how I understand it, at least.

--
Another one bites the dust
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by xetaprag · 2004-12-03 09:55 · Score: 1

If no one is going to create a competive product, then what's the point? What use would it be? There is only two I can think of: People would strip parts out to use in other projects, in which case MS is giving free work away at worst or at best is educating its competition.
MS has paid people to write this code. If I paid a bunch of people to write code, I'd want to be compensated if someone eventually made money from it. OS should begin, persist, and end as OS.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by LiquidCoooled · 2004-12-03 09:58 · Score: 1

Absolutely correct.

I got into open source software long before most authors had the bandwidth to supply the source by default.
Today's linux enthusiasts are the same folks who published into public domain libraries and magazine articles.
Most authors back then would gladly supply the code on request, and would be more than happy to give people a walk around the application.

--
liqbase :: faster than paper
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by RonnyJ · 2004-12-03 10:06 · Score: 1

Perhaps Quark could have waited until competitors caught up and then released the special code under the GPL.
It'd be good to see more companies releasing code like this - a good example would be iD, releasing Quake's source code under the GPL.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Dorothy+86 · 2004-12-03 10:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

Which features of iChat are "magic?"
I use iChat daily, but i don't really know anything "magical" about it...

--
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by JohnGrahamCumming · 2004-12-03 10:14 · Score: 1

If no one is going to create a competive product, then what's the point? What use would it be?

It would be very nice to have "old" operating systems lying around in a form that enables them to be ported to different platforms, or used to keep some ancient piece of software alive.

At some point Microsoft is going to stop shipping operating systems that are compatible with old software that runs on Windows 95. There are people out there who don't want to upgrade, or can't upgrade because there's nowhere to upgrade to because the application they know and love doesn't work past Windows XXX.

This is a major issue people trying to preserve computer history. If old OSes are released under the GPL then the code can be examined and appropriate emulators written. For example, imagine that we have an old device that has a Windows 95 driver. It will be nice in 50 years time to turn on that device, see if it works and then decide to try to interface it. If we can get the appropriate electronic connection then a driver is going to be handy. If there are no OSes around that can load the Windows 95 driver then a GPL driver will enable us to build a new one.

John.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by saintp · 2004-12-03 10:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't think the magic gets released until Tiger. Did you see the MacWorld when Tiger was unveiled? One of the improvements was to iChat, to let you video-conference with up to four participants in split-screen. It was pretty crazy.

--
Another one bites the dust
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by BrynM · 2004-12-03 10:23 · Score: 2, Interesting
For example, surely it wouldn't hurt Microsoft if they GPLed Windows 95.
It would hurt them for a couple of reasons:
- Everyone could see where they may have cut corners, written needlessly redundant code or were just plain sloppy. Not good PR. Especially in their eyes.
- They still have patents (and other IP) pertaining to lots of stuff in Win 95. In their view, GPLing such code would be exposing those patents to unnecessary risk of infringement.
- People would fork it and not get the next release of their products. They would rather see you buy a copy of XP or 2K.
You may want to scream FUD at me, but I think in some ways they would be justified in believing these things. You may think differently (hint), but their legacy code is part of their legacy business model.
Win 95 was a multi-layered beast with parts of DOS and Win 3.x, so saying "GPL Win 95" is actually saying that they should GPL a combination of things. Perhaps it would be easier to hope they would GPL bits of it, like say the FAT driver.
--
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Moofie · 2004-12-03 10:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

OK, they skew two video feeds and put all three in a frame. I don't really see how crazy that is. I mean, it's neat and all, but it doesn't seem "magical".

I love my Powerbook, and I'm going to buy Tiger as soon as I can get my grubby hands on it. But the iChat thing is just kinda neat, not "magic".

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Apathetic1 · 2004-12-03 10:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

One alternative is that a company that's developing code could decide to release their old code after some time has elapsed. For example, surely it wouldn't hurt Microsoft if they GPLed Windows 95. No one's going to create a competitive product from it

Microsoft's biggest OS competition right now is their own obsolete versions. I have no intention to upgrade to XP or Longhorn on my Windows computers (information for the curious: I have two Windows machines, an OpenBSD machine and a dual-boot Win/Lin laptop) because Windows 2000 does everything I need.

None of the commercial closed source software that has been Open Sourced has relied on control and vendor lock-in in the same way that Microsoft's products do. The worst thing that could happen to Microsoft is loss of control and that's exactly what an open Windows 95 would do. I'd be willing to bet that Microsoft would be happy if every obsolete version of Windows were to spontaneously self-destruct because it would mean continued revenue and furtherance of control.

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My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by JavaNPerl · 2004-12-03 10:57 · Score: 1

I agree about opening up the code after some period of time... I believe one of the "costs" of a patent should be that you are required to open source patented code once your patent has expired. Also vendors should be required to open source code after they end support for it, say after 18 months w/o support for a product they would be required to open source it, minus any code they licensed from other vendors or any code which is still under patent.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by laughingcoyote · 2004-12-03 11:06 · Score: 1

This is precisely why laws are needed specifically allowing reverse-engineering as soon as any given company decides to stop adequately supporting a piece of software. I agree that a company has the right (even if it's not always the best strategy) to keep their code proprietary for the purposes of making money off of it and keeping unique features unique while they are selling, marketing, and supporting it. They do not, however, have the right to do so in order to force a version less than 10 years old into obsolescence and force users to upgrade.

--
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by radish · 2004-12-03 11:56 · Score: 1

How is that different from, say, CuSeeme? I've had 20 people on screen at once on that, and that was several years ago.

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---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by ozric99 · 2004-12-03 12:10 · Score: 1

It's different because with iChat the people are fully clothed....
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by radish · 2004-12-03 13:10 · Score: 2, Funny

Hmm. So +1 again for CuSeeme :)

--
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Lehk228 · 2004-12-03 13:35 · Score: 1

so rendering up to four split screen video streams is hard? ...ok if you say so.

--
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by mcrbids · 2004-12-03 13:42 · Score: 1

One alternative is that a company that's developing code could decide to release their old code after some time has elapsed. For example, surely it wouldn't hurt Microsoft if they GPLed Windows 95. No one's going to create a competitive product from it, and if they removed their trademarks from it, they could free it and allow others to maintain it.

This idea has been pretty well decimated here on slashdot. However, one effect that's seldom acknowledged is the "torpedo effect".

See, OpenOffice is Open because Sun wanted to torpedo Microsoft's big cash cow, MS Office. Open Office is a fiscal torpedo, arranged primarily to suck some of the air out of Microsoft. (and, from what I see, it's working)

Often, this "torpedo effect" can happen when a company goes out of business, or decides to change strategies. (EG: IBM's Cloudscape, Borland's Interbase) In this case, it's more like a land mine left by retreating infantry - the battle is lost, but some collatoral damage is left behind to dismay potential future competitors in some related field.

I guess people don't want to acknowledge that OSS is often provided because of its power to destroy competition rather than because of a need to be loved by "the community".

--
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by vsync64 · 2004-12-03 14:43 · Score: 1

I don't have any illusions as to the reasons for support of OSS by large corporations. However, you say this as if a balancing of adversarial interests is a negative. In other systems it's called "checks and balances", and tends to be rather highly regarded.
As a side note, I can assure you -- having worked at Sun -- that the goal of OpenOffice was not merely to "suck some of the air out of Microsoft". OpenOffice (and the branded version, StarOffice) can run on Solaris/Sparc just as it can on Win32/x86. If enterprise users can be persuaded to migrate from MSOffice/Win32/x86 to OpenOffice/Win32/x86, they might later be persuaded to migrate from x86 workstations to a high-powered Sun server and SunFire terminals. At that point Sun has it made; they can sell systems, expansion components, service contracts, etc.

--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by ben_rh · 2004-12-03 14:47 · Score: 1

For example, surely it wouldn't hurt Microsoft if they GPLed Windows 95

That's a good idea. The first step to healing a past hardship is to share the pain with others.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by vsync64 · 2004-12-03 14:52 · Score: 1
Your Windows 95 example ignores the fact that Microsoft's product releases have improvements that become more and more incremental over time. For example:
- DOS/16-bit Windows to NT 3.51 provided a properly architected, natively 32-bit, cross platform kernel with preemptive multitasking.
- NT 3.51 to NT 4.0 provided an entirely new user interface, faster performance, etc.
- NT 4.0 to 5.0 provided Active Directory.
- NT 5.0 to 5.1 provided ... um ... themes.
In many cases newer versions actually provide a functionality regression. Note that many of the performance gains in NT 4.0 came from moving the video drivers into ring 0, thereby reducing overall system stability. Also notice that the contextual help in Office 2003 is completely useless, for example.
With the speed that community-maintained projects tend to implement features once a critical mass of basic functionality is attained, Microsoft could very easily hurt their own future business by releasing older versions of their code to the public. They would potentially end up in the same situation as a free software vendor: trading on their reputation as the original authors to provide customizations and technical support. And we all know how bad Microsoft tends to be both at caring about the needs of the individual business, and at providing technical support.
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by mcrbids · 2004-12-03 14:53 · Score: 1

If enterprise users can be persuaded to migrate from MSOffice/Win32/x86 to OpenOffice/Win32/x86, they might later be persuaded to migrate from x86 workstations to a high-powered Sun server and SunFire terminals. At that point Sun has it made; they can sell systems, expansion components, service contracts, etc.

And that's part of the equation. The fact that it's cross-platform was present when Sun first bought Star Office.

The fact that it's open source is due to the "torpedo effect".

--
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by zifferent · 2004-12-03 16:44 · Score: 1

I believe one of the "costs" of a patent should be that you are required to open source patented code once your patent has expired.
Important point. Why is it that software patents are special?
Let me illustrate my point.
If I was to gain a patent for physical object x. i would need to provide not only a description but also my plans and a working model of the object. Hence, my competitors can pull up my patent and see what I've done, but not copy it precisely because it is patented.
Why are software patents special in that only a technical description is necessary? I think they should also provide a sample of the code to prove its implimentation. Therefore when the patent expires (20 years or so) anyone could use the code.
It might make a company think twice before patenting software!

--
cat sig > /dev/null
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 17:20 · Score: 0

One alternative is that a company that's developing code could decide to release their old code after some time has elapsed. For example, surely it wouldn't hurt Microsoft if they GPLed Windows 95. No one's going to create a competitive product from it, and if they removed their trademarks from it, they could free it and allow others to maintain it.

That would be an excellent thing for the software giant to do!! Releasing the old Win 95 code would be a very humanitarian gesture that would make the company seem human whereas now it is like an oppressor.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 17:31 · Score: 0

MS has paid people to write this code.

One can easily argue that the wealth that MS has as a company really is due to the product developers rather than the managers there who virtually "steal" the rewards from the creators. I've always had a great hate for the business models that just wrap administration around talent and try to make out management and administration as important (they are relatively unimportant to the creative force and those should get the rewards and make the decisions of how to distribute those).
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by unixbugs · 2004-12-03 18:55 · Score: 0

well said, but most people seem to miss the whole point here.

in your post you are implying that what you want to do with your money and the hardware/software you buy is up to the individual. in a sense it is, but in when you really think about it, this whole proprietary IP crap we live with is a well oiled machine that perpetuates planned obsolescense.

we dont have control over our money anymore in this regard because we are growing precariously dependent on upgrades, hot-fixes, service packs, and contracts that can guarantee longevity of a product that is designed to fail and be replaced by a pricey successor.

open source is much the opposite, as it is in the nature of the very idea that simple, meaningful, and logical steps are taken in a protocol designed to perpetuate the improvement of a given product. with this model, one can take, for instance, a version of linux that is years old and apply patches (if one were so inclined) until it is virtually the latest and greatest of the bleeding edge open source world.

you just cant do that with proprietary software. it does not fit into their agenda, which is to sell said product by draining consumer pockets with crapware migrations, and drying our eyballs with rediculous marketing ploys in order to beat us into submission.

--
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Trepalium · 2004-12-03 18:58 · Score: 1

The USPTO stopped requiring a working model of the object long ago. In return, people started filing lots of theoretical patents for things they either could not build or had no idea how to implement that which they had 'invented'.

--
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 01:11 · Score: 0

You try doing simple tasks like that on woefully underpowered Apple hardware and see how easy it is!
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 05:43 · Score: 0

OK, they skew two video feeds and put all three in a frame. I don't really see how crazy that is.

No one else has a similar product. Free. Included with the OS. In fact, no one else has attempted a similar product. At all.
Re:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by bedessen · 2004-12-06 08:05 · Score: 1

NT 5.0 to 5.1 provided ... um ... themes.

It's a common misconception that Windows XP is just the same old 2k with themes. There were actually a large number of kernel level improvements. Things such as prefetching and volume shadow copy are NOT just fancy feel-good eye candy.

Closed source? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

No problem. Here's a decompiler for you. Have fun!

Seriously though, if the only advantage of closed source is expressly to avoid someone from "stealing" ideas and to keep hackers from finding defects, it's a failure.

Re:Closed source? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:45 · Score: 1, Insightful

Yeah, I hear Bill Gates and his friends complaining all the time. Must really suck to have all that money.
What's that you say? You put a paypal begware icon on your sourceforge page and by next year you hope to have enough money to buy a pizza and 6-pack? Well hells bells, at least you're OpenSource and sticking it to the man. Keep it up!
Re:Closed source? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:47 · Score: 0

Reverse engineering is LEGAL inside the EU and some other countries. Illegal to prevent access for interop and market fairness.

Half-and-half by b1t+r0t · 2004-12-03 09:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

Apple is doing pretty good by taking the middle road. Kernel, BSD utils, and compiler are open-source; graphics, window manager, IDE and apps are closed-source.

--

--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft

Re:Half-and-half by xetaprag · 2004-12-03 09:46 · Score: 1

"Open Source is evil." - Microsot
"Open Source is good." - everyone Microsoft's beaten in business.

Linux's only immediate threat is to Unix flavors.. so why would Sun be an OS advocate? Becuase its personal....Sun is sacrificing its self on the "Anything to Kill M$" alter.

P.S. - I love Linux, but I am married to Microsoft.
Re:Half-and-half by Desert+Raven · 2004-12-03 09:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Apple's doing well with it because they didn't have to *pay* to have it developed. I'm not saying that's wrong, but you certainly have to agree that taking something someone else wrote and modifying it is a whole load cheaper than paying umpteen developers to write the whole thing from scratch.

Note that the parts of OSX they *did* write from scratch, they didn't open the source on.

Apple's a good example of how a company can succeed by taking advantage of other people's generosity. But they are *not* a good example of how a company can succeed by *being* generous.
Re:Half-and-half by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:51 · Score: 1, Insightful

This sounds like just the opposite of where I would want source for mods. I'm MUCH more likely to want source for my apps and IDE vs the Kernel which works just fine w/o source.
Re:Half-and-half by neosake · 2004-12-03 09:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

What I find funny is that the closed source guy is using php for his pages, even if it's running on IIS

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"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
Re:Half-and-half by 0racle · 2004-12-03 09:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

They paid for NeXT. NeXT is the basis for OS X, not BSD. Apple, NeXT and just about everyone else wrote really important parts of the mach kernel, and instead of taking damn near forever to write everything from scratch took advantage of the microkernel architecture and turned some BSD networking into a subsystem.

Incidentally, using BSD licenced code in this way is not 'taking advantage of' in the negative sence that that phrase implies, but it is making use of it in the way the programmers intended. They have also given back many improvments they have made, something that is not required with the BSD licence.

--
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Re:Half-and-half by finkployd · 2004-12-03 10:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

In fairness, apple contributes quite a bit back into the open source community. khtml is a good example, darwin is another.

Finkployd
Re:Half-and-half by Senjutsu · 2004-12-03 10:13 · Score: 1

They've open sourced their kernel, rendevous, and several other homegrown things whose name escapes me at the moment.
Re:Half-and-half by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:26 · Score: 0

he did not say ALL software had to be closed source.. i think he is trying to say all software should not be open source....

heh, and guess what. he is using the php software and the kids that build it get nothing from it but maybe bragging rights..
Re:Half-and-half by bm17 · 2004-12-03 10:29 · Score: 1

They didn't write the kernel. CMU did.
Re:Half-and-half by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:39 · Score: 0

Incidentally, using BSD licenced code in this way is not 'taking advantage of' in the negative sence that that phrase implies

I think you are reading too much into that. "Taking advantage" of a person is negative, but practically every other use, like the "taking advantage of an opportunity", or "taking advantage of a feature" is not negative.
Re:Half-and-half by 0racle · 2004-12-03 10:52 · Score: 1

In the context, it definatly appeared that by linking Apple as an example of taking advantage of OSS, but not contributing, it definatly seemed that the poster was aiming for the negative application of 'taking advantage.' Well it did to me anyway.

--
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Re:Half-and-half by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:01 · Score: 0

If Linux loves you more than microsoft then you fail the stable marriage test.

HARRRR!!
Re:Half-and-half by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:08 · Score: 0

I disagree:

took advantage of the microkernel architecture and turned some BSD networking into a subsystem.

This seems to say that the facilities offered by the microkernel architecture allowed them to use BSD in a very useful manner, and they took advantage of those facilities.
Re:Half-and-half by Lally+Singh · 2004-12-03 11:12 · Score: 1

Then they hired many of the CMU programmers, and continued developing it long after CMU had finished with it. And all that development (for example, IOKit), is open source.

--
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Re:Half-and-half by legirons · 2004-12-03 11:46 · Score: 1

"In fairness, apple contributes quite a bit back into the open source community. khtml is a good example"

Hang on, I seem to remember using HTML before "open source apple" was even invented (or at least, before they were ever involved in BSD)

"KHTML is the HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project." - Wikipedia

According to Apple, they received 140,000 lines of code, which COCOMO says is worth $5 million. In return for that, Wikipedia reports that their patches have been very difficult to integrate with the main project.

"Apple worked secretly on their version of KHTML for a year before making their fork public. Apple also tends to submit their changes in large patches that incorporate a great number of changes, in some cases leaving code to do with future feature additions barely documented, making it difficult for the KDE developers to sort through and incorporate the changes"
Re:Half-and-half by finkployd · 2004-12-03 12:13 · Score: 1

Hang on, I seem to remember using HTML before "open source apple" was even invented

HTML is a markup language, I'm assuming you mean the khtml rendering engine and I never said that Apple invented it.

According to Apple, they received 140,000 lines of code, which COCOMO says is worth $5 million.

This is relevent exactly how? Is apple under some obligation to pay someone 5 million? Or contribute 5 million worth of code back into the community? This is not how I understood open source to work...

In return for that, Wikipedia reports that their patches have been very difficult to integrate with the main project.

I wasn't aware that when you forked something you were supposed to bend over backwards to accomadate the project you forked it from.

Look, all I said was that Apple is contributing back to the community. Nit pick all you want but they are also contributing a lot of things they do not have to, such as zeroconf (could have been propritary, they saw fit to make it open source and release a reference implementation). They also released the compatibility layer between QT and Aqua. These are positive steps in my opinion.

Sure it would be great if everything they did was GPL and all their software (and OS X) were free, but that is not the case. As it stands I'd glad to see them make the moves they have made and hope to see more of it in the future. Open source acceptance in the corporate world is a long road, and Apple has been on of the few major players pushing it along.
Re:Half-and-half by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 13:16 · Score: 1, Interesting

Apple is doing very well in my eyes -- I'm the proud papa of a 17" PB maxed out and I love it, but Apple lost a HUGE contract with the company I work for because they weren't completely open-source.

The IT management (this is a LARGE foreign exchange/investment bank) is insanely worried about backdoors, spyware, trojans, viruses, all that stuff. But they are worried more than anything about the companies we buy our OSes from. And there's good reason. My bosses are handling multi-billion dollar corporate and private accounts. We've had dealings with (working professionally with them) which made it apparent that they can go right through our firewalls and read documents on private PCs running a fully patched . In this year's price negotiations, they knew EVERYTHING. They sat there smirking as they spouted numbers they could not have known legally. In other words, there's some sort of corporate backdoor in . We couldn't prove anything, but there was NO other possibility for the situation. I would have thought it was a leak, but not with four separate people high up in the company. kneecapped us with inside information they stole off our somehow.

Obviously, the powers that be didn't want a repeat of this, and quietly ordered a complete IT overhaul immediately. I was pushing for PowerBooks for the Sales guys and iMacs for the Bookkeepers; I was ordered to put OpenBSD on the servers, but it's COMPLETELY inadequate for the desktop since our main accounting app is written in Java, which OpenBSD doesn't support. I thought I could get Macs in there, it would make my job easier, and Bastille has a Mac version now, which would make lockdowns a lot easier.

Anyway, I had a large presentation prepared, and I had already been promised large price concessions from Apple, but the Boss looked at me and asked me one question: "Can you look at every line of code and prove to me there isn't a corporate backdoor like there is with ?" Right there, Aqua fucked me over and now I've got 220 people running a Hardened Debian stable which was a bitch to set up. My bosses later decided that next year we all get thin clients anyway, so it's a good thing the Apple deal fell through.

Knowing that half your code is backdoor-free is not much consolation where security is job one.

Posting as AC from a public computer for very obvious reasons.
Re:Half-and-half by merdark · 2004-12-03 14:11 · Score: 1

And I'd like to add that they open sourced all of darwin, including the parts they bought from NeXT and wrote from scratch.
Re:Half-and-half by SirTalon42 · 2004-12-03 15:57 · Score: 1

I'm gonna say that someone in your company that knew the info was a victim of social engineering, rather than them actually breaking into your systems. They are much less likely to be tracked back to the source that way, and it is more likely to succeed.
Re:Half-and-half by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 23:06 · Score: 0

Apple contributes just as much as is needed to be called "a friend of OSS". Generosity means giving more.
Re:Half-and-half by legirons · 2004-12-04 00:19 · Score: 1

"Look, all I said was that Apple is contributing back to the community."

And my response was that that "contribution" of theirs involved Apple getting $5M-worth of code for free. Which they're welcome to. But spinning that as some great gift by Apple is a bit misleading.
Re:Half-and-half by finkployd · 2004-12-04 11:46 · Score: 1

I consider zeroconf to be a pretty damn big gift from apple.

Finkployd

Cashe of Martini's response by shogarth · 2004-12-03 09:41 · Score: 3, Informative

http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:bHfNvjS0VKcJ: www.joemarini.com/articles/notOpeningEverything200 41121.php+&hl=en&client=firefox-a

XML Comparison by xetaprag · 2004-12-03 09:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

I am fascinated by the XML comparison made in Tim's argument. If there are similiar market forces between the move to XML and the move to Open-Source, why is Microsoft Embracing one and attacking the other? What exactly is the similiarities between these two forces?

If everyone agrees to pump the same water through their pipes it is one thing. Getting everyone to stop building their own proprietary piping systems and contribute to a centralized piping system design, it another thing. Apples and Oranges.

Re:XML Comparison by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:09 · Score: 0

MS isnt *really* embracing XML. They are pretending to embrace it (becuase they have to, since its in demand) but are really planning 'embrace and extend'. Your data, even saved as so-called 'XML' from an MS application, will still mostly be stored in binary, undocumented bits within the XML. Only the framework will be XML.
Re:XML Comparison by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:32 · Score: 0

Exactly right, but not only that, XML is used by M$ as a disgusting Trojan Horse and catch up tactic against Corba and Java, specifically rmi. Don't be fooled, XML is just a weapon in M$ eyes and extend it they will, with glee. To put it another way, M$ XML = embracable/extinguishable markup language. Just watch, if that C#/.net crap takes hold (thanks a lot Miguel you utter fool) they will wheel out XML.net in a heart-beat.
Re:XML Comparison by Scarpux · 2004-12-03 10:38 · Score: 1

I thought that Tim explained it very well. People (Customers) want to control their own destinies especially when it comes to their data, processes, infrastructure etc.

Sure the Vendors want to build their own proprietary piping (because they control it) but as customers begin to see those open-source guys getting some really serious piping work done they are going to be interested in it. Because it allows them to use the free piping or easily expand, reuse for their own needs.

The piping example isn't a very good analogy to use though.

The point is everyone wants to be in control of their own data (with XML etc) and their infrastructure (Open Source).

--
-- This is not a sig
Re:XML Comparison by Jason+Earl · 2004-12-03 10:39 · Score: 3, Interesting

Microsoft is pushing XML for two reasons. The first reasons is that pushing XML for Office documents means that they can force their customers to upgrade to the newest version. Right now Microsoft's biggest competitor in the office suite race isn't OpenOffice.org or Corel's PerfectOffice. Microsoft's biggest competitor in this space are old versions of their own MS Office suite. Microsoft is desperate to move folks that are currently using Office 97 or Office 2000 to their newest offering. The easiest way to force people to migrate to the newest version of MS Office is to monkey with the document format. If older versions of MS Office can't open the newer files, then the folks on the old versions have a problem. When Office 97 came out Microsoft simply changed the binary format. This made enough of Microsoft's big customers upset enough that Microsoft can't really pull that trick again. By mixing the document format change with something that some people actually want (easily integratable XML formats), Microsoft can introduce a new document format without upsetting their big customers.
Microsoft's reasoning behind embracing XML as a format for their web services initiative is similar. Microsoft saw that Java was running away with the enterprise application market, and the execs at Microsoft knew that they had to do something to compete in this arena. One of the easiest ways to do this was to adopt some of the same standards that folks like IBM were adopting. Microsoft knew that unless their .NET servers could talk to Java application servers that they didn't have a chance, and so they opted for compatibility. For similar reasons Microsoft also opened up the specs for large portions of their .NET architecture (which is what spawned Mono). Microsoft knew that customers like standards, and since Microsoft was having to compete with Java for developers it realized that one of the cheapest ways to differentiate .NET from Java was to make it an open standard.
Basically Microsoft is only open to the extent that being open is good for business. Microsoft knows from long experience that closed source and opaque formats generally produce higher profit margins, but in certain key areas Microsoft is so interested in enticing buyers that it is willing to sweeten the deal with a bit of open document formats and network protocols. Think of XML as Microsoft's 0% financing or two-for-one sale pricing and you won't be too far off the mark.
Re:XML Comparison by xetaprag · 2004-12-03 10:57 · Score: 1

Not everyone wants to have the potential to customize their software. Some people just want the software to work and they want someone to blame when it doesn't.
Plus, open source software is only open to programers who know the language the software is written in. Do you realize how substantial an infrastructure investment is required for a organization to have the ability to custmoize an OS package? It is easier, and cheaper, in most business cases to pay for a close sourced product.
Re:XML Comparison by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 17:51 · Score: 0

Basically Microsoft is only open to the extent that being open is good for business.

Aha. And you have now proved the point of Stalman, Torvolds, and numerous other open source advocates. What, exactly, is wrong with Microsoft realizing that it must play the standards game to remain relevant? That's exactly what everyone has wanted, for a long time. Only now is there enough market power to actually force them to comply.

Stalman and the others are not unrealistic. They know that money drives the world, but they also know that open standards and a free flow of information is not the unthinkable option of a zero sum game, but a tremendous cash incentive in the open, unlimited game of the Universe. It's like industrial revolution, but more subtle and fundamental. In the industrial revolution, it was found that labor should not be "secret" and hoared by master craftsmen, but open and studied as a science. Now we find that information, too, is more useful if open to study.

The real value of closed source a la slashdotting by div_2n · 2004-12-03 09:41 · Score: 0

The page cannot be displayed
There are too many people accessing the Web site at this time.

Please try the following:

* Click the Refresh button, or try again later.
* Open the www.joemarini.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.

HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
Internet Information Services

Technical Information (for support personnel)

* Background:
This error can occur if the Web server is busy and cannot process your request due to heavy traffic.

* More information:
Microsoft Support

Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? by JohnGrahamCumming · 2004-12-03 09:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

This discussion was interesting but it ends very unconvincingly. Tim argues that Quark shouldn't have been closed source without much justification but then says that it's ok for iChat and Aqua to be closed.

One alternative is that a company that's developing code could decide to release their old code after some time has elapsed. For example, surely it wouldn't hurt Microsoft if they GPLed Windows 95. No one's going to create a competitive product from it, and if they removed their trademarks from it, they could free it and allow others to maintain it.

Perhaps Quark could have waited until competitors caught up and then released the special code under the GPL. They could even use the GPL to undermine a competitor. e.g. once feature X is no longer their big advantage, release it, let an open source solution implement it and then they can bash their competitors by saying: we've got feature Y which no one else has and feature X, that's just a freebee, what you need is Y.

John.

Nothing new by garglblaster · 2004-12-03 09:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

This discussion has been going on for ages..

Yes, closed source is generating business opportunities in the first place
however, open source will generate better software in the long run..

And it's more sustainable / better quality

you know what I'm talking about..

(?)

--

perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'

Re:Nothing new by danheskett · 2004-12-03 09:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

Some things can never be open sourced.

I've written software before that is used by state government to determine who gets audited. If that software was public and open there wouldn't be a single audit flagged by anyone. Accountants could pre-pare returns in very cleverly different ways with different numbers here and there to craft an audit-proof return.

There is no way for this application to be GPL'd with the source out in the open. The utility of the program is that no one knows the exact criteria.

The code are the rules in this system. And if everyone knew every rule, there would be no enforcement possible!
Re:Nothing new by sqlrob · 2004-12-03 09:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

That says the algorithm is flawed, not that the software shouldn't be open sourced.

And there's no reason the rules couldn't be put into a configuration file that *isn't* open sourced for the simplest possible way to do it.
Re:Nothing new by cmowire · 2004-12-03 09:56 · Score: 1

Ahh, but there's a partial counterpoint...

The parts *other* than the set of rules that determine who gets audited are completely harmless.

--
Gentoo Sucks
Re:Nothing new by garglblaster · 2004-12-03 09:59 · Score: 1

That's a very valid comment - and I would never object.
There is a lot of software that definitlely should not be open sourced - for the simple reason that it is not of value for the general public. - Or of wrong value for the general pubic for that matter..
Anyway, software that is of general use for the public interest is a different story..

--
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
Re:Nothing new by myowntrueself · 2004-12-03 10:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

"The code are the rules in this system. And if everyone knew every rule, there would be no enforcement possible!"

I don't mean to sound rude, but maybe you should learn about something called 'seperating code from data'?

It seems to me, that the data -- configuration details about how to determine whether someone gets audited -- can be kept secret, while the code -- how the configuration is used -- can be opened to public scrutiny.

IE; the souce code of your program should never have contained those secret details in the first place.

This has impact in other areas than security as well; what happens if the client wants to adjust the audit parameters? You have to change the sourcecode and recompile?

--
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Re:Nothing new by LiquidCoooled · 2004-12-03 10:03 · Score: 1

The utility of the program is that no one knows the exact criteria.

Doesn't that just sum up govermnents.

A person could spend 30 years reading every eltter of the law, and STILL become a criminal.
Knowing the rules does not mean you will obey them.
EVERYBODY knows its illegal to kill a person, but murders still occur.

--
liqbase :: faster than paper
Re:Nothing new by LiquidCoooled · 2004-12-03 10:06 · Score: 1

ffs

Sorry to everyone who just read the poll and are watching out for cockups like this.

You all know I meant letter.

--
liqbase :: faster than paper
Re:Nothing new by cetialphav · 2004-12-03 10:15 · Score: 3, Insightful

People could say the same thing about anti-SPAM software. I could definitely imagine a closed source vendor saying how if the software was open the spammers would have a field day. But in spite of that, spamassassin still works marvelously. A good algorithm should be able to withstand examination.
Re:Nothing new by westlake · 2004-12-03 10:35 · Score: 1

however, open source will generate better software in the long run..
And it's more sustainable / better quality
"Better quality," "more sustainable" and "in the long run" are suspiciously subjective, if not content-free. In the long run, we are all dead, as Keynes reminded his critics.
Re:Nothing new by Minwee · 2004-12-03 10:38 · Score: 2, Funny

Shhh... You're thinking too hard.

That kind of thing will only cause discontent.
Re:Nothing new by Confused · 2004-12-03 10:40 · Score: 1

The oh-so-secret algorithms you hide in your code lead only to the creation of two classes of accoutant companies: Those who hire people who know the algortihm (usually some ex-IRS employees) and those who don't.

Why else do you think, the tax accounting companies of ex-ministers of finance or of the wife of such a minister are so popular?

All in all, it leads to the old argument about security through secrecy.
Re:Nothing new by Qzukk · 2004-12-03 11:08 · Score: 1

Having a lot of experience in filtering data like this, I agree with the others. You should consider these rules as filters which are read as data, not as code. They should be loaded as data so that changes to these filters can be made as easy as possible.

That said, I think you are wrong about audit filters needing to be secret. I think that unless the IRS has some minimum audit quota it has to meet, there is no reason why people shouldn't have access to this information to be able to produce fully legal tax returns without being harassed.

--
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Re:Nothing new by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:12 · Score: 0

How do you figure? The problem with open source is no one is organized. You have a disperate group of programmers, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. How does this perpetuate *GOOD* software. Why have 30 different versions of the same program from different sources and the only difference between them is the name of the app and some toolbar icons.
Re:Nothing new by jedrek · 2004-12-03 13:10 · Score: 1

there is no reason why people shouldn't have access to this information to be able to produce fully legal tax returns without being harassed.

Looking for tax cheats is sort of like searching for black holes - you can't find black holes directly, you can only look around them. See filing abnormalities? See changes in returns? etc... Nobody worth their salt is going to give you an illegal tax return.

It's like a book telling criminals what to say to not get arrested.
Re:Nothing new by myowntrueself · 2004-12-03 13:34 · Score: 1

Oh... So *thats* what it is...

thx

--
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Re:Nothing new by theLOUDroom · 2004-12-03 19:34 · Score: 1

I've written software before that is used by state government to determine who gets audited. If that software was public and open there wouldn't be a single audit flagged by anyone. Accountants could pre-pare returns in very cleverly different ways with different numbers here and there to craft an audit-proof return.

That sounds like a problem with the criteria being used to determine who gets audited, not making the source code public. It sounds like the audit criteria are full of gaping holes and THAT is the problem.

The code are the rules in this system. And if everyone knew every rule, there would be no enforcement possible!

Ridiculous. It's sounds like the code/rules are already broken and only marginally effective.
The only case where your statements would actually be true is if it was actually impossible to change the criteria for an audit.

The right thing to do in this situation would be to fix the holes in the system, not blindly hope they're never found.

With a GOOD set of criteria, it wouldn't be trival to engineer yourself out of being flagged for an audit (other than not cheating on your taxes).

--
Life is too short to proofread.
Re:Nothing new by mcsuper5 · 2004-12-04 08:32 · Score: 1

This has impact in other areas than security as well; what happens if the client wants to adjust the audit parameters? You have to change the sourcecode and recompile?

He gets paid again.
Re:Nothing new by danheskett · 2004-12-07 02:09 · Score: 1

That's false.

I thought of that, and no, the definition of even what the criteria is is the answer to the problem.

The algorithm is The Law. The software itself could never, never ever be open sourced. Even putting various thresholds in configuration files would reveal what the code actually looks for.
Re:Nothing new by danheskett · 2004-12-07 02:48 · Score: 1

The problem is I didnt design the *%@!#$ system, the legislature did. There is not a coherent system of rules in place, you understand. Every year 100-250 new rules are implemented usually around October and have to be in place and working before January 1.

IE; the souce code of your program should never have contained those secret details in the first place.
That's just impossible. The key numbers are in config files, that's true. But that doesn't mean that the code isn't important. It's not likle I dont know about using these tools. When you are dealing with 8,000 tax laws there is going to be a lot of the system designed around specific laws.

This has impact in other areas than security as well; what happens if the client wants to adjust the audit parameters? You have to change the sourcecode and recompile?
The client is a state government. When they want to change parameters, they pass a law. Those changes have to happen on specific timetable or all hell breaks lose.

I dont mean to be rude, but you outta learn something about how software is done outside of the computer science world. You have to understand that the beautiful system designed 10 years ago has very little in common with the realities of what it has to do today. Impossibly little. Virtually nothing in common. Any skilled programmer with access to the source - no matter how well designed - could design a tax return that decieves the system without seeing a single config file. Just knowing what fields are in the config file is enough to get around the system, even if perfectly designed like you suggest.
Re:Nothing new by danheskett · 2004-12-07 03:06 · Score: 1

The problem is that the anti-spam people write and design the algorithm. In the case I presented the design is dictated by a body of 400 elected officals, in incremental fashion, year-by-year. When a new requirement is introduced, usually around October, it has to be in effect usually by January 1.
Re:Nothing new by sqlrob · 2004-12-07 04:41 · Score: 1

So you're saying that the law can not be known by the people it impacts? Sorry, no, that doesn't fly in a democracy (well, representative republic if you're picky).

And you're also not parameterizing it correctly if it can't be put into a config file. What is a source file other than config for a compiler?
Re:Nothing new by myowntrueself · 2004-12-07 05:40 · Score: 1

" The problem is I didnt design the *%@!#$ system, the legislature did"

Software designed by legislators? I pity you and everyone involved in the project (apart from the legislators).

--
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Re:Nothing new by danheskett · 2004-12-07 06:40 · Score: 1

They write the requirements! And they pass 100-250 modifications a year to the system. Literally, there are hundreds of conditions: "If you are a small farm owner (less than x acres, or y profit, or z total revevenue; if none of these apply then double y and if you have less than c employees, you are a small farm) and you have been audited twice in the last five years or once in the five years if the farm has not be continuously operated (7 out 12 months employement at 80% or higher or 11 out 12 months at 60% highest employement) then decrease your change of being audited by a total of 50%, not to fall below an absolute chance of .50%."

That would be one exclusion, in total, the system probably has 5000-6000 of them.
Re:Nothing new by myowntrueself · 2004-12-07 07:32 · Score: 1

Tell them that if they used COBOL then the legislators could do the whole thing themselves and they wouldn't need you.

Let them do that for a year and then they will pay you quadruple to rewrite it to be easier to maintain.

;)

--
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Re:Nothing new by danheskett · 2004-12-08 05:32 · Score: 1

Haha.. that's funny..

I am not longer involved with State government, except to pay my taxes.

It's a big mess.

Anyone whose been through it couldn't be against tax reform in the sense of ripping out the current system and replacing it with a 10 line perl script.

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Right, 'cause servers running Apache are never Slashdotted? C'mon dude...

the closed-source niche is shrinking? by shawn(at)fsu · 2004-12-03 09:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

Is it fair to call closed source a niche market? I mean closed source software is big business, when I think niche I think small, not many players, limited use, etc

--
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.

Re:the closed-source niche is shrinking? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:50 · Score: 0

# Ecology.

1. The function or position of an organism or population within an ecological community.
2. The particular area within a habitat occupied by an organism.

you see, so the word niche may have a different meaning than niche market:
A special area of demand for a product or service: "One niche that is approaching mass-market proportions is held by regional magazines" (Brad Edmondson).

both above references are from www.dictionary.com
Re:the closed-source niche is shrinking? by daemonc · 2004-12-03 09:54 · Score: 1

"Is it fair to call closed source a niche market?"

Well, let's look at the market for closed source operating systems.

"when I think niche I think small,"

Definitely not samll.

"not many players,"

Check.

"limited use, etc"

Check.

2 out of 3 criteria say closed source operating systems are a niche market.

--
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Re:the closed-source niche is shrinking? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:54 · Score: 0

when I think niche I think small, not many players, limited use, etc

So its got 2 out of 3. Thats a passing grade in some parts of the country.
Re:the closed-source niche is shrinking? by shawn(at)fsu · 2004-12-03 09:57 · Score: 1

when did this topic get limited to OS? I'm talking about open source vs closed source not just linux vs windows.

--
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Re:the closed-source niche is shrinking? by westlake · 2004-12-03 10:51 · Score: 1

a niche operating system does not have a 90% share of the PC market, and deep penetration elsewhere, in the server room, embedded systems, etc.

i think there should be a fair balance by hsmith · 2004-12-03 09:43 · Score: 1

Yes there should be a good amount of open source, but on the opposite side, there should be a good amount of closed source.

i think you can find a good balance between the two. perhaps software companies should be allowing rpogrammers to work on projects such as google does, contribute to a "better software world"

Open is up, Closed is down by markdowling · 2004-12-03 09:44 · Score: 1

Tim Bray can be read.
IIS says too many people connected on Joe Marini's.

I wish I could read why Joe M thinks closed is better but his closed source server won't let me :(

Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:45 · Score: 5, Informative

Some Things are Meant to be Secret

I was reading an interesting post by Tim Bray today about how he thinks everything should be open.

Now, most of my experience is in the packaged software world and not that of IT departments in big companies, so my view is somewhat different than his. I can understand why a customer company that is basing its business of a piece of software might want the right to look inside it to see what is going on, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a great idea across the rest of the software industry.

Here's why - when you develop a piece of packaged software, sometimes you only have a short amount of time to establish your product as a viable entity in the marketplace. If your competitors could just look inside your source code to see how you accomplished a certain feature that their product doesn't provide, then your fledgling product would be neutralized almost instantly.

When I worked at Quark, we had a heated rivalry with Aldus Corp (now Adobe) and their product, PageMaker. Quark introduced several key desktop publishing features in version 3.0 that essentially cemented our lead over PageMaker in the DTP market. Had Aldus been able to get a hold of our source code, Quark's trade secrets, along with the enormous amount of money we had invested in R&D to develop QuarkXPress 3 would have been for naught. Aldus would simply have copied our algorithms and updated their product to match ours.

I can go on and on with these examples - Dreamweaver, for example, had a fantastic feature whereby it would preserve the source code formatting that an HTML developer typed in. FrontPage didn't have it. GoLive didn't have it. PageMill didn't have it. NetObjects Fusion didn't have it. We spent a lot of time and money developing that feature, and it ended up being a key competitive advantage for us.

Now imagine that you're the one competing with somebody like Macromedia, or Adobe, or IBM. You have a great idea for a product, you've done your market research, and you want to make a go of it. Now imagine telling potential investors and customers that yes, because your product is Open Source, anybody can read the code and see how you solved a particularly prickly problem that up until now nobody else has tackled well. How much investment capital do you think you'll get? How many customers?

Tim says that "the days when the recipe for success included wrapping the engineering in a veil of secrecy, those days are gone". I don't agree - I think that this is one area where the very idea of Open Source just falls flat on its face. Tim, how do you protect your competitive advantage when your competitors can just look at your source code and cherry-pick the best ideas? Not every company in the world can just become a services company and compete on price. There's a reason why it's called "intellectual property."

Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:55 · Score: 0

Copyrights and trademarks don't fly out of the window when everything is forced to be open source. It'd be all the more simple to figure out who is just pirating if everything were open source, duh. Of course, this all hinges on a government staunchly forcing corporations where they don't want to go, so it'll never happen.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Moofie · 2004-12-03 10:28 · Score: 1

Thanks for reposting...I was curious to read the middle part of the discussion.

Reverse engineering a feature doesn't require looking at the source code. If PageMaker had wanted to be feature-compliant with Quark, they could have replicated the features themselves. Having Quark's source code wouldn't necessarily have helped them.

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by thephotoman · 2004-12-03 10:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

The way you keep your competitive advantage is by being at the leading (not bleading, leading) edge. Besides, if they don't have the rights to access your binaries, they cannot see the source. That's one of the things about the idea of open source software. Sure, they'll eventually get a copy of the binary through legal means, but that can take a while if you charge a reasonable price for the binary.

The problem isn't that you've got to keep your software secret, it's that you've got to support it better than the other guy and be reasonable about your pricing scheme. Sure, if Quark was open-sourced, I could download it myself without paying, but your large contract companies want support, results, and reliability. If you deliver on those three things, and do so better than your competitor, you should dominate.

Of course, if you were really paranoid, you could write your own license that gives you exclusive rights to the source for a brief period of time after the software is released (say, one year), and then after that the license converts to a free license. This can help recoup the losses to R&D, get mindshare out there, and general respect for the product.

If your company cannot compete based on price, then the laws of economics dictate that your company should fail. It's okay to charge more if you're providing more, but if you provide an equivalent product, you shouldn't expect to be able to charge twice as much as your competitor.

Granted, it's not true freedom, but at the same time, it'd be a step to allow people to better appreciate the freedom given to them by free and open source software.

--
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by dgatwood · 2004-12-03 10:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
Now, most of my experience is in the packaged software world and not that of IT departments in big companies, so my view is somewhat different than his. I can understand why a customer company that is basing its business of a piece of software might want the right to look inside it to see what is going on, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a great idea across the rest of the software industry.
Here's why - when you develop a piece of packaged software, sometimes you only have a short amount of time to establish your product as a viable entity in the marketplace. If your competitors could just look inside your source code to see how you accomplished a certain feature that their product doesn't provide, then your fledgling product would be neutralized almost instantly.
There are three problems with that argument:
1. All software can be trivially recreated. If a company wants a feature, they don't need to steal your company's code. It wouldn't do them a bit of good because the time to integrate your code into theirs for almost any feature is almost always greater than the time needed to write it from scratch. The rare exceptions are large features that are almost completely stand-alone tools, in which case even then, the amount of trouble they would get into for stealing it costs far more than writing it themselves.
2. There is no such thing as a product that businesses don't depend on. And even individual users want some control over their software---at the very least, some assurance that the company won't just abandon it after they've spent hundreds of their hard-earned dollars to buy the program only to find a dozen bugs that they can't work around.
3. There are very few "particularly prickly" problems anymore outside of the academic world. Commercial software development is difficult because of the difficulty of debugging such large pieces of code. There probably hasn't been a "really prickly" algorithmic problem solved (with the possible exception of game development) in the general-user commercial programming world in two decades, and algorithmic problems are the only ones that closed source really protects. For any other features (like "ooh, that's a cool way to integrate those tools" or "ooh, it keeps the line formatting when parsing HTML") can be trivially rewritten by a programming team of sufficient competence simply looking at what it does and coming up with a good architectural design that supports all of the desired features... usually in a matter of hours or minutes unless it's a really large feature.
The only place where your argument would be valid -might- be in areas like 3-D modeling/animation, audio/video/data compression, and audio/video effects processing, since there's still some algorithmic work being done in those narrow fields. That said, those things make up only a very tiny percentage of software development, and most of it will never be used by the general public (outside of games).
--
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by rhendershot · 2004-12-03 10:54 · Score: 1

there's one other place that the ISV maintains competitive advantage by keeping source closed; persistence mechanism. (btw- I include transfer of data to external softwares in this).

I use Quicken but have no access to my data outside of their GUI (I would dearly love to be able to write my own reporting and utility tools to run against my finance data).

I (am forced to) use MS-Office but we all know the man-years of effort the OpenOffice folks have spent with that one.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 12:25 · Score: 1, Insightful

All software can be trivially recreated.

Bullshit. If this were true there'd be much more open source software of equal quality to every single piece of closed software than there currently is.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 12:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

I want all the features found in Microsoft Office, in AbiWord and others. Go and do it.

Your arguments are more like, I don't like the other argument so it must be false, arguments. The real world data shows that you are wrong. Amount of code in Office is far more than you can afford to replicate in a meaningful time. The best option is actually to look at the source code, learn how it works and then implement your own.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Rinikusu · 2004-12-03 13:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

1. Then why don't they do it? The GIMP still does not have all these "trivial" features that Photoshop has, and likely will never, either. If it's so "trivial", then why aren't we seeing feature and ease-of-use parity between Open Source products and their closed source counterparts? In some software segments, yes (Apache, Tomcat, etc). In others, you don't. Maybe it's simply a matter of time and money vs. the ability or desire of a particular person to give away their work for free, but obviously, it's by no means a trivial problem. Programmatically speaking, maybe, but in practicality, getting someone to do all that hard work for basically "nothing" (except pride?), well, you've got a long row to hoe.

2. It completely depends upon the software, as well. But being Open Source does not guarantee that software will be well-supported or abandoned by the developers, either. See sourceforge. Yes, by having the source code, you might can take over and make your changes, if you have the technical know-how or even the desire to do it. Or you have to pay someone to do it. If you're paying for someone else to do it, really, why does a company care if the solution is open source or closed source? $600 for photoshop, one time license (depends upon how many artists you have) vs 65k/year for house programmer/contractor to produce work that you cannot really profit from (sell it once, but give away the source, that's the last sale you'll probably make).

3. Again, who's paying for that programming team? You seem to think there's an infinite supply of interested people working on these type of problems. There's not. I've found that even WITH the incentive of a great salary that I still couldn't bear to write software that I wasn't interested in. But the point it, to get that team of programmers, you have to assemble of group of interested, technically proficient programmers, and for many problems, that's going to cost you money because only money makes them interested. :P

--
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Beatlebum · 2004-12-03 13:38 · Score: 1

You're missing an important point. As you say it is possible (not trivial) for a team of programmers to replicate functionality of another application. But often the differentiating factor is not the actual function but the quality of its implementation. For example, the principles of indexing data are well understood but what makes Oracle a leader is its speed, scalability and robustness. Photoshop is another example, its functions are very well defined yet no one has been able to challenge it as a best seller. I'll give one last example, many scientific packages implement a fast fourier transform, but the application I work on has a very fast (perhaps the fastest on x86) implementation. Opening our source would give away a huge competetive advantage.

You assume that all implementations are alike apart from a "tiny percentage". This is simply not the case, many leaders are leaders because of the quality of their code, along with its function.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by carlislematthew · 2004-12-03 13:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

"All software can be trivially recreated".

Your comment was interesting up until that point.

You're right that most software is not very tricky but that doesn't mean that it's trivial to produce. It can take months or YEARS to reproduce a software system that someone else has created. If you're 12 months ahead of the competition then you're set. If it's going to take a million dollars and 2 months to get staffed up before you even START development, then you're going to be releasing your beta version while your competition is releasing their second version with a bunch of features that all the users requested. It can take years to catch up, if the money continues to flow of course.

The comment that you argued against has it exactly right. It's about being ahead of the competition and attempting to stay ahead.

Open source is a wonderful thing, for some projects. Arguing that it would be appropriate for something like Dreamweaver is naive at best.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 13:38 · Score: 0

can be trivially rewritten by a programming team of sufficient competence simply looking at what it does and coming up with a good architectural design that supports all of the desired features... usually in a matter of hours or minutes unless it's a really large feature.

You obviously have never worked on a large, complex software project.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by westlake · 2004-12-03 14:41 · Score: 1

All software can be trivially recreated
Utter nonsense.
OpenOffice and Firefox have proprietary roots and megabucks of development money behind them. The Gimp is far from being a drop-in replacement for Photoshop. But these are not bleeding-edge technologies.
I doubt the picture changes much if you look at the single, marketable, feature your product does not have and your own development team cannot give you. Let me know when you can deliver a CYMK plug-in overnight.
The only place where your argument would be valid -might- be in areas like 3-D modeling/animation, audio/video/data compression, and audio/video effects processing, since there's still some algorithmic work being done in those narrow fields. That said, those things make up only a very tiny percentage of software development, and most of it will never be used by the general public (outside of games).
The general public presumably excluding those heading off to see The Incredibles, those who own cell phones, digicams, camcorders, digital tv, home computers, (think Avalon and it's successors) home theater sound systems, portable media players, subscribe to broadband cable, digital cable, TiVO, XM Radio, VoIP and other services, download music, videos, etc.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by x3ro · 2004-12-03 14:59 · Score: 1

You're talking about taking a feature and incorporating it into an existing system. How about someone just forking the tree, adding a stack of new features on top, and then selling it as a better system? They would have everything your system has plus more.

--
[ UNSIGNED NOT NULL ]
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 16:59 · Score: 0

He probably meant that those who actually CAN create good software can trivially recreate anything they sample and desire to. The reason why there isn't more (isn't any actually)good quality open source software is that the good developers work for money (some for themselves) rather than write software as hobbyists.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 17:31 · Score: 0

I'm glad other people already posted about how stupid this comment is.

I used to like slashdot I really did. Unfortunately like Wired magazine Slashdot has been taken over by a million boring threads just like this one.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by dgatwood · 2004-12-03 19:21 · Score: 1

That and most open source development relies too heavily on the "many eyes make all bugs small" lie rather than doing proper QA testing. There's a lot of software out there in the open source world that would be very good with better QA testing. Same for the closed source world, of course....
Here's a challenge: name one closed source piece of software that is commonly used by a general audience that doesn't have a piece of software that serves the same function in the open source world. (Saying that the open source software UI isn't as good doesn't count, nor does jumping up and down about differences in feature sets.) Good luck.
That's not saying that the open source software will always be as good as the software it's ripping off. For simpler software, it will usually be better, for more complex stuff, worse, but that's caused by the fact that it's five people doing it in free time instead of twenty people getting paid rather than some fundamentally hard problem that needs to be solved....

--
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by dgatwood · 2004-12-03 19:26 · Score: 1

You likely wouldn't be able to learn -anything- from the Office source code. Most closed source software is an unholy mess. At best, you might save time figuring out what data structures are needed to store certain data.
Even then, odds are if enough open source developers implement it from scratch instead, the data structures will end up being better because it will have received significant scrutiny all at once rather than being organically grown like the internals of a mature software product.

--
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by dgatwood · 2004-12-03 19:32 · Score: 1

1. You're right. I'm not saying that the social problem is trivial. Given sufficient motivation, almost all software is trivial. That first part is a very hard problem.
2. True. That said, there is software that 99% works that I could fix by changing one or two lines of code. I got so pissed off at the company after they hadn't fixed those tiny little bugs (which are preventing me from finishing an audio CD that I wanted to ship six months ago) that I dumped that audio software and wrote format conversion tools to convert their project files to an open format. Most people wouldn't be able to do that, though. Most people would just be screwed.
3. This whole thread was referring to usefulness to competitors, not to open source projects. Therefore, the entire point was with respect to whether another company could reproduce the software without stealing the source. The answer is a resounding "yes".

--
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by ClosedSource · 2004-12-03 19:40 · Score: 1

Obviously, if you rewrite a legacy application from scratch, it's going to start out cleaner than the orginal was after years of maintenance. This has nothing to do with open vs. closed source software.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by dgatwood · 2004-12-03 20:01 · Score: 1

And all of those things you describe are very specialized tools. Most people don't need Photoshop, Oracle, or a blazingly-fast FFT algorithm. I -did- emphasize general-purpose software. Of those, only Photoshop qualifies, and even then, just barely. Really, Photoshop Elements, maybe. I'd say GIMP, with a decent UI rework, could easily compete with Elements.
Also bear in mind that, with the possible exception of your extremely specialized FFT algorithm (which would be so much better if it were public, as there are so many non-scientific uses for FFT that it seems almost criminal to limit the use of such a superior algorithm to a scientific package that only a few thousand people will use), most of those programs are much older than the open source equivalent. Photoshop predates Linux by a year, GIMP by five, and predates a usable X11 by... oh, wait, we're still waiting for a usable X11. Never mind. :-p
*sigh*

--
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by cduffy · 2004-12-03 20:34 · Score: 1

Okay, "can be trivially created, given a well-funded development team".

Happy?

My employer is a late-stage startup with a commercial software product targeted at a quite large and lucerative market which is only now starting to see real penetration. We have a damn good product. We worked a long time to get it that way.

We're under no illusions that our competitors couldn't recreate our code in 1/4 the time. Thing is, it's not just the code that makes us competitive -- we *assume* the competitors will figure out how all our nifty bits work, or buy an off-the-shelf implementation of parts we did in-house, and so forth. Because we're not relying on difficulty of reproducing our software as a competitive edge, we'll be in much better shape after its best features do get reproduced by our competitors (which they will, after we do a general release, because they're so damn much better than what's out there right now, and our competitors have the cash to hire the folks they need, whereas we've been operating on a shoestring).

Sure, it'll take some money and manpower, but to the kinds of people who are angling for this market, throwing a 150-person team (including management and support staff) at the problem for 8 months is indeed trivial. Counting on competitors being unable to reproduce our features is a sure way to fail.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 21:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

1. You're missing the point. Features are trivial to implement in that they're "just work"; sometimes they're less fun work, and there's less people willing to do it, but that's beside the point - having the source code to a competing product with a feature doesn't make the feature the slightest bit easier to implement (like is claimed by Joe Marini's article), because transferring the feature is usually just as much or more work than implementing it from scratch.

There are only a couple of cases where having the source code would be valuable for a competitor:

a. When the source code implements an undocumented protocol or file format and the competitor wants to be compatible.

b. When the source code implements a genuinely hard (and unpublished) algorithm. Non-programmers tend to assume that programs are full of such "magic formulas", while programmers (at least good ones) know that most programs contain none. These algorithms are usually "pure math" making them more easily transferable to other programs. Photoshop may have a few such algorithms (image manipulation is an area where genuinely hard algorithms for automatic image enhancement can be useful), but they're most likely not related to usability, and I don't know how well-published the field of image manipulation is.

Neither of these cases is, in my opinion, a valid reason to consider the source code a secret. For case a., it's anticompetitive to make interoperability difficult, for case b., researchers really should be advancing the state of the art rather than selling programs implementing their secret formulas. They should publish, and use patents if their inventions really deserve protection.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 21:26 · Score: 0

The original point is still wrong.

Seeing the competitors source code isn't going to help you implement your product, not in the slightest. Not unless you take their entire product and just change it to make it look different enough to sell as your own, but that's not what the original, incorrect point was about.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by symbolic · 2004-12-04 02:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

Quark's trade secrets, along with the enormous amount of money we had invested in R&D to develop QuarkXPress 3 would have been for naught.

I worked with a company who used Quark for their primary workflow (one of their departments anyway). If ALdus could have gotten ahold of the source, I think the primary reason Quark would have been in trouble was their attitude toward their customers- a kind of "You owe us" mentality. It was quite annoying. I haven't had to deal with anything Quark for quite a while, so I don't know if the attitude has changed.

That having been said, everyone assumes that it's ONLY the technology that will make or break your success as a company. Technology is only part of it - unfortunately, it's the part that keeps customers locked into using your pruduct even when they despise you as a company. I think there's a lot to be said for good customer service- spreading some goodwill will go a long way toward retaining customers that might otherwise consider a competing product.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by Beatlebum · 2004-12-04 04:28 · Score: 1

Man, I don't no where to start. FFT's are used all over the place, our FFT is not specicialized, it is just FAST.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by edxwelch · 2004-12-04 07:05 · Score: 1

I agree completely.
However I still think open source applications can't make any money for the simple reason that the end-user can just download your code and build the application themselves. It's a simple fact that very few people pay for anything if there is some way to download it for free.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by westlake · 2004-12-04 19:17 · Score: 1

Counting on competitors being unable to reproduce our features is a sure way to fail.
Entering a market where financially stronger competitors can match your product feature-for-feature in six months doesn't sound like the path to success.
Re:Text of joemarini.com link by cduffy · 2004-12-05 07:32 · Score: 1

Entering a market where financially stronger competitors can match your product feature-for-feature in six months doesn't sound like the path to success.

There aren't all that many markets where that isn't true. Microsoft, IBM -- they're in a huge number of markets, and have enough resources that they can fund a losing project just to gain {market,mind}share if they want to. (And btw, I said eight months, not six, for the code. Eight is pushing it, hard. Six is simply impossible if there's going to be any kind of QA cycle whatsoever).

SLOCcount estimates that our code would take 38 developers 3.4 years to write, at a cost above $17 million. A "dream team" with past experience writing similar software, given the ability to poke at our app (or read detailed specs written by someone who did) and access to a well-written (architected and implemented to be truly reusable) codebase with all the basic (non-competitive-edge) features already implemented could get to where we are (while avoiding our user-visible mistakes and misfeatures) in 8 months. (The non-competitive-edge features, like the others, aren't algorithmically difficult -- but like all code, they take time to write and time to QA and time to integrate with the rest of the system and, when appropriate, to integrate with outside products and systems). Said team and code would, of course, also cost a lot more (but for at least some of our larger competitors, they've probably already sunk a good chunk of the involved costs). Likewise, they could afford to buy technologies we've had to build in-house. Nothing I've discussed above is difficult -- just time-consuming, and thus expensive.

Given that our competitors have that kind of money, and have access to preexisting codebases (albiet, given that this is the real world, probably not architected and implemented for effective reuse without some work) -- yes, they can implement our software's features if they set their hearts on it. Thing is, reproducing our features won't give them our product, which is more than just a bunch of code, in a timeframe even remotely approaching the above. The code we've managed to rewrite ground-up in about two years of near-solid crunch time (after we brought on a dev lead who fired the bad coders and threatened everyone else with a baseball bat until they started writing unit tests), but the data it operates on has been in development for over five years and can only really be created by a team of competant MDs with good taste, who are in general considerably more expensive and hard to come by than coders. We pay ours in equity and in the excitement of being part of building a product with potential to substantially impact their field (our CEO, a MD himself, is very good at imparting this excitement). I'd be suprised if our larger competitors could reach similar arrangements -- and even if they could, that's years of development time for the data. (I haven't mentioned the artwork yet -- suffice to say that there's a lot of it, and we have a graphics artist who puts out simply amazing work at a rate more consistent with a team of four or five).

But then, our competitors can hire graphics artists; let's say they also manage to fork out the cash and hire a team of MDs five or so times larger than ours (and a team of pharmacists -- they actually make up more of our company than any other group -- though they might just decide to buy rather than build the pharmaceutical data). They might be able to get done in a year -- but suddenly, they're not just spending real money; they're spending lots of real money, but the lion's share of the expendatures are on something having nothing to do with development of the code itself!

So... if these financially stronger competitors decide they want our product's capabilities enough to throw real money (which we don't have) at it... why not buy us? That makes us happy (particularly those of us who've been around for a while and own a lot of stock) and makes them happy (because they get a pro

Just goes to show... by MMaestro · 2004-12-03 09:46 · Score: 1

The best kept secrets are the ones who know nothing about.

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 09:46 · Score: 2, Informative

It's also PHP.

Open everything by FiReaNGeL · 2004-12-03 09:48 · Score: 1

The 'open everything' solution would have the merit of stopping theft from open source to closed source, essentially getting code for free, which will always happen in a open-closed system. Sometimes its evident (some coverage on Slashdot a month or two ago about pure 'rebranding' without even bothering to change messages during the boot process with the name of the original product), sometimes it's not and you have no way to tell.

But it has problems too. I assume that 'Open everything' would drive us in complicated license/lawsuit hell. "I coded that in program X! Pay y dollars for a license!" "I didn't even look at your source!" "Can you prove it?" Hell even SCO managed to raise hell without any evidence. So nothing's perfect I guess.

--
Eureka Science News - automatically updated

Re:Open everything by itachi18 · 2004-12-03 10:11 · Score: 1

If we're looking at closed source at being bad, we should also look into how restricitve licenses are in the first place. If we did away with them altogether, it would be much better. For one thing, companies would be liable for their software, and therefore would need insurance. Insurance rates would be based on risk (read: quality of code and number of incidents). Companies that write good code would have low insurance, and have an economic advantage over those that don't.

Some secrets are counter productive... by DeVilla · 2004-12-03 09:48 · Score: 4, Funny

Take Joe's web page. It's so secret that I can't even read it. To many people are trying to veiw it right now. Of course, the secret would be better served if he had been more selective about who he let's in, instead of just setting a number of people who would be in on what he had to say.

More seriously, if a company can't beat a competing product by releasing open source, then I would assume the microsoft web server would be better and more popular than any open source web server. However, that doesn't seem to hold. Perhaps Joe has a response to that on his page. I'll have to wait until his (closed source) web server recovers to see.

Re:Some secrets are counter productive... by dark_requiem · 2004-12-03 11:46 · Score: 1

It seems that many people keep pointing to the inherent superiority of OSS by citing the failings of Microsoft products. In fact, MS products are the only ones I have seen cited to make this point. Microsoft is not, and never has been, a company that wrote stable, efficient code. Microsoft is a skilled marketing company with semi-skilled programmers. Of course their products are lackluster. They're not trying to produce the most stable products, they're trying to produce products that are easy to use, as most users are clueless, and they're trying to maintain brand recognition. They do this very well. Writing stable code is another matter.

However, we are still only talking about one company, a company who, as almost everyone here acknowledges, writes crappy code. So holding them up as the representative of the entire closed-source industry is somewhat misleading. Dell is one of the biggest producers of PCs, but they certainly don't represent the quality of the machines my company produces. So let's abandon the misleading collectivized closed-source arguments, and look at this objectively. MS is not representative of the quality of all closed-source products.
Re:Some secrets are counter productive... by DeVilla · 2004-12-03 15:20 · Score: 1

Yes, Microsoft is not really known for their ability to write stable or bullet proof code, or anything that could be mistaken for such. Yet they are the ones standing up with their tarnished reputation to claim closed source is better. Since they obviously are not the example of their own thesis, you'd think they'd try to get someone who was to do the talking.

If their ease of use is how closed source is better, then I'd still question them being the example. These day's my Mom does just was well with her email, web browsing and such on Linux as she did on Windows. She couldn't have installed Linux herself, but she couldn't have installed Windows either. Now, she is now longer blaming herself for 'being stupid' and crashing her computer or making it do 'wierd things', because it's not crashing or flaking out any more, and as much as I love to offer the compliment, it's not because she is any more computer savy now that she was on Windows.

At the very least, it proves that Linux is not the junk hobiest software and the closed source is not inherently better. And that Microsoft, should not be the ones to speak.
Re:Some secrets are counter productive... by DeVilla · 2004-12-03 15:25 · Score: 1

Cool! I got modded up high enough to get through my own filter. Unfortunately, it was for the sarcasm in the first paragragh. The response to Jim's article made it sound like Jim made a point of one company beating another and that it would not have been possible without closed source. Yet, Apache beats the Microsoft webserver. I guess I should finally go RTFA.

Too black-and-white. by k98sven · 2004-12-03 09:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't think there is any question. Open and closed source will both be around for the forseeable future.

To what extent is a different matter.

As long as there are people (and this would be the vast majority today) who care less about what license their software has than how well it does the job, then there will always be a market for closed-source software. On the condition that it is better than the available OSS solutions.

I think OSS will play this kind of role in the future, providing everybody with a basic set of software, and upping the ante for the quality of commercial software.

Commercial software on the other hand, will increasingly be for those who need and are willing to pay for the improved quality it offers.
(and will per definition be forced to offer in order to exist)

Re:Too black-and-white. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 14:35 · Score: 0

...as long as there are people [...] who care less about...

Who care less than whom?

Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by GillBates0 · 2004-12-03 09:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

Open Knowledge, Free Information, Sharing of Ideas, Open Source....call it what you want to....has been around since the longest time, and is responsible for the scientific progress, technology and advancement that we're enjoying today.

Closed Source, Trade Secrets, Intellectual Property, etc are an outcome of relatively recent business practices and have been artificially created in order to promote innovation through monetary profit and other forms of compensation for individuals and additionally competitive advantage in the case of corporations.

To sum it up, Open knowledge is essential for overall, longterm technological progress, while Closed knowledge is useful in promoting short term business gains.

Talk to a scientist, and they'll support Open knowledge...talk to a businessman, and they'll argue for closely guarded trade secrets

--
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam

Re:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:32 · Score: 1, Insightful

Closed Source, Trade Secrets, Intellectual Property, etc are an outcome of relatively recent business practices

And just what do you base that on?

For thousands of years there have been secret societies, trade guilds, and even religions where the fundamental practices and methods have been held in secret. The only way to get in on these secrets was to join (if you were allowed) and work your way up for quite a while.

A few examples to start with: Freemasons, Judaism, and Catholicism. While what goes on at these organizations is now fairly well known or can be found out somewhat easily, it used to not be that way.

If anything, you'll see more openess today than just 100 years ago, whether willingly or legislated.
Re:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:50 · Score: 1, Insightful

I agree, but would like to take this a step further.

Scientists recognize the value of temporary secrets - they don't want to publish their research until they have completed it because they don't want someone else to pick up from where they are and finish before them.

This is essentially the same argument business men have; they want to protect their initial investment (be the first). This is a logical and acceptable argument for closed-source in the beginning.

After the initial release (i.e. the scientist publishes their work) comes the difference. Scientists find value in making their work public; it makes their work legitimate and can give them name recognition. In business (in particular, software), this does not happen. This doesn't mean there isn't advantages to making software public knowledge (we all know those reasons). The unfortunate fact is that businesses either don't know these reasons, don't understand them or simply don't care. There is a prevailing attitude in modern business of short-term profit; there is an incredible amount of talk in business about growing the company X% in the next year or 2 years or maybe even 5 years, but there is virtually no discussion about how to build the company to last a century.

Open-source allows the product to become better, grow with time and still be maintainable. Closed-source allows for short-term profit (potential). It is clear that the prevailing method of doing business doesn't fit with open-source; now it is just a question of "don't know", "don't understand", or "don't care." I hope it isn't the latter.
Re:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by Noehre · 2004-12-03 10:51 · Score: 1

And what about us scientists getting MBAs?

Most open scientific knowledge exists because of tax money being given away in the form of grants. That tax money depends on a robust economy that is in large part driven by 'closed knowledge.'

Software development is sort of an odd case because it doesn't really require that much capital investment, just lots of time and labor. Try funding an 'open source' sciences research lab with no public funding.

I talk to a lot of scientists, and they support both the open dissemation of scientific knowledge and the development of products. Anybody that thinks the world would work without both of them is just being a naive idealist.
Re:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by matrix0f8h · 2004-12-03 11:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

Good point.

In the same way that religions filtered their "secret" information to the public based on what they wanted them to hear; businesses filter their "secrets" to the public through PR.

Unfortunately it turns out that the secrets that both of these organizations were/are keeping were/are insidious.
Re:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by dark_requiem · 2004-12-03 11:57 · Score: 1

This is why patents expire. Gradually, all trade secrets become part of the sum total of human knowledge. If scientists want to publish all their findings freely, that is their choice. Let's not forget that those same scientists are the ones that have to basically go begging for reasearch funding. The age of trade secrets has accelerated the development of technology and new ideas by ensuring a profit for those who develop marketable technology, and since all that will eventually become public domain, it is advantageous in all respects.
Re:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by starfishsystems · 2004-12-03 12:57 · Score: 1

That tax money depends on a robust economy that is in large part driven by 'closed knowledge.'
It's an interesting argument, but it presumes a zero-sum game in which all wealth is finite. Certain forms of wealth are finite, but many are at least elastic, and others, particularly concepts and methods, are not intrinsically bounded forms of wealth at all.
It's difficult therefore to infer that science would not exist without external funding. Historically, this has not been so. It seems to me that science exists whenever people take an interest in some phenomenon, and that seems very much in the nature of what it is to be human.
From that perspective, it seems really bizarre to go around trying to capture the wealth of ideas, as if there were not enough to go around, or as if sharing an idea would somehow diminish its value. On the contrary, sharing an idea is more likely to enrich the field of ideas. Closing knowledge, on the other hand, is just another way to fence off a piece of the commons for personal gain.

--
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Re:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by Narchie+Troll · 2004-12-03 14:06 · Score: 1

Actually, a patent is not a trade secret. Patents become public domain; trade secrets need not. In fact, patents are never secret; the entire point is that a patent is published in full.
Re:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed) by akuma(x86) · 2004-12-03 17:56 · Score: 1

Scientific progress occured in the past because scientists were encouraged by the state to explore their ideas (in many cases through the Feudal system, where Kings and Queens and such would fund them). This is not unlike today where many scientists are funded by the state through govt. grants. But again, many more are funded through private industry.

We have never had as free a market as we do today. Who is to say that the profit motive wouldn't have generated new ideas faster than the old way?

I would argue that the market allocates resources to their most productive ends, therefore progress would have been made faster. After all, resource allocation by a few Kings and Queens is far less efficient than a free market because their access to information and ability to process it is limited vs. the pricing system which automatically factors in the desires of millions of people.

Many large corporations have "blue-sky" research departments that regularly publish peer-reviewed papers because it is in their long-term business interests to do so. Think of the acheivements of just a few of the giants like AT&T Bell Labs, IBM and Intel. Economic incentives have a knack for spurring innovation - witness the most recent X-prize success.

Secrecy is necessary to provide an economic incentive to fund the innovation in the first place. Eventually, secrets get out but not before the innovator has had time to recoup his/her initial investment + some profit which is essential motivation for generating the idea in the first place.

Competition and secrecy exist today in academia as well. Research groups compete for limited funding dollars, so there is an incentive to publish something first before your rival so you may continue to receive funding. The question is...is that funding efficiently allocated to the right groups? Academic funding is allocated by bureuocrats in contrast to the market where funding is allocated via the price system which is in turn a reflection of what society wants (is willing to pay for).

uh, tennis anyone? by e.m.rainey · 2004-12-03 09:51 · Score: 2

I'm not an aficionado but at some point in this metaphor it'll be Tim love Joe, right? You know that's not legal here anymore, right?

--
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.

Yes! by russianspy · 2004-12-03 09:51 · Score: 0, Flamebait

I'm probably going to be flamed for taking opposite view, but I have to give this a try.

Than again, I'm probably gonig to be flamed by saing "I'm probably going to be flamed for saying this.."..

There are specific classes of software where the users should not really have access to the code. It generally involves highly specialized things. For example the code that runs the radiation machine for cancer treatment. Ideally, that code would need to be extremely well tested and researched. I know there are examples of companies that cut corners. Having some sort of review system would be beneficial, but there should be no way for customers/operators to be able to modify the code. Even by accident (or malicious hacker, whatever).

The systems I'm talking about are generally standalone for that very reason. Nobody can use them unless they need to do that specific task... Maybe that is security enough in itself. Is there ever enough security when lives are at stake though?

Re:Yes! by eobanb · 2004-12-03 10:09 · Score: 1

But just because a program is open source doesn't at all mean that just anyone can modify the code that is actually running on mission-critical hardware.

I have the source to kernel 2.6.9. Uh, but does that mean I can take over just anyone's box? Of course not. Essentially, the code for medical applications, as in your example, should be open, if for nothing else than facilitating peer review. You wouldn't want to make a do-it-yourself MRI scanner running homebrew code, if such a thing was even practical. I stand by my assertion that open-sourcing code, by its very nature of peer review, makes it safer and safer.

--
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Re:Yes! by russianspy · 2004-12-03 10:20 · Score: 1

There is nothing in closed source methodology that prohibits peer review. What is the value of some guy off the street reviewing code that kind of code? Very little. What is the benefit of having an open source code in this case? Are you going to allow patches to be submitted? If so, who's going to check them? Are there going to be sufficient tests run for that kind of applications? If you don't allow code submissions... What will happen when someone forks that software. Should the company still be responsible for the modifications? I really don't want to approach this from the point of view of accountability (although it is important), but from the point of view of experience and expertise. In this kind of model, the company would retain the required expertise to maintain the software. At that level you basically have support agreements. If one of your customers needs a modification or addition - the company is responsible for implementing it. Noone sane would accept accept a hacked up version of the code from the web. Not for this kind of appliation - with a very good reason. Open source model would give nothing to this kind of project except confusion.
Re:Yes! by Couldn'tCareLess · 2004-12-03 11:07 · Score: 1

As a customer of the Cancer Testing Machine Corp., the very same company that recently moved it's software to an open source model in an attempt to garner insight and feedback from the cancer testing research community, I would have to say that I would almost certainly not download J0e D00d's patched modification of said software and would certainly continue as a customer of the CTMC. I understand that it's their software, they are the experts in its use and that they have total control over their version of it. They may have accepted modifications to it from outsiders, but I trust that they will have tested these modifications with the same strict method that I hope they use with internally produced design changes.
I would feel a tad uncomfortable making any such presumptions with regards to the quality of J0e's code.
Indeed, as a large medical interest, it is with my arse tightly clamped shut by the fear of legal repercussions that I ensure that I purchase the machinery, software and it's licence from those most suited to provide it.
It's not just about the code.

short summarise by Janek+Kozicki · 2004-12-03 09:52 · Score: 1

it was interesting TFA(*), so to make it short: closed source makes sense only when nobody else solved a certain programming problem (so the guy who solved it - can benefit from that). When other companies solve it - there is no longer sense in keeping the solution closed - it's better when they together concentrate on improving it.

OTOH, IMHO it'd great if clever solutions for programming problems would first appear as opensource, so that nobody can patent that solution (because of prior art).

(*) fantastic

--
# #\ @ ? Colonize Mars #

Re:short summarise by Taladar · 2004-12-03 11:26 · Score: 1

Since when did the existance of prior art stop any company from patenting something in the US?

--
Linux is not Windows

Uh... was it wise to say this to Microsoft? by Realistic_Dragon · 2004-12-03 09:54 · Score: 2, Funny

(The point about incompatible architecture is right, by the way; by analogy, if the OpenOffice guys could download all of the Microsoft Office source code tomorrow, it would probably slow them down more than help them.)

You heard it here first folks, Office 2k4 source code leak on Kazaa tomorrow from 'unknown source'...

--
Beep beep.

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by LurkerXXX · 2004-12-03 09:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Right, because we know both websites are hosted on hardware with equal processing power and available bandwidth.

What? We don't?

"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by Chemisor · 2004-12-03 09:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Good code is not hard to read, and even the worst code is a million times easier to read than the output of a disassembler. So the argument is really not valid at all. If you have some copyable secrets, the only answer is to keep the code closed. Not everyone wants to use the open source development anyway. A company is much more likely to want to only take code from its employees, and so will derive no benefit from opening the code. Back to the drawing board, OSS advocates! Come up with a better argument.

Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by erikharrison · 2004-12-03 10:07 · Score: 2, Informative

Good code is not hard to read
The main point was code is harder to write than read. That doesn't change based on quality level.

And nothing is like six thousand lines of code. Or, say 3 million (MS Office).
Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by Eric604 · 2004-12-03 10:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

even the worst code is a million times easier to read than the output of a disassembler
So what you're saying is, assembler is not code? Weird. I guess these old skool coderz weren't coders after all.
Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:19 · Score: 0

Funny, people say the opposite about Perl code all the time! (note: I'm fluent in Perl so I don't hold this oppinion).
But really though, take a high level language like Perl and compile it to machine code. Now the poor bastards who decompile it are in for a long, long ride to make anything resembling the original Perl code. Oftentimes it's faster to just rewrite the damn thing from scratch! That makes compilation a very good method for protecting code. Not foolproof, but nothing's foolproof. And it doesn't have to be foolproof, so long as it makes it hard, very hard.
BTW, there's no good Perl compiler at this time, but that'll change when Perl6 is out. The concept still applies to there HLL's though.
Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:50 · Score: 0

You're entirely missing the point. Yes, code is easier to read than disassembler, but that's not the tradeoff the author was making. His point is that code is harder to read than it is to write. Thus, when two companies are competing on features, it is invariably faster to write a new feature from scratch than it would be to try understanding/copying/reworking a competitor's feature from their code (source or otherwise).

If you have some copyable secrets, the only answer isn't to keep the code closed - it's to not have a shitty business model. Seriously, reliance on that stuff causes no end of problems - the first disgruntaled employee to leave your company, and you're screwed. And the worst part is the tendancy in that situation to rely on the secret to stay secret, instead of continuing to innovate.
Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by Eric604 · 2004-12-03 11:01 · Score: 1

Good code is not hard to read
That's very subjective and not realy the point, the article is about comparing reading to writing.
When writing code you have the big picture in mind and then decompose it in smaller parts (statements); when reading code you only see a bunch of statements and have to reassemble the big picture again. This makes it SEEM easier to write than to read.
However, good code is IMO indeed faster to read than to write. If a programmer thinks it's faster to write new code it's because he/she forgets about the fixes added later on. Good code also has comments/documentation, clear variable/class names and is broken up in smaller parts which makes it easier to understand and harder to write.
Now what if the code is a mess? Messy code completly reverses the situation: hard to read, easy to write.
Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by miu · 2004-12-03 11:36 · Score: 1

Exactly and even the worst code can be run through a tool that will let you jump to the important parts and figure out the magic. I've cloned a "magical" feature both ways - by painstaking disassembly, traces, and reads of memory dumps and by taking existing rotten code and figuring out what it does. The second is the far easier option.

--

[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by Chemisor · 2004-12-03 11:44 · Score: 1

> And the worst part is the tendancy in that situation
> to rely on the secret to stay secret, instead of continuing to innovate.

And what incentive would you have to innovate if your competitors just steal your innovations and sell them cheaper because they don't have to pay for the research?

> Thus, when two companies are competing on features,
> it is invariably faster to write a new feature from scratch

Not necessarily. It depends on what the "feature" is. If it is just a different dialog layout, sure, it's much easier to do from scratch. It's not much of an invention either. I'm talking about real inventions, like Google's indexing algorithms. If you wanted to duplicate that functionality without seeing their code, you'd have to be as smart as the person who invented them in the first place.

> the first disgruntaled employee to leave your company, and you're screwed.

Well, don't have disgruntled employees! If you treat them well, they'll treat you well. Even now, I doubt this happens all that often, since you can sue this person and possibly even get criminal charges against him, depending on how your NDA was worded.
Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by Chemisor · 2004-12-03 11:48 · Score: 1

> So what you're saying is, assembler is not code?

Not any more, grandpa! :) Seriously, when you hear someone say "code", he means a high level language source. A modern nontrivial application is VERY hard to figure out by looking at dissassembly output; normal people would not be able to do it at all.
Re:"Code is hard to read" is NOT a good answer by djmurdoch · 2004-12-03 12:16 · Score: 1

even the worst code is a million times easier to read than the output of a disassembler

So what you're saying is, assembler is not code? Weird. I guess these old skool coderz weren't coders after all.

No, the message is that disassemblers don't produce source code. They produce something which can be passed through an assembler to produce the same object code, but all the semantics that were in the filenames, variable names, macros, etc. are lost.

Some software SHOULD be not open. by azav · 2004-12-03 09:58 · Score: 1, Insightful

If you example, you are responsible for a mission critical software deployment for company or country A and you are using software that is not closed but is say, a product of the open source community, there is little to no guarantee that a backdoor or little known security exploit has not been put in to the code that you base your software system on.

I may be expressing my ignorance to current well run open source projects but actually, what does prevent a coder agent from putting in or keeping on security exploits? All the low level bit and byte override overflow exploits are very difficult to understand for regular people and harder to protect against.

Can there be a point where software that was previously open is licensed for private uses and security audited while development on a private fork continues??

--
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...

Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:07 · Score: 0

There is a difference between making the source available and letting any random person submit code to your codebase...
Open source doesn't necessarily mean the second, and in fact, if you look at most OSS projects, you'll notice that only a (relatively) small number of people are entrusted to submit code directly to the codebase.
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by teamhasnoi · 2004-12-03 10:13 · Score: 1

So, what is to stop the same 'coder agent' from doing the same to closed source? Sure, he/she's got to get hired, or contracted to work on it, but if the stakes are high enough, that would be just a temporary setback.
If you look at Apache and IIS, there are far more exploits for IIS, even though Apache is installed on many more servers.
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by LiquidCoooled · 2004-12-03 10:19 · Score: 1

I believe the BSD license allows for private forking into a closed source branch.

Now, onto the issue of malicious patching.

Most Open Source projects are maintained by a chain of command. Patches are submitted into the tree, but not automatically rolled into the main branch until verified by a trusted maintainer, or after numerous discussions on the boards or IRC.

Anonymous patches are allowed in some projects, but would be incredibly stupid to allow them to be merged without first validating them.

I could begin submitting patches into the Kernel, and build up a relationship with the central maintainers. After X amount of time, I might be given rights to push patches directly into the main branch myself.

Of course, if its your own project, you can choose to simply ignore all outside patches and risk a rebellion and fork.

Its just common sense really :)

--
liqbase :: faster than paper
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by EzInKy · 2004-12-03 10:22 · Score: 1

I may be expressing my ignorance to current well run open source projects but actually, what does prevent a coder agent from putting in or keeping on security exploits?

He'll get caught when someone who does understand the code reads it.

Now it's my turn. What prevents someone from putting a security exploit in closed source code?

--
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by chrisjrn · 2004-12-03 10:22 · Score: 1

Generally, there is some sort of central control in the project, so that someone actually sees the security exploit before it gets released to the public -- open source doesn't mean that the changes are public as soon as someone (your 'agent') decides to put it there...
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by grumbel · 2004-12-03 10:54 · Score: 1

First of, if there is a backdoor it shouldn't be that hard to fix and it should also be easier to locate when you have the source, with closed source you are neither allowed to fix it and will have a much harder time to find it in the first place.

Second, what makes you believe that there are backdoors in open source any more than in closed source software? Open Source isn't open for everybody, write access to the repository is limited to a small number of people, commit logs get posted to mailing lists and can be easily be verified by other people there. Open source people don't blindly apply every patch they get any more than closed source people do.

### All the low level bit and byte override overflow exploits are very difficult to understand for regular people and harder to protect against.

Yes, but that has nothing todo with open or closed sound.

Open source doesn't gurantee you anything sure, but neither does closed source, just because your contractor says its 'bug and backdoor free' doesn't mean that it is.
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by burns210 · 2004-12-03 11:09 · Score: 1

So corporation X wants to deploy production/enterprise level software Y or Z. Y is open source, Z is closed source. Y and Z are comparable feature-wise, and both equally fill the role.

If Y has a backdoor, you have the option for your software development department to look at the code, review and check for buffer overflows and backdoors.

If Z has a backdoor, you are unaware of it, but it is likely that only company Z knows about it(for the time being, backdoors are commonly cracked by third-party hackers).

So in the first scenario, many people could know about the hole but you can also fix it, or use a fix provided by a programmer that also knows about the while.

In the second scenario, few peopl know (initially) about it, but it cannot be patched by anyone but the company that made it(and put in the backdoor in the first place. could you really trust them to patch it?).

Which is the better way to go?
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by marcosdumay · 2004-12-03 11:19 · Score: 1

Well, software been used in a misssion critical must be auditted, it been closed or open.
Besides that, it's also hard to trust a company (remenber that a free software developer doesn't need to know how uses his software, but a closed software company does know) and problems with free software tend to be detected faster.
And if it's not enogh, at least free software is easyer to audit (because you have the source) and don't let you with buggy software because you can correct the bugs you foud. People that need this kind of security generaly can afford correcting software.

--
Rethinking email
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:19 · Score: 0

If you example, you are responsible for a mission critical software deployment for company or country A and you are using software that is not closed but is say, a product of the open source community, there is little to no guarantee that a backdoor or little known security exploit has not been put in to the code that you base your software system on.

The exact same thing can be said for closed-source software. The difference is, the people who want to run mission critical systems can audit the open-source software themselves if it matters to them. With closed-source software, you have to trust the vendor.

Given your example of a government using software, do you really think that, say, China would prefer to trust Microsoft, a US corporation, or audit OpenBSD?

I may be expressing my ignorance to current well run open source projects but actually, what does prevent a coder agent from putting in or keeping on security exploits?

A number of mechanisms. Firstly, the maintainers don't just chuck in every patch they get. If somebody submits a patch, it's reviewed and only goes in if makes sense.

So, you say, what if somebody introduces a vulnerability with a new feature? Hopefully, the maintainers will spot that. If they don't the community will. If the community doesn't, the person auditing the software will. Not auditing? Then you have to trust somebody. Do you trust the company that has a profit motive, or the people who are demonstrating that they have nothing to hide, over and over again?

Can there be a point where software that was previously open is licensed for private uses and security audited while development on a private fork continues??

I'm not sure what you mean here. An open-source project can be licensed privately by the copyright holders. Anybody with access to the source can audit it.
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by Taladar · 2004-12-03 11:31 · Score: 1

And what does prevent a closed source software vendor from putting a similar piece of code into their software? Or an employee of this closed-source vendor? With Open Source their is at least a slight chance someone will find it, with closed-source you have no chance at all to know about it. (I don't say Open Source is much better than closed source in this regard, but it definitely isn't worse)

--
Linux is not Windows
Re:Some software SHOULD be not open. by azav · 2004-12-03 12:35 · Score: 1

Lack of competent oversight and a security review policy.

Which is part of the point of my original post. Are these policies put in place for mission critical software where security is paramount? I have no way of knowing. Bearing in mind the additional cost this would entail, it appears that these two policies would be requirements - but I fear that due to costs, they would require too much personnel/time and not be instituted until after the fact of a security flaw being found.

--
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...

Simple solution by YouHaveSnail · 2004-12-03 10:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

The simple solution to this problem/debate, and really the only solution, is to let the market decide in each case. There are many markets where a proprietary solution may in fact be the best solution, and there are others where open source, communally developed software is more likely to succeed.

A good example is the games market. Developing compelling games is a lot of work (just ask the poor schlubs over at EA). Some games are written as a labor of love and may be released as open source projects. Far more often, though, games are produced like movies, using expensive resources and labor. And they often have to be produced on a tight schedule for marketing reasons, so that their release coincides with the release of some movie or holiday buying season or whatever. For these reasons, there are few if any open source games out there, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Obviously, there are also many areas in which open source products are kicking the proprietary competition's collective ass. These are usually products which work best if they can run on multiple platforms, meet the needs of lots of different people in different situations, and provide enough value that smart people are willing to spend their time improving and customizing them. Linux, Apache, PHP, etc.

So lets stop worrying about whether open source software is better than proprietary software in all cases or vice versa. It's pretty clear that both bring value to our society and to our economy. Lets instead keep improving the ways we develop products under both systems, and make sure that we maintain an infrastructure that works for both. Software patents are a dumb and harmful idea, but copyright is important and should be respected and protected. Open standards are essential to vibrant markets and useful tools, and we should insist on vendor-neutral bodies to develop and maintain them.

Re:Simple solution by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:19 · Score: 0

These days, good open source games are rare because they require a lot of artwork: graphics, animation, sound, music, and so on. These are out of reach of most open source developers, and artists haven't caught on to open source. In the old days, there were lots of open source games, with moria and nethack (still is) being a couple of very famous ones.
Re:Simple solution by YouHaveSnail · 2004-12-03 10:49 · Score: 1

In the old days, there were lots of open source games, with moria and nethack (still is) being a couple of very famous ones.

Right, but those are perfect examples of the kind of products you get from open source efforts. Not that there's anything wrong with moria or nethack... they're classic games, fun to play, and addictive enough that people still get stuck on them. But the current games market demands fantastic graphics, great sound, etc., all of which require expensive resources, including labor. Most games today are also written for a particular platform. That's true partly because the platform owners use exclusivity as an important marketing tool, and partly because some games have deep ties to hardware and platform features.

None of that is likely to change anytime soon. I don't see today's teenage boys suddenly deciding that ANSI graphics and zero sound is super retro chic and cool enough to ditch their PlayStation.

But games are only one example. Although the FOSS community has made several attempts at productivity software over the years, it's never been a real threat to proprietary packages like MS Office. Yes, I know about OpenOffice, and I wish it nothing but the best. But the truth is that developing great productivity applications requires huge effort and organization beyond just developing code, and proprietary developers will at least have a significant advantage in this domain for the foreseeable future.

By the same token, there's no inherent reason that proprietary developers can't build a great OS or a great web server or something like that. It's happened, and plenty of times. But the FOSS community has an advantage in these domains, and it'll continue to threaten proprietary developers who seek to maintain huge market share there.
Re:Simple solution by dvdeug · 2004-12-03 11:46 · Score: 1

But games are only one example. Although the FOSS community has made several attempts at productivity software over the years, it's never been a real threat to proprietary packages like MS Office.

I'm not sure that's true. Games require (a) a lot of art (something that free software hasn't been strong on, historically) and (b) constant advances in the state of the art. Word processors, spreadsheets and similar things don't. Microsoft is quickly hitting the dead end on new features for MS Office that anyone needs. The main reason why MS Office is holding its own is because its file formats are virtually impossible to emulate correctly. (Which is what you get from doing raw memory dumps.) The one feature everyone complains that OpenOffice doesn't have is bug compatibility with MS Office file formats.

I think free software has problems with markets that need large amounts of art. It also has problems with markets where you have to run fast to stay in the same place. Anything else, free software will eventually build something (or get something freed) that's good enough and cut the market for proprietary solutions.

For example, GCC, for much of the market, is good enough. A huge part of the market for C, Pascal, Fortran77 and Ada compilers is removed by GCC. Likewise, the Unix shells that are free software annihilate any market there might be for a proprietary shell. Even if they stood still, there's no features a proprietary shell could have that would make many people switch. IE would not be a viable webbrowser if Microsoft didn't subsidize it. Mozilla and Konqueror have virtually cut out the market for proprietary webbrowsers on Un*x. Gimp is cutting out a large part of the low-level market for graphics editors.

Not-quite Free software also has that effect; there's dozens of semester-project level raytracers on the net, but PovRay is the only serious raytracer available for the home user. FractInt kills much of the market for Free or non-Free fractal programs.

All free software has to do is to hit that point where it's good enough for the market and it will kill much of the proprietary competition. I don't think that's an effect of an OS or webserver; anything that can collect enough developers to compete in a stable market will eventually become good-enough to starve the proprietary competition.
Re:Simple solution by Delphiki · 2004-12-03 14:05 · Score: 1

The Gimp has cut into the market for low level image editors? Are you sure you aren't thinking of pirated copies of Photoshop? GCC is good enough as long as you aren't on Windows. OpenOffice is good, but it still hasn't cut deeply into MS Office's market share, and MS Office still does a lot of thing that OpenOffice doesn't and does some other things beter.
Unix shells? Has anyone ever tried to market a Unix shell on its own? Microsoft doesn't subsidize IE. It's included in the operating system, so people certainly pay for it. So apparently, people are paying for one crappy product, and getting another crappy product for free! Those fools. Or maybe both are examples of proprietary examples that are good enough, even though there is a better browser available and an OS some people think are better.
As much as is made of free software, there a lot of areas where free software is not a threat to proprietary software and where there are no signs of that changing. For example, name an open source application cutting into Photoshop's market share. Or who are moving into the anti-virus market? Or commercial quality video editing or sound production? Or Flash and Shockwave?
All free software has to do is to hit that point where it's good enough for the market and it will kill much of the proprietary competition. I don't think that's an effect of an OS or webserver; anything that can collect enough developers to compete in a stable market will eventually become good-enough to starve the proprietary competition.
Do you have any basis for this? Can you name a single market that closed source software has been starved out of? Unless you limit it to Unix only, I'd be willing to bet you can't. In fact, except for a few server applications, I doubt that open source has ten percent of any single market.
Even PovRay and FractInt which aren't open source are only in two very small niche markets.

--
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
Re:Simple solution by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 18:56 · Score: 0

>...Although the FOSS community has made several attempts at productivity software over the years, it's never been a real threat to proprietary packages like MS Office. Yes, I know about OpenOffice, and I wish it nothing but the best...

IIRC, OpenOffice was based on StarOffice, which was developed as a closed source product until Sun decided to open it.
Re:Simple solution by Jonti · 2004-12-03 22:45 · Score: 1

name an open source application ... who are moving into the anti-virus market?

Oh, you haven't heard?
Try Clam anti-virus at http://www.clamav.net/

It is of course in everyone's direct interests to support an open, free global anti-virus network like Clam, rather than pay for secret source snake oil that does you-know-not-what.
Re:Simple solution by danila · 2004-12-04 00:25 · Score: 1

You were brainwashed to believe that market is perfect. It isn't. The only thing is exceeds at is making demand equal supply, not at maximizing efficiency, utility or happiness.

It's quite obvious from current practices in game development, that open source has tremendous potential there. I am not saying GPL necessarily has, but open source in general. For example, 25% of EA projects use a common rendering platform - Renderware. Don't you think there are benefits for everyone if there was free access to the source (not necessarily "free as in beer"). Think about how much other middleware there is. Think about many companies optimizing their engines for moddability so that users can create custom content. All this just begs for open source model to be used.

The market, however, is not perfect. If it was perfect, it would release only perfect products, which is not the case. :) Ergo it isn't.

--
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Re:Simple solution by danila · 2004-12-04 00:27 · Score: 1

Also, don't forget that we are part of the market. If we are discussing how open-source should be forced on everyone, we are being part of the market push for open-source. :)

--
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.

Im confused? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:02 · Score: 0

My names Tim -- how does this affect my ability to reproduce?

On the contrary by eobanb · 2004-12-03 10:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

But they are *not* a good example of how a company can succeed by *being* generous

How do you figure? Apple's given a lot back to the open source community, especially in terms of user interface and networking. Yes, Apple used to be very unfriendly to open source, but now it's just as easy to dual boot a Mac with Mac OS X and Linux as it is with a PC. And Apple even directly controls the hardware. But back to software; Apple basically re-wrote KHTML for Safari, and then gave it all back to KDE. Rendezvous is also an important project, largely under Apple direction, that probably wouldn't have otherwise caught on.

And don't even get me started on user interface. Apple might not have contributed to this directly, but have you ever stopped to think how much of Gnome and GTK+ is influenced by the Mac OS? Cosmetically, the two are becoming more alike all the time. Example: GTKFileSelection really really sucked. But then Gnome took an idea straight from Mac OS X and brought us GTKFileChooser, which is way more intuitive and easy to use.

In the future, it'll all be even more prevalent. Jabber is coming to iChat in Tiger, for example. It seems like most, if not all, improvements Apple makes to open source libraries/programs all gets given back to the open source community, which is way more than can be said for a lot of other companies.

So stop bitching.

--

Take off every sig. For great justice.

Re:On the contrary by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:29 · Score: 0

KHTML currently has no fixes from Apple.
Re:On the contrary by Reverberant · 2004-12-03 11:43 · Score: 1

Yes, Apple used to be very unfriendly to open source
I agree with the general thrust of your post, but when has Apple been "unfriendly" to open source? Yes there was the FSF boycott, but that was because the FSF was angry at Apple over the Microsoft "look & feel" lawsuit rather than a specific issue with open source.

Apple was collaborating with open source software advocates years before open source was 'cool' (in the mainstream sense). I know the pre-Open Firmware bootloaders weren't easy to deal with, but hackers have gotten NetBSD and Linux running on several 68k era Macs without any grief from Apple.
Re:On the contrary by ndogg · 2004-12-03 11:54 · Score: 1

Don't bet on it That's only one example, but there are many others. Just do some searching around on the KDE lists (hint: search for WebCore, not Safari.)

--
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Re:On the contrary by zurab · 2004-12-03 12:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

Apple has given a lot back to the OSS, but you misrepresent several points:

Yes, Apple used to be very unfriendly to open source, but now it's just as easy to dual boot a Mac with Mac OS X and Linux as it is with a PC.

And what, exactly, did they give out as open source with that? Yes, you can boot Linux on a Mac; you can also do it on a mainframe, Sparcstation, and everybody's microwave. i.e., at the most they are on par with everyone else - not hindering != being generous and giving, unless that's your definition of the word.

Apple basically re-wrote KHTML for Safari, and then gave it all back to KDE.

They didn't rewrite anything. Apple chose KHTML as their rendering engine for their new Safari web browser and contributed their fixes and modifications back. Yes, they could have chosen Gecko, or written another one from scratch, but they chose KHTML because they liked it better. KHTML is licensed under LGPL - anyone who receives the Safari binaries has a right to ask for the modified KHTML source. Apple is contributing their bug fixes and additions that they are required to disclose under LGPL.

Presumably, they are being very nice and collaborative about it and I am not in any way trying to portray them in a bad light for the way they are doing this. But it's nowhere close to what you claim about rewriting the whole engine and giving back out of generosity.

And don't even get me started on user interface. Apple might not have contributed to this directly, but have you ever stopped to think how much of Gnome and GTK+ is influenced by the Mac OS?

I don't know how this relates to generosity - would they start suing GNOME developers or users if they were not acting "generous?" MS Windows has also influenced KDE and GNOME and various application GUIs - you could then argue that MS has been just as, or even more generous with the OSS in this regard.

So, yes, Apple has contributed Darwin and Rendevouz when they didn't have to, they are being helpful with providing fixes in KHTML (which they would eventually have to), but you don't want to blow some things out of proportion.
Re:On the contrary by dvdeug · 2004-12-03 12:47 · Score: 1

KHTML is licensed under LGPL - anyone who receives the Safari binaries has a right to ask for the modified KHTML source. Apple is contributing their bug fixes and additions that they are required to disclose under LGPL.

But they don't have to contribute them; they just have to reveal them. Merging someone's fork can be very hard, and Apple could make it much harder just by making a few changes to make the code fit Apple's coding standards, like changing variable names and code indention. The fact that Apple is actively working with KDE developers is above and beyond the call of duty.
Re:On the contrary by dvdeug · 2004-12-03 12:50 · Score: 1

Yes, I'm replying to myself.

One counterexample of this is OpenBSD. Yes, all their code is Open Source and available, but they don't go out of their way to return patches to upstream. Several times, a vulnerability has been discovered and published, and OpenBSD said "Oh, we fixed that a year ago." Sure, you can dig through the OpenBSD changes, but they aren't cooperating by contributing their fixes upstream.
Re:On the contrary by zurab · 2004-12-03 13:39 · Score: 1

KHTML is licensed under LGPL - anyone who receives the Safari binaries has a right to ask for the modified KHTML source. Apple is contributing their bug fixes and additions that they are required to disclose under LGPL.

But they don't have to contribute them; they just have to reveal them. Merging someone's fork can be very hard, and Apple could make it much harder just by making a few changes to make the code fit Apple's coding standards, like changing variable names and code indention. The fact that Apple is actively working with KDE developers is above and beyond the call of duty.

But I didn't dispute that point. In fact, I made one along the same lines in the next sentence after what you quoted. What I was correcting is the parent poster's statement that Apple rewrote KHTML and gave it "all" back to KDE team as a part of their generosity. Well, that's not exactly what they did.
Re:On the contrary by vsync64 · 2004-12-03 14:33 · Score: 1

Theo de Raadt used to contribute to NetBSD until there was a falling out. At that point he felt that it wasn't worth his time to contribute to the project. His view is that people should use OpenBSD rather than NetBSD. Isn't this what every vendor thinks? At least his source is public; he could just as easily have closed it.
That's what a fork is. The same thing happened to XFree86; they annoyed one too many people and suddenly everyone disowned them. And there's been a flurry of X11 development since. XEmacs similarly pressured FSF Emacs to catch up -- eventually -- on some architectural and feature improvements that RMS was too stubborn to include originally, and provided a choice for users that wanted features RMS didn't like but JWZ did. I don't necessarily view forking as a wholesale negative when the source is open; certainly there are downsides to it but forcing users to choose which maintainer takes a better overall approach can have positive aspects as well. I also suspect the threat of forking with regard to ego, support contracts, and professional reputation also tends to force package maintainers to behave in a more cooperative manner than they perhaps might otherwise.
I don't endorse or condemn the history behind OpenBSD; the only BSD I use is FreeBSD so I'm not a partisan for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. But that history is what it is, and I have to wonder whether, when Theo started feeling that his contributions were unwelcome, you would rather have had him stop releasing his code entirely, or fork his project.

--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Re:On the contrary by dvdeug · 2004-12-03 18:45 · Score: 1

His view is that people should use OpenBSD rather than NetBSD.

I wasn't talking about core BSD; I'm talking about all the little side utilities that the BSDs share with Linux.
Re:On the contrary by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-05 13:22 · Score: 0

> And what, exactly, did they give out as open source with that?

Well, it's called mklinux. They developed it, released it as an open source distribution, and did the critical part of writing the drivers for the previously undocumented hardware.

Honestly, what more could they have done than that to promote linux on their platform? I don't understand your attitude about it.
Re:On the contrary by zurab · 2004-12-05 16:49 · Score: 1

Well, it's called mklinux. They developed it, released it as an open source distribution, and did the critical part of writing the drivers for the previously undocumented hardware.

Fill in the gaps: they developed several releases in the mid-to-late 90s, they provided partial information and partial implementation of their hardware. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that - it's just what it is. Since then they have dropped doing anything with MkLinux.

Honestly, what more could they have done than that to promote linux on their platform? I don't understand your attitude about it.

I don't know what they could have done - that's not the point. The point is not to overblow what they did and give Steve Jobs a blowjob for it. At most they are on par with other hardware manufacturers in this regard - you can boot Linux on PPC, you can boot it also on Playstation, iPaq, and a wide range or hardware and gadgets. There is no attitude.

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by garaged · 2004-12-03 10:05 · Score: 1

It's not the same to get bandwidth starved by a slashdotting, that bearink the web serving program just because of a bandwidth attack

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I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma

Competition by Ann+Coulter · 2004-12-03 10:05 · Score: 1

Even though some companies depend on the closed nature of the fruits of their research department, they still can not compete with a similar product with a few features less but yet is free and more reliable. This assumes that both products have the same marketing backing.

Most algorithms are still publicly availible. Anyone can implement them, given the necessary experience. There are briliant minds working on implementing features in Open Source software that are similar to those in their commercial counterparts.

The main reason why Open Source software hasn't been used as much in areas such as publishing or the home market is because Closed Source products have already entranched themselves in those niches. If there are superior Open Source products in those areas, and more people are convinced to try them, then the relevant Closed Source based companies will loose a lot of market share.

Re:Competition by Quill_28 · 2004-12-03 10:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

'but yet is free and more reliable.'

I didn't know open source was always more reliable?

IMO, apple has given back 'enough' by lakeland · 2004-12-03 10:07 · Score: 1

Sure, apple hasn't open sourced many bits they wrote from scratch (rendezvous?) but to they projects they have used they have contributed back pretty generously.

Sure, they've taken advantage of other people being generous, and why not? Those people chose to give away the software. But in my opinion they've been generous enough in return. One of the nice things about open source is that, with so many people using it, any given user does not have to give back much in order for us to get a lot.

Re:IMO, apple has given back 'enough' by Moofie · 2004-12-03 10:33 · Score: 1

Rendezvous is an IETF standard. Apple just gave it a cool name. (Oh yeah, and wrote most of it, improved it immeasurably, and gave it back to all of us.)

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/sep/25rende zv ous.html

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!

To Faith, Family, And Values Coalition: +1, True by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:08 · Score: 0

To borrow a phrase from Dennis Hopper:

Fuck you you fucking fucks.

Seditiously as always,
Kilgore Trout, CEO

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by Temporal · 2004-12-03 10:09 · Score: 1

Calm down. I was joking. The error just seemed humorously ironic to me.

Re:Yes! but no. by teamhasnoi · 2004-12-03 10:10 · Score: 1

There are no circumstances where code cannot be modified. The Xbox is a good example - there is always an exploit, be it hardware or software. If you want to keep something secret and safe, destroy it and never speak of it again.

Closed vs. Open by jd · 2004-12-03 10:12 · Score: 1

Closed Source cannot really be argued as generating more business. Either people will buy a product or they won't. Either it does what they want or it doesn't. Either the price is what the market will bear or it isn't.

Let's use that age-old analogy - welding down the hood of a car. With modern cars, it might as well be, for all the (lack of) servicable parts inside. For many practical purposes (such as driving it) it would make absolutely zero difference. 99.99% of the time, for 99.99% of the users, it would have no impact.

Sticking with the car analogy - do simpler, more easily maintained, cars do better/worse than complex vehicles where only Trained Experts with multi-gazillion dollar workshops can replace a fuse?

There's not much evidence of it. Old-style Volkswagon Beetles had a very respectable run, and were highly popular where said multi-gazillion dollar workshops did not exist. They certainly didn't cause Volkswagon to go belly-up, they held their own, and they led to a whole generation of "minis", all built with similar simplicity and maintainability in mind. On the other hand, they didn't drive GM or Ferrari out of business, either.

What does all this mean? Well, it means that Open Source is a perfectly viable business model. Past experience fails to show a convincing case for secrecy driving the markets or the consumers.

It also means that Closed Source is unlikely to go away. Not because it's "superior" (by what standards?) but because it's embraced by producers. People don't write their own programs any more than they build their own cars (well, some do, in both fields, but it's not exactly common). You're essentially stuck with what's on offer. Free choice is a myth to the extent that you can't choose something that doesn't exist.

Volkswagon made its own mistakes - not because those mistakes were inevitable and because of the simple design of the Beetle, but because the management didn't comprehend the potential, failed to take advantage of that potential, and assumed that only hippies liked the car anyway.

It's still anyone's guess as to whether IBM and SGI will do the same. It's good that there are more companies actively imvolved, because if one does blindside itself, it might not be so disasterous.

Certainly, although HP/Compaq have done some stupid things in the FOSS world, it's not hurt anything other than their image in that world. Apache's defection from an Open Source license didn't kill the web or Linux as a web server. The only people affected by OSG's decision to make X non-free was themselves. Everyone just moved to XFree, leaving the X Consortium stranded on its own ego.

(Likewise, when XFree86 collapsed under the weight of their own stupidity, XOrg simply picked up the slack and left the XFree group choking in the dust.)

FOSS has the strengths of the Beetle, then, with few of the weaknesses of over-centralized management. If companies learn how to utilize the products, this could be a significant market for some considerable time.

The question is not, and never has been, which is better. The question is which side will be the better at presenting its case.

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)

Re:Closed vs. Open by Moofie · 2004-12-03 11:14 · Score: 1

Simple question.

Would you rather drive an old Beetle, or a BMW M5?

I really am curious as to where these cars with no user serviceable parts come from. I'm looking at what people are doing with cars at SEMA, and I simply don't see what you're complaining about. Need a gazillion dollar shop to replace a fuse? Dude! What are you driving? The Space Shuttle?

--
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!

closed vs open source = products vs services by Spy+der+Mann · 2004-12-03 10:14 · Score: 1, Interesting

When software companies sell their software, it's priority that they keep the source hidden (why sell something that you can get for free?)

In contrast, open source software is meant to be given away.

Therefore, Open vs. Closed source is just a readaptation of the products vs. services issue. Allow me to explain why:

Open source software tends to be more generic (i.e. a software for scripting websites), while closed source tends to be more specific (i.e. software for scripting company's website).

Therefore Open Source users tend to focus more on SERVICES (i.e. adapting open source software "X" for company "Y"). That's what we all web programmers do, right? Eventually we end up making products, therefore the source code is closed (i.e. the PHP files for our client companies). We can choose to sell it as a product (i.e. giving an exclusive, non-transferrable license to the client), or keep working on it as a service.

The problem is when a company wants to make a product and wants to have EVERYONE using it. It's destroying the economy in favor of a few (i.e. Microsoft). Kills the competition, etc etc.

Open vs. closed software is like the Yang/Yin duality: One cannot exist without the other. Closed software needs Open software to avoid reinventing the wheel. Open software needs closed software to have an active market using it.

The lifecycle of Software goes like this: Someone writes a software good enough for a specific task. He can choose either to sell it, or to give it away. If he sells it, (closed source) there will come competitors as a natural consequence. If he gives it away, people will adapt it to their specific things, charging for the service. This will eventually become a software in itself, repeating the cycle.

It's not that one is better than the other. Both are the opposite sides of the coin. It's when someone tries to force one over the other (GPL infection and patented software monopolies are examples of such extremes) is when things get messy.

So, open vs. closed source, in the end, is just a matter of economy.

Re:closed vs open source = products vs services by dsci · 2004-12-03 11:22 · Score: 1

In contrast, open source software is meant to be given away.

Not necessarily. Open source merely means the source code is available. True, to those who wish to configure and compile, that may in fact mean free (as in beer).

But, in the business world, not everyone wants to compile every app on every box. I can write an app, compile the binary and sell it, but make the source 'open' to those that want it. Many customers could not care less about the source code, and may lack the skills to do the compiling.

In fact, in the MS Windows world, most users don't even HAVE a compiler. In this case, they are paying me to configure and compile the software for them (a service as you describe it), but the point is that the USABLE software to the customer was NOT free.

Part of the problem "open source vs. closed source" is that it is not JUST about money. It goes much deeper.

the source code is closed (i.e. the PHP files for our client companies)
Isn't PHP code OPEN by definition? If you are writing a deployable product, the code is open; if not, if it's just in-house stuff, who really cares anyway. Then it is ALL 'closed' source in a way.

--
Computational Chemistry products and services.

Google cache by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:14 · Score: 0

Joe's article

Now, why is Tim referring to himself by name and not using the pronoun "I"? Delusions of grandeur?

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:18 · Score: 0

What? That made no sense at all.

Here's the real reason for closed-source by killermookie · 2004-12-03 10:20 · Score: 1

We are morons

Closed Source for External File Formats by Sheepdot · 2004-12-03 10:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

One of the biggest problems with the closed source model is that you have to be a big player in order to maintain the format(s) for your external files being used. For example, the .WPD format lost out to .RTF and so has .DOC to a certain extent.

An open source gaming engine will eventually surpass a closed source one, however the issue right now is that there is so much more money to be had developing one closed source. But even that cannot delay the inevitable.

Some exceptions do occur. Adobe's PDF format is one that has simply been reverse-engineered instead of replaced.

I realize that my comments focus mainly on external "save files" and that not doesn't apply directly to the argument, but IMHO the shift in external formats being closed to more open is a good indicator of what the "end game" will look like in the future.

Microsoft can push the closed source model all they want, but the reality is that they essentially killed it by buying out all the other closed-source solutions in the marketplace. Now all that remains is for them to eventually succumb.

Re:Closed Source for External File Formats by eweu · 2004-12-03 11:11 · Score: 2, Informative

Adobe's PDF format is one that has simply been reverse-engineered instead of replaced.

The PDF Reference is available for all to see. No need to RE it.

But this gives weight to your argument. Adobe has been remarkable successful with PDF simply by encouraging others to use it. They happen to sell the most full featured PDF creation tools, but others have been able to take advantage with still more success.
Re:Closed Source for External File Formats by mistersooreams · 2004-12-03 11:13 · Score: 1

Just to say, PDF is actually an open format. There are other viewers than Acrobat. Small point, I know, and I agree with you otherwise.

--
apterous.org
Re:Closed Source for External File Formats by daVinci1980 · 2004-12-03 11:19 · Score: 1

An open source gaming engine will eventually surpass a closed source one, however the issue right now is that there is so much more money to be had developing one closed source. But even that cannot delay the inevitable.

What is your reference for this statement? Why is it inevitable? Here's my list of closed-source engines. Let me know which of these will be surpassed in the short-term. Or, consider equivalently powerful engines for whatever period you would like to choose for the future.

Source
DOOM 3
Unreal *
Renderware
Gamebryo
Quake *
Farcry

Versus:
Irrlicht
XEngine
That terrible "cube" renderer that supports multitexturing ...

OSS prides itself on being really quick to fix things, but frankly, it's really sluggish when it comes to bleeding edge technology.

PS: Sadly, I maintain my own OSS rendering technology, which is also a bit laggy compared to existing technologies.

Fortunately, I also maintain a closed source engine which lets me work on all the bleeding edge problems I want.

--
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Re:Closed Source for External File Formats by dedazo · 2004-12-03 11:41 · Score: 1

Microsoft can push the closed source model all they want, but the reality is that they essentially killed it by buying out all the other closed-source solutions in the marketplace. Now all that remains is for them to eventually succumb.
Your user name is quite appropriate given the dumbness of your comment. There are thousands - thousands - of software companies producing commercial "closed-source" products. You and everyone else around here have somehow decided that the only entity in the planet producing commercial software is Microsoft, and that the only software used by people and companies is a kernel, the desktop, a web browser and an office suite. So you can't see the forest for the trees.
BTW - Microsoft isn't "pushing" anything. The people who "push" open source are the ones on which the onus falls to prove that it is viable. Commercial licensed software was working fine before Stallman had his Jolt-induced vision. You may not like how it worked (or how it works now), but that doesn't mean open source somehow magically invented the software market last year.

--
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo

Oher areas by Quill_28 · 2004-12-03 10:21 · Score: 1

Is the open source movement moved to other areas besides software?

i.e. to me software is no different then books, music, architect plans, recipes, etc

So does the open source movement want to move into these areas also?

Or just stick with software?

Curious i guess.

Re:Oher areas by DuckofDeath87 · 2004-12-03 10:53 · Score: 2, Informative

Well, it already has, to a small degree.
In music, there is the Creative Commons.
And, in books, there is WikiBooks.
So, yes, it does seem to want to expand to other things.

Google Cache by swiftstream · 2004-12-03 10:23 · Score: 1

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fww w.joemarini.com%2Farticles%2FnotOpeningEverything2 0041121.php

--
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.

That wont work by geekoid · 2004-12-03 10:23 · Score: 1

due to market manipulation..such as wielding power from a monopoly ilegally.

Market is great, but to just let the market decide without any governance is follhardy.

--
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Re:That wont work by bladernr · 2004-12-03 11:42 · Score: 1

Market is great, but to just let the market decide without any governance is [foolhardy].
Governance is great, but who is governing? I support regulation in theory, but not in practice; I tend not to trust the regulators to be objective and fair arbitors.
The free-market is a horrible method of capitol allocation - but it happens to be the best we know. Worldwide, privatized industries perform better than their state-owned predecessors. People may not like it, but its true, and proven over and over again.
I certainly don't trust regulation to popular vote - tyranny of the majority, group-think, and all that. So, in adsense of regulation, the market seems to work.
In fact, most monopoly conditions and competition perversions are, in fact, due to government. Look at official protections and barriers to entry. Government does not solve the problem - it IS the problem. Just look at what happened to airfares and phone bills when their respective industries were deregulated (hint: consumers got a better deal).

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Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Re:That wont work by dvdeug · 2004-12-03 12:40 · Score: 1

Just look at what happened to airfares and phone bills when their respective industries were deregulated (hint: consumers got a better deal).

Hint: phone companies weren't deregulated; AT&T was broken up. Nobody could have broken into the industry with AT&T whole against them; they would have had to run telephone wires all over the place, for one thing. Of course, the people in Podunk, North Dakota still wouldn't have phone service without government regulation.
Re:That wont work by ciggieposeur · 2004-12-03 12:55 · Score: 1

Worldwide, privatized industries perform better than their state-owned predecessors.

That's actually not true for basic infrastructure industries. Water, wastewater, fire control, and electricity are markets that the government tends to handle far better than private corporations, usually because the corporations try to squeeze as much money out of the system as possible by reducing service and raising prices.

Check out recent stories about the effort to privatize electricity PUCs in the Northeast, or even older stories about what happens when a large city's wastewater operations get privatized.

In fact, most monopoly conditions and competition perversions are, in fact, due to government.

Again, check your history about the rise of monopolies. In most cases, government has to intervene to break them up, resulting in a better deal for consumers. Standard Oil and AT&T being the classic examples.
Re:That wont work by fishbowl · 2004-12-03 12:59 · Score: 1

"Of course, the people in Podunk, North Dakota still wouldn't have phone service without government regulation."

However it might have been interesting to see them get wireless phones before ever getting landlines (and to get broadband internet without ever using dialup as an evolutionary step!)

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-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.

can't we just get along by jonathanduty · 2004-12-03 10:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've been reading open sources vs closed source arguments for a long time now. I guess my question would be why does it just have to be one or the other? In business school they teach students many different business models because different markets call for different models.

Microsoft has a model that works for their market (that is if the measure for a good model is not the quality of software but the about of sales and market ownership). The JBoss Group also seems to be doing well in their market so they have also found a model that works.

Why can't we just all get along??

Re:The real value of closed source a la slashdotti by SCHecklerX · 2004-12-03 10:25 · Score: 1

As a poster above pointed out, this may be the artificial connection limit because he is using a 'personal' version of windows and not server? This type of artificial limit, of course, would not exist in open source software unless there were a good reason for it, or it was easily controllable by those using the software.

It's not a wrong ling... Here's the Google cache by swiftstream · 2004-12-03 10:25 · Score: 1

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fww w.joemarini.com%2Farticles%2FnotOpeningEverything2 0041121.php

--
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by BrynM · 2004-12-03 10:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Right, because we know both websites are hosted on hardware with equal processing power and available bandwidth.

<sarcasm>Maybe he just needs to buy more client licenses...</sarcasm>

--
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)

super sekret sorce by geoff+lane · 2004-12-03 10:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

The problem with secrets is that they rarely last.

If your business model is based on a secret then you end up spending more on protecting the secret than developing new products.

Re:super sekret sorce by dsci · 2004-12-03 11:29 · Score: 1

If your business model is based on a secret then you end up spending more on protecting the secret than developing new products.

Exactly. Excellent article today posted on FastCompany details just this point.

Short version: Microsoft has spent A WHOLE BUNCH of money in the past decade and half protecting existing markets rather than innovating new ones. Their R&D dollars go into incremental changes in existing products, rather than the development of new technologies.

--
Computational Chemistry products and services.

Google Cache/Mirror by swiftstream · 2004-12-03 10:28 · Score: 2, Informative

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fww w.joemarini.com%2Farticles%2FnotOpeningEverything2 0041121.php

--
Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.

Software or Code? by Barumpus · 2004-12-03 10:30 · Score: 2, Funny

Should code be secret? That is debatable and, in my opinion, would fall to an individual per code basis.

As for software. Yes, some of that should have been kept secret. WinME, Daikatana, and the Deer Hunter series all come to mind in this case.

It's really about Open Standards by Enrico+Pulatzo · 2004-12-03 10:33 · Score: 1

Tim makes a great argument in the first part about sticking to open standards, while calling it Open Source. Personally, I can take or leave open source. It's rarely important for me to be able to see how someone else did something. However, having a standard for a project (say MS Exchange Server) handy would allow me to interchange that project with a competitor that provided other value added materials.

Joe argues (I belive rightly so) that opening the source of Quark would have killed Quark (which would have been great in my opinion). However, he does not address opening the format of the Quark file. Doing that would not have killed off Quark, unless there's something I'm missing there, it would have made Quark even more of a standard, since competitors could interoperate with Quark files.

Relationships, relationships, relationships,... by plopez · 2004-12-03 10:36 · Score: 4, Insightful

What makes a successful company? Good customer relationships.

I too have work for large organizations, and the traditional B2B relatioship was to give the open source to the client. It was licensed, patened, copy righted etc. but we still had the source which our in-house staff (I was one of them) could modify to meet our customized needs. With the understanding that we would have to support our own mods.

If our mods were good, the vendor would essentially buy us out by giving us discounts, free training classes etc. and take over the supporting the modfication, which was then rolled out to other clients. Sure we could have ripped off their code, but it was in our own best interest not to. The vendor, by licensing the code over a broad number of clients created a cost sharing situation. And they were pleasent to work with.

How did the vendor succeed? By building a good working relationship with the customer. It is all about relationships. This is something MS and other closed source vendors never understand. Especially when they have a monopoly and they can abuse the customer with impunity.

The closed source approach really did not start until the 80's when world+dog thought that the path to fortune was in building proprietary closed source software. It is an anomoly which is slowly shrinking.

Closed source is also product based, which really does not make sense for software as it is an industrial paradigm. Software is more of a service, and open source is more service oriented than closed source (IBM understands this). It is the level of service on which you will win in the long run. Anything else is a short-term anomoly.

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putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+

Re:Relationships, relationships, relationships,... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 14:27 · Score: 0

No,No, NO! You are WRONG! OPEN source is an anomoly that is slowly shrinking, NOT the other way around!!! You talk about customer relationships...what relationship is there between the developer of and F/OSS project and the user? What F/OSS project that you know of actually listens to the user? I've not seen ONE since the days of PERL, which predates LINUX by almost a decade. And if PERL can't do it, what makes you thin anything else can?

Why always this battle? by dantheman82 · 2004-12-03 10:37 · Score: 1

It is quite nieve, I would say, to categorically label open source or closed source software as safer than its counterpart.
I may have a specialized closed-source operating system with low public demand but it remains lucrative within its niche market. I could have some genius programmers make it very safe. I could have this same operating system open source with only a small handful of developers worldwide working on or even interested in it (think of the countless SourceForge and other projects). So, due to lack of interest, it is total junk.
Now, if you build interest with great ideas and vision as the homesteader of OSS and build a large community that examines your code carefully, you will have a very good operating system.
However, in either case, you don't take into account malicious behavior. Let's say I spend hour after hour finding major security holes in an Open Source operating system. Who's to say I don't simply keep my findings secret until I can inflict maximum damage or steal the most money?
Open source is nice under the idealistic assumption that all developers are honest. For all you know, 1/2 of the developers on the current Linux distro only report half of the errors they find (or worse yet, embed malicious code in the OS). However, closed source developers have one added advantage - they get paid for what they do. If they get sick of the company, they could embezzle money or insert malicious code or document possible exploits as a personal vendetta.
All in all, I'd say the market decides which types of software are best suited for each model. And some software are successful when following either model.
The real question: Is this my sig or actually part of my comments?

--
This sig donated to Pater. Long live /.

Money by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:37 · Score: 0

How does a lone coder make money in the open source model these days? Is it possible, or will his ideas just become public and lose all value?

Slashdot is joining the Pie-In-The-Sky community by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:42 · Score: 0

Slashdot is finally willing and able to join the totally silly fan-boy level of know-nothings.

-If OSing doesn't hurt MS/Adobe/etc one bit, why don't they do it? Get like tons of karma for it??

-If MS would open up Office source code all you had to do is: rewrite the parts that are patented (in Romania). Sell for $20 as R-Office. 100% compliant. Same feature set.

F**ing morons.

Not a programmer by inerte · 2004-12-03 10:42 · Score: 1

From the "Not opening everything" return:

Had Aldus been able to get a hold of our source code, Quark's trade secrets, along with the enormous amount of money we had invested in R&D to develop QuarkXPress 3 would have been for naught.

There's nothing easier than copying a software software. Gone are the days of C. Speed is a non-issue. The R in R&D is what matters. I can choose between dozens of languages to write what Quark did. Nowadays you can implement the "algorithms" (from Joe's words) in PHP or Python.

It's not the source code, stupid.

Dreamweaver, for example, had a fantastic feature whereby it would preserve the source code formatting that an HTML developer typed in. FrontPage didn't have it. GoLive didn't have it. PageMill didn't have it. NetObjects Fusion didn't have it.

Hire me. I can write a HTML parser in one day.

We spent a lot of time and money developing that feature, and it ended up being a key competitive advantage for us.

That's because you made it first.

How much investment capital do you think you'll get? How many customers?

Oh yeah, like if code matters when selling a software. That's why most of the financial transactions from major banks and credit card companies depend on either Cobol or Java.

Not every company in the world can just become a services company and compete on price.

That's why Linux isn't ready for the desktop.

Source code exists to serve the programmer, not the user (or costumer).

--
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite

You don't understand Open Source by jerometremblay · 2004-12-03 10:44 · Score: 1

Open Source does not mean "blindly download free software on the internet".

It means share what you write.

A bit of both by jav1231 · 2004-12-03 10:46 · Score: 1

I don't see how everything being open is any better than everything being closed. I think for some utilities, being closed-source makes sense. I wouldn't want vital defense applications being "opened." However, I wouldn't want my Government keeping all data on a "closed source" OS either. I think there are places for everything.

Re:A bit of both by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 14:17 · Score: 0

Then you obviously don't understand the differnece between a program,and data, and really souldn't be allowed on this site at all.

One of us should re-read the essay by ccoakley · 2004-12-03 10:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Nothing Spolsky says in his essay would have prevented Firefox, nor the better Mozilla codebase. He simply says not to rewrite from scratch. He never says anything about refactoring or improving the existing codebase. Version 2 may not have any code in common with Version 1, but throughout the development process there were feature improvements, architectural improvements, etc. The point is that by starting with a working version 1, even an ugly version 1, if the decision was made to release early, it would have been possible. Once you have something running, don't throw it away.

Of course, there is an old adage, "All absolute statements are wrong, including this one."

I don't mean to debate the accuracy of what he said, just that the interpretation you have is different than my interpretation. However, I do know that my productivity is higher when I modify a working program than when I start over. If the architecture is *really* bad, I could see where it might actually be beneficial to start over, but I think programmers have a tendency to overestimate how unworkable the current system is when the chance to rewrite from scratch appears.

--
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.

Re:One of us should re-read the essay by lakeland · 2004-12-03 14:56 · Score: 1

Have you ever tried to refactor a large piece of software? There are huge constraints on what you can do because it is virtually impossible to adjust the architecture.

That is the difference between what can be achieved by refactoring compared to what can be achieved by rewriting. If your architecture is correct then you can improve on it with refactoring, but if it has huge design flaws that you're working around with ugly hacks, then there is no way for refactoring to fix those design flaws. You just have to rewrite large chunks from scratch.
Re:One of us should re-read the essay by ccoakley · 2004-12-03 17:06 · Score: 1

It depends on what you mean by large. If you mean 100,000 LOC, yes. If you mean 1,000,000 LOC or more, no. I was the project lead for a Navy flight scheduling system. It was a little over 200k LOC when we hit some major growing pains. The project changed database backend technology. We made that migration in a day (used Perl code to rewrite our code then manually inspected the output and fixed what remained or got butchered by the perl). We changed GUI library components (we used a grid in many places). That change we did piecemeal over a period of a week.

That said, eventually the project leads from all our projects sat down and debated the merits of rewriting the program. We had a lot of assumptions in our system that were essentially hard coded magic numbers. We built schedules for one and two seat aircraft only. We only understood the concept of pilot and WSO. We only could schedule one mission per sortie. Anyway, we had a customer that wanted almost every assumption we made undone. So, we were debating:

1. Rewrite the system from scratch with the lessons learned.
2. Write a new system for the new customer and maintain two codebases.
3. Refactor away.

This time, we chose to do the rewrite. I designed the new database for the rewrite and left the project (due to a personality conflict with the head of the marketing department). The project went over budget by a factor of three or so (and the budget was quite large compared to the first version). Three of the major developers left the company before they hit a release, two of them passing the torch of project lead as they left.

I'm not going to say that the rewrite wasn't necessary. Some rewrites are: moving from a client-server app to a web app (requirement for most systems used by the navy) is one reason. Bad code is just not a very good reason. I'm not even sure bad architecture is a good reason. Most of the design patterns from the GoF book are based around mitigating architecture problems. First, drop in a proxy object, then fix either end of the proxy, then, fix the proxy.

I should stress that the above was not under my current employer.

Anyway, that's my experience. I've designed and built multiple scheduling applications. I've also worked on a payroll system, on a couple hardware control systems, and a single embedded system. None of those ever grew beyond the million line mark, though (the embedded system was probably less than a couple thousand).

--
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
Re:One of us should re-read the essay by nathanh · 2004-12-03 17:36 · Score: 1

Nothing Spolsky says in his essay would have prevented Firefox, nor the better Mozilla codebase. He simply says not to rewrite from scratch. He never says anything about refactoring or improving the existing codebase.

Sometimes it's more difficult to refactor than to just rewrite. Architectural problems can run deep; if you hit a design problem then no amount of refactoring will fix the problem, you simply need to start again.
Spolsky's argument was essentially that the original code has been tested and debugged. There might be 100s of man years worth of testing and debugging (aka "knowledge") buried in that code. So his argument is that starting from scratch is throwing away all that knowledge and effort.
The problem with Spolsky's argument is that the effort was never in the code. The effort was in the 100s of man years of testing and debugging. If you're using code to store your testing and debugging results then you're in trouble already, because code will change. You will need to write new features. You will need to refactor the code. So what happens when you refactor your code and you accidentally break a previous fix? If you've relied on your code to store your debugging and testing knowledge then you're stuffed.
The solution is a suite of unit tests. If you have a comprehensive test suite then it doesn't matter if you rewrite or refactor. The test suite will tell you if you've broken a fringe case or border condition.
Once you make this realisation - that the real value of the software isn't in the code, it's in the test suite - writing software becomes a whole lot easier! The code is just one of many possible implementations. The test suite is what describes what your software does. The test suite is what catches you when you make a mistake. The test suite is what prevents your software from going backwards. The test suite contains all of your 100s of man years of testing and debugging. Not the code.
I think it's very enlightening that not once in Spolsky's argument did he mention the phrases "test suite" or "unit test" or "regression testing".
Re:One of us should re-read the essay by tepples · 2004-12-04 06:17 · Score: 1

The solution is a suite of unit tests. If you have a comprehensive test suite then it doesn't matter if you rewrite or refactor. The test suite will tell you if you've broken a fringe case or border condition.

Problem is that some debugging and testing knowledge relates to a particular piece of hardware, and sometimes, the maintainers don't have enough money to purchase and maintain a specimen of each piece of hardware as a testing rig.

And that being the case... by Belial6 · 2004-12-03 10:51 · Score: 1

Should companies choose the product that makes software executives a few billions bucks more, or should they choose the software the was the best that could be made?

Secrecy OK in short term, terrible in long term by davidwr · 2004-12-03 10:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

Some projects, notably security-sensitive ones, are improved by being "below the radar."

If I were selling an intrusion-detection device, I'd probably base it on a well-proven open-source program (probably a BSD- or similar license), but I'd audit every line and include my own "secret sauce" to make it beefier. Over time I'd return SOME of my tweaks to the community, but not all of them. As a matter of practice, I'd probably return anything that I introduced more than a year ago, more frequently if it was important that all vendors impliment the code immediately.

Why not all of them? If an attacker had access to my source code, it makes the job much easier. By keeping at least one "trap" he doesn't know about, it makes it much harder for him to sneak in undetected.

--
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.

Re:Secrecy OK in short term, terrible in long term by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 14:22 · Score: 0

Which tweaks would you "return to the community"?? And, if the community found a flaw in your program, and exploited it, so that your intrusion-detection device could be comprimised, would youthen launch a flock of IP-based lawsuits, a la SCO? And what if you released a tweak, and other company saw it, found a better way of doing that, and took 30% of your market share? Would you sue that company for improbving something you had already made public, because you got bitch slapped? How about if you had a million stockholders who wanted your head on a pike for releasing the source in the first place?

hmm?

I disagree by geekoid · 2004-12-03 10:52 · Score: 1

what you need to do is learn proper coding, and not put your rules in the code.

Plus, if everybody did know the rules, so what?
Everybody would still have to obey them or get caught.

Now, in reality, those people all ready know those rules and are , right now, to provide an 'audit-proof' return.

Any rule that is applied by the governemnt, or for the government NEEDS to be open. What the hell are you doing creating 'special rules' to apply to the people and then not telling them?

Finally, it would force the IRS to

--
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Sports Metaphors by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:52 · Score: 0

Easy with the sports metaphors there, Agassi. This is /., after all. The closest most of us get to tennis is... well, Mario Tennis.

Wait. Was that to what you were referring?

server jokes by joeyspqr · 2004-12-03 10:53 · Score: 1

1453 hrs PST
tbray. org accessible
joemarini.com ... error 403.9, too many people accessing website

insert obligatory bad puns about slashdot effect, tennis, and web server OSes here

--
+1 fashionably cynical

Re:server jokes by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 17:43 · Score: 0

My server is running on a totally budget hosting service, and they are the ones throttling the incoming requests. The same thing would be happening if it were any other server and the hosting service had a limit on connections.

Tim Bray has had literally several years to get his site up to snuff to handle large reading audiences. I, quite frankly, never thought that I would get the readership that I seem to be getting today.

LOL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 10:55 · Score: 0

Funny you thought of tennis (which he could be referring to, of course) because I was thinking volleyball! Probably because I've been around volleyball more than tennis... It only serves to prove your point. :)

Humorous, ironic, but also insightful. by khasim · 2004-12-03 10:57 · Score: 1

One server is still serving pages.

The other is giving errors.

Now, since the server still running was linked TWICE while the other server was only linked ONCE ...

Of course, the actual content of those pages is a factor. Since I cannot see one of them, I cannot comment on it.

Excerpt by droopycom · 2004-12-03 11:02 · Score: 1

The supposed coup-de-grace from the "Open" guy
>

Re:Excerpt by droopycom · 2004-12-03 11:06 · Score: 1

The plain old text filter sucks, it cannot cope with a "less than" signs

Lets try again with `"`

"
So, practically speaking, Joe Marini, if you'd published the source code for all those features in Quark 3.0, and some manager at Aldus had told their developers to snag the code and replicate it, they would have said two things:

1.

OK, which of the features we're now working on do you want us to back out so we can work on the Quark features instead?
2.

Tim Gill is a #$!!%** and the whole architecture of Quark is a !#!)($* piece of $*^*%!@ and 100% incompatible with PageMaker, if you want that feature it'd be way quicker and better to just build it from scratch.
"

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:10 · Score: 0

The Slashdotting bearinked the web server. Can't you read?

Closed source and parents-can't have it both ways by iamacat · 2004-12-03 11:12 · Score: 1

The purpose of patents is to encourage inventors to publish their research and license it to people for a smaller price than what it would cost to re-discover the concept. Now a Microsoft employee says their source code must stay secret to prevent competitors from copying their features. Fine by me if they don't turn around and patent the same features. If you license an invention, the owner shouldn't be still keeping secrets from you to prevent you from actually taking advantage of it.

Let's change the law so that a software patent application must include free (as in BSD license) source code of a complete, currently sellable (as determined by courts later if disputed) application that takes advantage of the concept. Don't like it? Keep your secrets and don't bitch if someone rediscovers them.

What is the business ADVANTAGE of open source? by SiliconEntity · 2004-12-03 11:13 · Score: 1

In that discussion I see some debate about whether closed source has a business advantage, and the consensus was that it does, in at least some cases. But I don't see much about what the business advantage is of opening source.

Most business customers are not developers. They are no more able to benefit from open source than the average person would benefit from a set of engineering blueprints of their dishwasher. Open source only speaks to developers. To everyone else it is gibberish.

So what does a business gain by publishing its software in a way that the small percentage of people in the world who are developers can read it? I don't see that they gain much. Most businesses don't want people to be modifying and re-selling (or even re-giving-away) their software. Yes, maybe a few patches will come back, but most engineering departments are going to be resistant to bringing in outside material like that. By the time they vet it and make sure it is safe and works, they could have fixed the bug themselves for cheaper.

Disclaimer: I work for a company which publishes its source code, but retains copyright to it. We do this for a specific reason appropriate to our specific target market, that would not apply in most cases. But we don't get any benefit from it other than satisfying those particular market needs which make people want to see our code.

Re:What is the business ADVANTAGE of open source? by isbhod · 2004-12-03 11:35 · Score: 1

Most business customers are not developers. They are no more able to benefit from open source than the average person would benefit from a set of engineering blueprints of their dishwasher. Open source only speaks to developers. To everyone else it is gibberish.
good point. the blue prints have no advantage to me. . . UNLESS you take into consideration that while i do not need (nor can i read) the blue prints, but joe, the down the street who happens to be an aspiring dishwasher manufacturer, and would make a great manufacturer if he only had the money to sink into R&D, would benifit greatly by haveing free access to blueprints.
of course this is all just my opinion, i could be, and often am, wrong.
Re:What is the business ADVANTAGE of open source? by Todd+Knarr · 2004-12-03 12:11 · Score: 1
For a software vendor, there's no advantage in opening the source code. If you aren't a vendor, though, there's several advantages:
- For companies writing in-house software, development cost is important and resale value irrelevant. Open source allows you to grab software that does almost what you want and add the features you need, concentrating your development efforts (and costs) only on the bits that aren't already there. This also applies to pure customers, if there's an open-source package that does almost what they want except for one or two features they can hire someone to add just those features, with closed code you either live with the missing bits or go through an expensive switch.
- For pure customers, they aren't at the mercy of the vendor for bugfixes. If a bug is critical to one customer but relatively unimportant to the vendor, with open source the customer can hire someone to fix the bug for them. It's the customer's decision which is cheaper: hiring it done or waiting for the vendor's update. With closed code, the customer has no choice but to wait until the vendor decides to fix the bug (which may be never for certain bugs).
- For everyone, you're no longer at the mercy of the vendor's interests and product road-map. If what's good for you as a customer diverges from what's in the vendor's interest, with closed code customers have to either live with it or abandon the product entirely (an expensive proposition). With open source if the vendor/owner's idea of where the software should go diverge too far from that of a group of customers, the customers have the option of forking the code and investing (through employees or by contracting the work out) in developing the product along their path instead of the vendor's. This happened with the GCC compiler, nearly happened once with the X Consortium's X11 product and is happening currently with XFree86.
Remember, 95% of software isn't written for resale, so judging benefit purely from the POV of a software vendor misses an awful lot.
Re:What is the business ADVANTAGE of open source? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 14:09 · Score: 0

Actually, OVER 95% of softwre IS written for resale, which renders your points moot. Basically what I'd expect from a pro-open source idiot.
Re:What is the business ADVANTAGE of open source? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 15:26 · Score: 0

Citation?
Re:What is the business ADVANTAGE of open source? by Todd+Knarr · 2004-12-03 18:30 · Score: 1

If that were the case, then in 25 years of programming I'd've had a hard time not working on at least one project intended for resale. Instead, I find that all the software I've worked on was bespoke work for internal use. More, when I tally up the resumes I've evaluated over the years, few candidates had any intended-for-resale software projects listed and even for those few it made up the minority of their experience. Either I've had a ridiculously long run of 20s on the random-encounter dice or you haven't worked as a professional software developer and are getting your impressions from what you see at CompUSA.
Re:What is the business ADVANTAGE of open source? by Tsu+Dho+Nimh · 2004-12-04 00:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Most business customers are not developers. They are no more able to benefit from open source than the average person would benefit from a set of engineering blueprints of their dishwasher."
If I had the engineering plans for my dishwasher, I could FIX it when it broke. Or I could hire someone who could read the plans and have them fix it or modify it for me. If it was in a sealed module, I'd have to .... buy another one!
Re:What is the business ADVANTAGE of open source? by mikera · 2004-12-04 00:30 · Score: 1

That is unabashed bullshit.

By far, the vast majority of programs written are business applications developed for internal use within organisations. This is true whether you count number of applications, lines of code, money spent or number of people employed.

Of course, a lot of this effort is duplcated. This is another reason why open source software is a Good Thing - reducing the waste in corporate IT development work would significantly improve overall efficiency in the economy.

Forced obsolescence by Apathetic1 · 2004-12-03 11:22 · Score: 1

It's an interesting question, though - at what point is it fair to force a product into obsolescence? With manufactured goods they tend to wear out (e.g. cars - my parents' cars have lasted about 15 years on average). What do you do if your product is an intangible and never wears out? It's a hard question to answer and I don't have much faith that legislators would get it right.

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My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?

Re:Forced obsolescence by laughingcoyote · 2004-12-03 11:29 · Score: 1

Some manufactured goods last quite some time, and even after they've outlived their "useful" lives, sometimes hobbyists keep them going for novelty value. The difference is, that even if the car manufacturer stops "supporting" a car, I can go pop the hood, find a compatible part somewhere, and get it running again. Same with an old TV or transistor radio. I don't think a manufacturer or designer should be required to support a product forever, but I don't think they should be able to prohibit you from getting at the guts of it and doing it yourself.

With the support issue, though, what about the software companies who sell "lifetime" support contracts? If they cease to support an old version, and there are people out there holding these contracts, are they not owed their money back? I think some type of up-front disclosure (X Software Corp. plans to support this version for 5 years) is in order.

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To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Re:Forced obsolescence by Apathetic1 · 2004-12-03 11:51 · Score: 1

It's a good point that it's frequently possible to get outside support for systems like cars. I think software is a little different because it's hard to draw a line between construction and maintenance. Software doesn't have a set structure so once you have the code you can turn it into anything you want, really. It would be harder to turn a car into, say, an airplane.

I'm firmly of the opinion that lifetime support should be lifetime of the user / company and not lifetime of the software. The lifetime of software is hard to define. There's software from the 70s emulated on mainframes still running some of the manufacturing lines where I had a summer job.

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My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
Re:Forced obsolescence by laughingcoyote · 2004-12-03 12:06 · Score: 1

The software would still be copyrighted/patented, so even if it became legal for me to reverse-engineer my copy of Windows 95, I couldn't make it into "Windows PX" and start selling copies, and Microsoft could still come after me for doing so. I'm talking about doing third-party support (security patches, bug fixes, etc.) once the manufacturer no longer wants to do them.

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To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Re:Forced obsolescence by Class+Act+Dynamo · 2004-12-03 12:26 · Score: 1

It would be harder to turn a car into, say, an airplane.

Not if you are in the Transformers universe, baby! Remember that blue car (I forget the name)? He could become a sort of airplane car. He was so cool!

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My other computer is a Jacquard loom.

Open source vs closed source security by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 11:25 · Score: 0

Imagine if you will, the code that runs the launch and guidance systems in a nuclear missile silo. This code has been thoroughly audited for security problems by a large security team not involved in the original development, the code is practically mathematically proven to be bug free and secure.

However, there is a security flaw in it which allows an attacker control over the launch of the missile. Nobody has noticed this yet and the code is closed source and not in public view. To improve the security of the code, should it be open-sourced to allow people to look at the code and suggest improvements? Or should it remain closed-sourced, reducing the probability that an attacker will discover the flaw and launch the weapon?

Laws change by tepples · 2004-12-03 11:36 · Score: 1

AC claims that it is unlawful for the publisher of a computer program to prevent access required to reverse engineer the program. This may be true as of today, but "harmonization" got copyright term extensions and the DMCA exported around the world (granted, the Sonny Bono movement started in Germany rather than the USA, but still), and a future "free" trade agreement may have a rider that prohibits member nations from prohibiting publishers from erecting contractual or technical bars to reverse engineering.

Screw IIS; I use WinApache on my desktop PC by tepples · 2004-12-03 11:43 · Score: 1

IIS, not the Windows kernel, imposes the limit of 10 incoming HTTP connections. Apache HTTP Server 2.0.52 for Windows has no such software-publisher-defined limit, and if you can learn to edit HTML, you can learn to make basic changes to httpd.conf in Notepad. Why again do so many people think that IIS is the only choice for HTTP server software for Windows?

Re:Screw IIS; I use WinApache on my desktop PC by SCHecklerX · 2004-12-03 12:04 · Score: 2, Interesting

Indeed. You can also run Bind on windows, yet people insist on using Microsoft's buggy, standards-be-damned DNS instead. They'll argue that this is necessary for Active Directory to work properly. Incorrect. (I'm fighting that battle at work right now).

YES!!! by mark-t · 2004-12-03 11:44 · Score: 1

Some software is definitely meant to be secret.

Windows, for instance, should have never seen the light of day, let alone be published for mass distribution.

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File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'

How much money have these people made? by T3kno · 2004-12-03 11:44 · Score: 1

Charles Babbage
Augustin Louis Cauchy
Albert Einstein
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
Carl Friedrich Gauss
David Hilbert
Karl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Andrei Andreyevich Markov
Sir Isaac Newton
Blaise Pascal
Carle David Tolm Runge
George Gabriel Stokes
Alan Mathison Turing
Johannes Kepler
Pierre de Fermat
Leonardo Fibonacci
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
Caroline Herschel
John Nash
Sir Walter Raleigh
et al

Off of their "Intelectual Property"? What would the world be like if Marie Curie was in the closed source camp? Stephen Hawking would like to patent all of his ideas, any objections? Software is an extension of math and art, meant to be shared with the world. If the Pythagorian theorom was not worthy of a patent I really don't think that there is much justification for a patent of IsNot. A closed source world would be on without textbooks, museums, concerts or theaters.

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(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)

Re:How much money have these people made? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 12:43 · Score: 0

>...Off of their "Intelectual Property"?

Some of the people on your list live quite the life of luxury, by ANYBODY'S standards. (A few died at their own hands after living their miserable lives also, but I don't quite see the point of your argument.)
Re:How much money have these people made? by CaptainCheese · 2004-12-03 16:59 · Score: 1

Also, some on the list have a sizable portfolio of patents to their name...I always liked the Einstein/Szilard refrigeration devices. most of them were much more efficient than the current consumer systems.

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-- .sigs are a waste of data...turn them off...

Support migration vs. infrastructure migration by tepples · 2004-12-03 11:47 · Score: 1

Do you realize how substantial an infrastructure investment is required for a organization to have the ability to custmoize an OS package? It is easier, and cheaper, in most business cases to pay for a close sourced product.

Or to pay for a support contract on an free software product. The huge advantage of free software support contracts over proprietary software licensing, even ignoring price, is that when you migrate to a competing support provider, you don't migrate to a different software infrastructure; thus, such migration is cheaper.

A point for closing it by hauk · 2004-12-03 11:59 · Score: 1

A small software company with a limited marketing budget should definitely release software as closed source. Otherwise what will stop another small company from taking the code, do some quick search & replace and release the product as their own closed source? Forget about the open source hype, close the source dudes and let big companies with their laywers open source their crap.

Re: A point for closing it by DuctTape · 2004-12-03 20:44 · Score: 1

Otherwise what will stop another small company from taking the code, do some quick search & replace and release the product as their own closed source?
That's what I think that the big disadvantage of closed-source is. Some yahoo gets ahold of your open source code, removes the names and copyrights, compiles it themselves, and releases it as their own, charging $$$. And who is going to ask to see their code? I guess that they'd have to add a lot of value for someone to buy theirs instead of getting it for free from the original source.
But I would suspect, not that I am accusing or anything, but I would suspect that some open source code, probably BSD but could be others, has made it into Microsoft products. Which, if you think about it, would not be that bad of an idea since then perhaps it wouldn't crash as much. Even I would like that!
DT

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Is this thing on? Hello?

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by JohnyDog · 2004-12-03 12:03 · Score: 1

Please note that the page returned error about reaching set user limit. As of now, the page loads with full speed so i guess the limit was initially set low and was now raised by admin to compensate the /. effect.

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People who like this sort of sig will find this the sort of sig they like.

We can only hope... by DaveAtFraud · 2004-12-03 12:09 · Score: 2, Funny

That Microsoft keeps the source code for some of their products secret:

1) Visual Basic
2) Access
3) Bob
4) Outlook Express
5) IIS
6) Internet Explorer

Preferably, they would keep the source code a secret by destroying *ALL* copies and starting over again.

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They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben

Does Joe Marini even develop? Seems like not... by SuperKendall · 2004-12-03 12:15 · Score: 1

Here I think is an incredible stupid example:

I can go on and on with these examples - Dreamweaver, for example, had a fantastic feature whereby it would preserve the source code formatting that an HTML developer typed in. FrontPage didn't have it. GoLive didn't have it. PageMill didn't have it. NetObjects Fusion didn't have it. We spent a lot of time and money developing that feature, and it ended up being a key competitive advantage for us.

Anyone who has ever developed a GUI program - heck, anyone that even has written more than ten pages of code - how likely do you really think it is that releasing the source to Dreamweaver would make it ANY easier for any of those other programs to add the capability to preserve source code formatting. Would any of those other programs even have been able to modify internal data structures enough to make use of the stolen code before they could even just write in the feature themselves - even if it was possible? If you gave me the code from a GUi app wholly different from one I had written, and said "add this one feature but keep our app the same" - my first instinct would be a feature-from scratch anyway!

Furthermore if it were a case of something like the GPL and they did copy code, unless the sealers had opened their own codebase they could be sued for quite a bit. Very few professional companies would risk something like that - indeed they are incredibly risk adverse. You might have seen some Dreamweaver one-offs, but no major package making use of that code.

That one paragraph just outlines how out of touch he seems to be with the subject matter at hand.

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:Judging from the IIS error page in the second l by RancidBeef · 2004-12-03 12:22 · Score: 1

Unfortunately my dictionary doesn't have "bearinked" in it.

i serve.. by Erik+Hollensbe · 2004-12-03 12:43 · Score: 1

.. that slashdot serves shameless self-plug on a topic that means a whole lotta nothing these days.

People have already made their decisions one way or another - let the world sort it out, not two over-opinionated goons that need ad impressions.

What it really gets down to. by 3seas · 2004-12-03 12:47 · Score: 1

Man is the only creature we recognize that is capable of higher level abstract thought.

It is this ability that enables us to advance, and we do this by building upon what those before us have done.

It should be very clear as to who has what intent given the hard realty facts.

There are those who prefer we be like ape so to serve them and those who prefer us to help build something we all benefit from.

so are you an ape, or a human?

The problem by randall_burns · 2004-12-03 13:22 · Score: 1

Once upon a time, Alexander the Great had conquered a city in Persia. He gathered up the city fathers and asked: do you have any advice for me. One old man who figured he didn't have much to loose said:
"Yes, sire. Don't you think it would be a good idea to have your soldier quite burning your city?".

The problem with Microsoft, they are now big enough, they need to start looking at the big picture-and they can't. Microsoft really is in a position to greatly influence IP legislation-and change the rules to create substantial open source infrastructure. Microsoft has already benefited from this-isnt Microsoft more valuable than it would have been without the internet?(no way the net would have been created with Microsoft tools).

Why closed source works, in the larger sense.... by Jonny+Royale · 2004-12-03 13:29 · Score: 1

Closed source WORKS. It's more, not less, efficient. Here's why:

In a standard economic model, a person makes something (a pice of code, a shoe, a car, whatever). Now, in a macroeconomic sense, that person is required to be compensated for their effort. The easiest, most direct model of compensation is money. That money, which exists as an abstract of value, allows that person to redeem their efforts for other items they require (food, clothing shelter). Now, here's the problem with the Open source model:

The same person creates the same piece of code, only they make it open source. So, people are free to use and distribute it WITHOUT compensation to the original creator. The only way the original creator can be compensated is IF they: a) need something and b) the person who has or creates what they need is ALSO willing to utilize the same model, and the balance of effort outputed is equaled to the benifits inputted.

To use an example, imagine a programmer who writes a paricularly interesting piece of code as a dot on a graph. As the code that programmer writes spreads, links form between them and the people who use that code, creating a sort of star pattern. For example, Microsoft writes Windows XP, and sells it to the consumer. Now, in a closed source envirnment, the outer edgens of those links must immediately return assets (money, trade) to the center for the creation of that link (a la software lisencing). In an open source model, those people on the outer edges of those links don't have to create any reciprocity to the center for the assets received. They can take, and give nothing. The hope, and (in my opinion) it's a thin one at that, is that the center of that pattern will need something, and that something will out them at the outside of ANOTHER pattern, and that enough of these patterns will congregate to create a cohesive, self sustaning whole. But, in the reality we live in, the maximum efficiency is optainined when the return on the effort is immediate to the distribution of the effort. This allows for a minimum of waste in the time difference bentween the creation of goods, and the compensation received for their use and increasing efficency amoungst their users.

To put it another way, imageine the same graph. One the close source side, there is a single link bentween the developer and the consumer. On the Open source side, there is a potentially endless series of links between the producer and the producre's consumption. From an efficency standpoint, one will beat everything else, except 0, which cannot exist in a society that trades amoungst individuals.

I'm putting this in my journal as well, so anyone who thinks I'm worng, please write me in there, and I'll be happy to debate this with you.

RE: GPL violations under our very noses, libmad, m by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 13:50 · Score: 0

Check it out; massive GPL violations of libmad, divx, nero, and mom's apple pie, and closed-source units to boot

http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?&t hreadid=113893

Software patents exist by roystgnr · 2004-12-03 14:01 · Score: 1

1. Support software patents, and Microsoft will gladly lay it all out in the open.

Microsoft has loads of software patents, and the court system is willing to enforce the valid ones (and some of the invalid ones) whether Slashdot readers support them or not. So... Microsoft will start making all their code visible to the public (not open source, which requires more freedom than that) when exactly?

Your not listening by nitehawk214 · 2004-12-03 14:01 · Score: 1

And I am telling you that a team of competent programmers can replicate every single feature in those products in the same amount of time/money, regardless if they look at the source code for them. Its up to the customer to decide if its worth it to buy the features, or the competitors software.

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I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust

Re:Your not listening by ClosedSource · 2004-12-03 19:44 · Score: 1

So if, for example, someone comes up with a revolutionary approach to speech recognition that is speaker-independent and 99% accurate, a team of competent programmers can replicate it just as fast without source code as with? Dream on.
Re:Your not listening by cduffy · 2004-12-03 20:22 · Score: 1

Speech recognition is a special case. Very little commercial software involves algorithmically difficult problems; you're picking at one of the quite few exceptions.

I work at a startup making a piece of commercial software in a fast-growing market with quite low penetration. Our product is arguably best available except for maturity issues -- yet the only "secret sauce" we have that our larger competitors couldn't easily recreate isn't code or algorithms at all, but data!

Know the "exception that proves the rule" bit? Speech recognition is one of those.
Re:Your not listening by ClosedSource · 2004-12-03 20:45 · Score: 1

I find the "exception that proves the rule" argument to be one the dumbest ever (no offense).

The point is that the post I was responding to stated that competent programmers "can replicate every single feature ..." so finding a single case where it's not true blows that argument away.

Now you made a better argument because you narrowed the scope, but in doing so you have to admit that there are cases where closed source makes better sense. Then we are left with debating the conditions where one is better than the other and how often each scenario applies.
Re:Your not listening by cduffy · 2004-12-03 21:43 · Score: 1

I find the "exception that proves the rule" argument to be one the dumbest ever (no offense).
None taken, I used to think that too. It's a fairly subtle argument to appreciate -- on face value, it's certainly absurd.
Roughly, in this context, it expands out to something akin to the following: "If you had to pick something which as much of a fringe element as [FOO] to find an exception to the rule which I'm trying to assert, then the rule presumably holds for more common cases".
The point is that the post I was responding to stated that competent programmers "can replicate every single feature ..." so finding a single case where it's not true blows that argument away.
Yes, the parent post was obviously hyperbole. Trying to determine whether the parent's argument is factually true in all cases (as opposed to true in most cases) is simply pedentry as far as I'm concerned -- arguing over the corner cases while it's the common cases that are interesting.
but in doing so you have to admit that there are cases where closed source makes better sense.
My understanding was that this discussion was with regard to the extent to which competitive advantages in general (covering both those based on better underlying algorithms and those based on better design requirements) can be reasonably maintained by closed-source software in a competitive environment. I've scanned the parent posts several levels back, and you're the first to mention anything about which model "makes better sense". That's a separate discussion, and one that's liable to involve less light and more heat; consequently, let's resolve the first issue, and leave the other for later.
Re:Your not listening by ClosedSource · 2004-12-04 08:42 · Score: 1

"Roughly, in this context, it expands out to something akin to the following: "If you had to pick something which as much of a fringe element as [FOO] to find an exception to the rule which I'm trying to assert, then the rule presumably holds for more common cases".

Of course labeling something "fringe" is begging the question. Fundamentally, finding an exception merely disproves the absolute statement in the rule, it says nothing about what percentage of cases agree with the rule. That's why this argument is generally considered to be fallacious.

I can be accused of not appreciating subtlety, not recognizing hyperbole and being pedantic, but I take considerable comfort in being absolutely correct.

"That's a separate discussion"

Gee, and I'm apparently off-topic too. I don't need to use the exact words of previous posters for mine to be relevant to the discussion. The argument I was responding to attempts to dismiss the competitive value of closed source code by claiming that opening the source wouldn't provide an advantage to ones competitors.

In any case, I find the argument that the source code isn't needed to be a strange one for open source advocates to make.
Re:Your not listening by cduffy · 2004-12-04 14:48 · Score: 1

...I take considerable comfort in being absolutely correct.
Understandably so.
In any case, I find the argument that the source code isn't needed to be a strange one for open source advocates to make.
You're oversimplifying a bit. The argument here is that observing an app's user-visible design is generally sufficient for a well-funded and determined opponent to reproduce it. However, frequently the value of using OSS components is in the ability to make small modifications or fixes -- in short, to produce not a rewrite (in which case the source of the original is often more a hindrance than a help) but a lightly modified version which has had some needed bugfix or feature enhancement -- a case where source access is generally critical.
With this distinction made, perhaps the positions no longer seem so contradictory?

(As an aside: I work for a company building a piece of specialized closed-source application software -- but we use and contribute to a number of open-source projects which aren't directly relevant to our core business, and considerably reduce our costs by doing so).
Re:Your not listening by ClosedSource · 2004-12-05 10:53 · Score: 1

"You're oversimplifying a bit"

I don't see much effort on the part of most open source advocates to qualify their belief that all source code should be available (perhaps you are an exception or perhaps you wouldn't pass their litmus test for being an OSS advocate). Once they start making exceptions they lose the "higher moral ground" they believe exists.

"The argument here is that observing an app's user-visible design is generally sufficient for a well-funded and determined opponent to reproduce it."

The key here is "well-funded" and "determined". In many cases the funding and determination of a potential competitor to produce a knock-off falls short because they need a viable plan that is likely to result in a reasonable ROI. The more difficult you can make it, the fewer competitors you have. Releasing your source code will make it more likely that your competitors business plan will pass the ROI test.
Re:Your not listening by cduffy · 2004-12-05 12:46 · Score: 1

Once they start making exceptions they lose the "higher moral ground" they believe exists.
You're conflating the open source crowd with the Free Software crowd.
The Free Software crowd believes that all software should be Free because anything else is morally corrupt. The Open Source crowd believes that open source should be used in a wide variety of (but not necessarily all) situations because it's economically and technically advantageous. Read ESR's essays to see the Open Source perspective; read the FSF's documents to see the Free Software perspective.
Releasing your source code will make it more likely that your competitors business plan will pass the ROI test.
If their business plan is building a cheap knockoff of your product that you could build and market more cheaply (because you already have the technical staff, knowledge, business connections, etc. in place), sure. If their business plan is building something innovative and different, it's less likely that they'll be able to pull that off.
That said, I'm a member of the Open Source crowd, not the Free Software crowd. I don't think that releasing one's core product as open source necessarily makes sense, but that releasing infrastructure not tied to one's competitive advantages is The Right Thing. If you've met folks who claim to represent the open source movement but say differently, they're actually Free Software zealots in disguise.
Read the papers by each organization, and see for yourself where they stand.
Re:Your not listening by ClosedSource · 2004-12-05 18:52 · Score: 1

Despite the clearly stated beliefs of the leaders of these two movements, the terms "Open Source" and "Free" software are often used interchangably and I'm guilty of doing so here. Perhaps so many people do this because the term "Free software" is so ambiguous that we're afraid people will read it as "free as in beer" rather then "free as in anthropomorphic". I don't believe there is any ethical difference between Open, "Free" or Closed software.

"If their business plan is building something innovative and different, it's less likely that they'll be able to pull that off."

If they're building "something innovative and different" then naturally the source code for an legacy product will not really help them. But you don't know what your competitors are going to do, so the smart move is to not release your source code.
Re:Your not listening by cduffy · 2004-12-05 19:09 · Score: 1

Despite the clearly stated beliefs of the leaders of these two movements, the terms "Open Source" and "Free" software are often used interchangably and I'm guilty of doing so here.
Given the extent to which you claim to pride yourself on correctness, I'd hope that you'd stop that.
I don't believe there is any ethical difference between Open, "Free" or Closed software.
...thus excluding you from the Free Software movement but leaving you quite welcome in the Open Source crowd, or of course the proprietary world.
But you don't know what your competitors are going to do, so the smart move is to not release your source code.
Irrelevant. You're fighting a strawman, not the position I actually take.
As I said in black and white: I don't think that releasing one's core product as open source necessarily makes sense, but that releasing infrastructure not tied to one's competitive advantages is The Right Thing. Releasing code for our core product would be a needless risk[1], but we're not doing that -- there's no reason to! Releasing code for infrastructure components that have nothing to do with our core business makes great sense, though, because it cuts software maintenance costs. This is all by-the-book, if you go read ESR.
[1] - Although, for the reasons mentioned in this thread, I'd argue a fairly minimal risk; building something not innovative or different and trying to compete with us would be hard for the reasons I mentioned before: Staff, knowledge (of both the product and the domain in general), business connections, and so forth.
Re:Your not listening by ClosedSource · 2004-12-06 11:03 · Score: 1

"Irrelevant. You're fighting a strawman, not the position I actually take."

Actually, I was just stating my opinion, not making any claim about your position. The fact that your opinion and mine are very close doesn't deter me from making a distinction.

Since I've unintentionally prompted you to repeat yourself, I think we've probably covered all the ground we're going to. I'm going to stop now. You can have the last word if you want to add anything.

MS source got much better recently by roystgnr · 2004-12-03 14:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sure, you would have been correct in May 2002, when Microsoft exec Jim Allchin testified that releasing their source code would endanger national security. I mean, surely there's no way a Microsoft executive would perjure himself to try and keep his company from being penalized for its crimes!

However, Microsoft fixed all these security problems by January 2003, when they had their source code cleaned up enough to show to 60 countries including China. So you shouldn't spread any more of these scurrilous rumors; why, that would imply that Microsoft would commit treason just to try and increase foreign revenues!

Re:MS source got much better recently by El+Cubano · 2004-12-03 16:02 · Score: 1

However, Microsoft fixed all these security problems by January 2003, when they had their source code cleaned up enough to show to 60 countries including China.
Clearly, China was so overwhelmed with Microsoft's security improvements that they went out and bought a million Windows machines from Dell. Oh, wait a minute. They actually bought a million Linux machines from Sun. My mistake. Maybe Microsoft doesn't have its act as together as you think.

Re:Closed source and parents-can't have it both wa by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 14:14 · Score: 0

Once again, like most open source morons, you miss the point because your head is so far up your ass, you can't see the light. The purpouse of patents os so that people can recover the cost AND make a PROFIT for their discoveries, without having to worry about someone else coming in and stealing their invention and also making money from it. What's the point of inventing anything if you can't make a profit from it? TO just reciver the cost is fine, but offers no incentive to the inventor.

First mover advantage and Intellectual Property by Kris_J · 2004-12-03 15:04 · Score: 2, Interesting

There are some industries where copyright and secrecy isn't an option. Any financial product in Australia has to be fully documented and publicly available, yet companies continue to come up with new financial products, because if you come up with a good one you benefit simply from doing it first. Since ultimately, Intellectual Property laws are a construct designed to encourage development, and their necessity in relation to processes (rather than physical products) is seriously questionable, I don't see any need for software to be especially secret. Not that I'm demanding that Google be forced to write a manual on how to copy them.

Yes by andreyw · 2004-12-03 15:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

Interesting post, but I want to point out that writing optimized code does not mean going beyond the boundaries of C89/C99. I treat warnings as errors - in fact, 99% of all warnings are quite reasonable - sloppy code or runtime errors. It pisses me off that so many programmers think that just because it (barely) compiles, its worthwhile to put their abortions out into the world. For one thing, there is a high chance of the code chocking on newer versions of or different compilers.

Why are there so many OSS projects out there with incredibly sloppy code that no one bothers to fix?

I personally always compile everything with -Wall --pedantic.

Re:Closed source and parents-can't have it both wa by iamacat · 2004-12-03 15:29 · Score: 1

It's scary to see someone so far gone as to think intellectual property laws are designed to help some rich bastards make more money rather than for public benefit.

Sure, it's in public interest to let people recoup costs of their research and make a living. But not make infinite profit - than they will be a drain on the society and in fact discouraged to invent more. That's why patents expire after 20 years, which is quite reasonable for manufacturing and medical research. For software it should be more like 2 years.

Also, in exchange for limited protection, patent applicants are required to disclose their invention to the public. I can invent some more on top of it and make the original patent holder pay me to use my enhancements!

Finally, there is compulsory licencing if you get too greedy.

Interesting quote from Joe by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 15:50 · Score: 0

Now imagine telling potential investors and customers that yes, because your product is Open Source, anybody can read the code and see how you solved a particularly prickly problem that up until now nobody else has tackled well.

But that isn't what has happened. Particularly in the case of Microsoft, Joe's current employer. Rather than concealing particularly clever solutions to problems, all Microsoft conceals are proprietary standards that they busily change to enforce a constant update cycle (and thus their cash flow) and artificial limits that they impose on their own software to make sure that people pay more to do more (ala artificial constraints imposed between NT Workstation and Server or the limits on the number of processors for different versions of XP).

What closed source actually does is preserve a company's ability to make more money from the same code NOT be rewarded for inventing clever new code.

answers to your questions by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 15:52 · Score: 0

*** Which tweaks would you "return to the community"?? ***
I'd keep just enough private to confuse the attackers. Anything more than a year old would go out to the world.

** And, if the community found a flaw in your program, and exploited it, so that your intrusion-detection device could be comprimised, would youthen launch a flock of IP-based lawsuits, a la SCO? **
First, if the flaw is in the public code the community is more likely to PATCH the flaw than exploit it. If it's in the private code they are more likely to REPORT it than exploit it.
Second, why would I want to go bankrupt?

** And what if you released a tweak, and other company saw it, found a better way of doing that, and took 30% of your market share? **
That would tell me I need to spend more on marketing and less on development [sarcasm].

** How about if you had a million stockholders who wanted your head on a pike for releasing the source in the first place? **
Rule #0 - If you want to stay in control, maintain 51% equity. Seriously, I'd probably resign and go work on The Next Big Thing.

dammit forgot to log in by davidwr · 2004-12-03 15:53 · Score: 1

The above post was by me.

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Security by obscurity is a fallacy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 16:28 · Score: 0

I've seen some (neophyte) people decry that keeping source code secret promotes security. What a lie! Keeping software source code a secret does no better a job of enhancing security than the futile attempt at keeping cryptographic algorithms secret, so people can't break your code. When I studied cryptography in university, I was told 1. if you rely on keeping the method secret, you haven't got any security at all. 2. during the cold war, everyone knew exactly how the other guys algorithm worked. Does it affect security? Essentially no. Keeping the fact that the lock on your house has tumblers a secret adds as much seurity (and it doesn't). The difficulty of either breaking the algorithm, or having to do a massive brute force cryptographic attack is what provides security, not knowledge of how the algorithm works. What keeping source code a secret does is protect a monopoly. It works against security, patches, improvement, innovation, ...

Hog Wash by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 16:48 · Score: 0

Yes there are places for both secret (closed), open source software, there is no question. The application can be closed sourced, however; the file format should be open. Let other applications read it.

Keep this in mind, when, file formats are open, there is no (or as much) vendor lockin. Now companies can compete for the best feature set. The spoils will go to the company with the best / most useful features.

True, by opening up file formats some of the source is likely to be revieled but it will be a small price to pay for true innovations. How hard do you think companies will work to keep their customers if they know they can jump ship to another product without migration costs.

Hey, without open standards, you all wouldnt be suring this thing called the "Internet" or communiating to vastly different computers systems, period; without openstandards.

1) TCP/IP
2) HTTP
3) HTML
4) And the list goes on.

Now deal with it.

exactly by uncadonna · 2004-12-03 17:04 · Score: 1

Tim, how do you protect your competitive advantage when your competitors can just look at your source code and cherry-pick the best ideas?

Maybe you can't, really. But in the end you'll be competing with someone else who's perfectly willing to operate on those terms. You'll often find them catching up with your functionality quicker than you expected.

Not every company in the world can just become a services company and compete on price.

Exactly. And most of those companies who can't adapt are in big trouble.

The fact that many companies can't adapt to the situation doesn't change the situation, does it? People are willing and able to undercut your price with superior products. Deal with it or find another line of work.

What a lousy counterargument: "this is inconvenient so it can't be true". Right.

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Re:exactly by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 17:41 · Score: 0

Oh, you've gotta be kidding. Are you serious?

So basically EVERY software co. in the world should just give it up and become a services company and OS their software?

It has nothing to do with the situation being inconvenient. It has everything to do with the market NOT FUCKING WORKING THAT WAY.

Typical Slashdot dumbass.
Re:exactly by uncadonna · 2004-12-03 19:28 · Score: 1

It has everything to do with the market NOT FUCKING WORKING THAT WAY.
You mean superior products at lower prices don't tend to win in the end?
Most companies who sell software will eventually end up competing head to head with people who give the stuff away. It turns out that software made by a few dedicated people enjoying themselves typically works better than bloatware built by armies of resentful wage slaves. The smaller, happier and more effective group can usually get by on a service model somehow.
Are you serious?
So basically EVERY software co. in the world should just give it up and become a services company and OS their software?
I don't tend to make sweeping statements like that, but for the most part, yeah. There may be exceptions, but software licensing itself is not usually going to be a reasonable business model because nothing will prevent your competitor from giving away the competing product and living off the t-shirts and the concert tickets.
Interestingly, this tactic was in some ways pioneered by Microsoft. Remember Netscape? The fact that the marginal cost of a unit of software is zero makes for a very interesting marketplace.

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Re:Does Joe Marini even develop? Seems like not... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 17:13 · Score: 0

You're totally misunderstanding what I said.

First, yes I do develop, and have done so for 20+ years starting with machine-level assembly. I'm no script-kiddie wannabe.

Perhaps that paragraph was a bad illustrative example, but the point still stands. When a company invests a lot of time and money in developing a feature that requires a lot of investigation and brainpower to solve, and you're the only company that has such a solution, then that gives you an advantage.

Your response of "well, I would just develop it myself from scratch" just goes to prove my point - that you have develop it FROM SCRATCH, and you have to go through all the same obstacles that I did. You have to get around all the same roadblocks that I did. Meantime, I'm happily making money from my software while you try to catch up.

Contrast this with an OSS approach, where I can just look inside your code to see how you solved the problem and get a MASSIVE head start over just writing code from a blank sheet.

I said it before, and I'll say it again - COMMERCIAL SHRINKWRAP software does NOT benefit from an OSS approach. There are industries where it works fine, such as in-house IT, but not commercial shrinkwrap. You just cannot recoup your investment that way.

A few Babblings re: the Never Ending Story by gazz · 2004-12-03 17:41 · Score: 1

I'm about to go off on one, for which I apologise in advance...Please correct me if I'm incorrect, which I'm certain will be done wether I ask for it or not.

The way I see it is, this argument boils down to the Needs of the One (the Company) vs. the Needs of the Many (Everyone).

"Closed" products seem to have a rather egoistic nature - they are structured to inflate the coffers of a particular Company without regard for the general populace.

"Open" products seem to have a generally altruistic nature - they are structured to inflate the body of knowledge available to all.

How exactly does one go about convincing someone selfish to be selfless?

Can an idea truly be 100% owned? I mean, we are referring to codified ideas, at the end of the day, and usually ideas are developed from other ideas - if one were to reveal where all of their ideas were generated from, and those ideas had generated revenue, should not various proportions of that revenue be directed towards the generators of all precursor ideas? If we use a word in our code, and that code makes cold hard cash, shouldn't the creator of the word be given a proportion of said dosh?

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You can't keep the competitor out by Skapare · 2004-12-03 18:01 · Score: 3, Informative

Joe Marini said:

Here's why - when you develop a piece of packaged software, sometimes you only have a short amount of time to establish your product as a viable entity in the marketplace. If your competitors could just look inside your source code to see how you accomplished a certain feature that their product doesn't provide, then your fledgling product would be neutralized almost instantly.

If you're talking about a sophisticated and innovative algorithm, maybe this will be the case. But it can be reverse engineered quite easily by simply following the basic flow of the machine instructions and producing work-alike high level code. Of course you lose valuable comments ... maybe. Too often this rush-job commercial code doesn't even have such comments.

I did reverse engineering of a competitor's product once and succeeded in easily reproducing their proprietary compression algorithm (I needed to decompress it to build an import module for their data files to allow customers who switched to our software to use their old data). A few months later, the company I worked for bought out that competitor. When their software team found out we had an import program for their data files, their first question was how we did the decompression. It turns out they had lost the original source code when they were porting it from the mainframe to the PC, and were trying to figure out how to change to a new data format instead of reverse engineering their own code.

Now imagine that you're the one competing with somebody like Macromedia, or Adobe, or IBM. You have a great idea for a product, you've done your market research, and you want to make a go of it. Now imagine telling potential investors and customers that yes, because your product is Open Source, anybody can read the code and see how you solved a particularly prickly problem that up until now nobody else has tackled well. How much investment capital do you think you'll get? How many customers?

Under the GPL, I can give it away for free, but my competitors still can't integrate my code into their code (unless they want to GPL their own code). They'd have to understand the solution in a clean room scenario, and re-implement it (something they can do with the binary, anyway). So it is not actually an instant handover to your competitor. Then my business model will be free code, and paid for technical support. In the mean time, my competitors are struggling to debug their re-implementation, and making only one time sales. I'll be taking in incremental revenues from support.

Not every product is going to be able to benefit from this model. But more and more products will, and many do already. Some very specialized software will still be best kept closed source for now. But once it has been developed as open source, the days are numbered for the closed source version. Making the open source business model work depends on understanding that developmental thinking (e.g. intellectual property) is no longer the value commodity it once was. Just look at all the effort so many big software developers are making to get lower development costs by hiring people in lower cost of living countries. Thinking is cheap, and getting cheaper. Working for your customer or client is where the value is, and that's support.

The intellectual advantage does work, only when your competitor is using the same business model and doesn't have that particular innovation in their product. But when you are comparing business models, between one time software sales with mediocre support, vs. free software and paid for support from a vendor that gets its revenue only if it does the support job right, we will be finding that the latter model has more business advantage to business customers, and this in turn means a better market for the free software paid support model.

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now we need to go OSS in diesel cars

Reason to keep source code closed by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 18:25 · Score: 0

Patenting mathematical ideas & software isn't possible in Europe (and shouldn't be in a way that it is possible in USA, only truly novel ideas should be patentable).

If you spend for example 100 million to research, you don't want to give everything away freely. In fact you should even try to make reverse engineering the code difficult. I know it sucks, but you have to make your money somehow.

Software is not an invention. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 19:43 · Score: 0

You have tacitly assumed that software deserves a patent because it is an invention. How else can anything deserve a patent?

It is not. Clever algorithms are more of a creative adaptation than they are an invention. Software simply implements math or a business method, neither of which are inventions on their own. Because the implementation is inherently an abstraction, there's always another way to do it. No two programmers will do the same thing the same way, nor do they need to anymore than they need to chose the same programming language. Programming is more like a painting or essay than it is a discovery of means of using basic principles to achieve something useful in a unique and improved way. The basic priciples are laid out elswhere and may or may not be subject to patents. If any kind of exclusive franchise is to be granted to a program, it should be a copyright. Patents will keep people from being able to do things that are obvious and easy to implement by other means. One click shopping is a great example. Software patents are inherntly abusive, whether open or closed.

Re:Software is not an invention. by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-04 20:36 · Score: 1

Software simply implements math or a business method,

So do many inventions.

Patents will keep people from being able to do things that are obvious and easy to implement by other means. One click shopping is a great example. Software patents are inherntly abusive, whether open or closed.

This is only because they are violating the two things I already mentioned in my post you are replying to. "One click shopping" should not have been awarded a patent because is not a specific enough description of what is being done to make it any different than a zillion other things people already know how to do. The reason it passed is that the patent office doesn't know how to check if something is already common knowlege among the programmer community or not.

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"Software patents are not an inherently bad idea." by TapeCutter · 2004-12-03 19:55 · Score: 1

To patent a process is an appalling idea. In legal terms "process patents" are a brand new idea that really only applies to the US (at the moment). I think someone in the US should take out a patent on the process of taking out a patent and shut the place down. Software is well protected under law by copyright (or left) as the case may be.

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And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.

Re:"Software patents are not an inherently bad ide by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-03 20:22 · Score: 1

To patent a process is an appalling idea.

You just (presumably unknowningly) said that every single patent is an apalling idea, from Patent #1 filed in 1790 all the way up to today. All patents are patents on processes, not patents on the end result of that process (if you make the same widget in a different way than the way that was patented, you have not infringed the patent.)

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That was the whole point of this thread by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 21:34 · Score: 0

It was that open sourcing the closed souce code DOES NOT give enough benefit to a competitor. Here you have agreed that an evolved project may as well be rewritten from scratch (therefore not using the original code).

Ergo, no benefit to the competing team for being able to look at the code.

How about releasnig the code of closed software when an upgrade is minstream? E.g. OfficeXP now that Office 2003 is mainstream?

All the featues needed will have been included in competing projects and the new features that are supposed to be selling this new version are not in the old version.

Re:That was the whole point of this thread by ClosedSource · 2004-12-04 08:30 · Score: 1

"Here you have agreed that an evolved project may as well be rewritten from scratch (therefore not using the original code)."

An application can always be written from scratch if you have the necessary knowledge, but so what? That fact has no bearing on whether its the most efficient way to make changes or whether there is value in having the source.

I said that! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-03 21:45 · Score: 0

Right at the beginning. I hope that it was me brought it to his attention. I don't remember seeing anyone else mention it when I said it.

I also believe that I was the first one to bring "NBM" to ZDNet - "Nobody but Microsoft" to counter the epithet "ABM".

My life IS having an effect! Just in cyberspace. Oh well, take what you get, I suppose....

isn't it really a moot issue? by 3seas · 2004-12-03 22:42 · Score: 1

Sorta like saying this or that roman numeral equasion is to be kept secret....

consider:

FreeSoftware will only become genuinely free when it is easy enough to create that anyone, regardless of their resource limitations (knowledge, time, etc.) can create it, from simple automations to improve their personal productivity level to full application programming. This is based upon the primary concept and purpose of programming:

Programming is the act of automating complexity in order to make the use and reuse of the complexity easy for the user of the complexity. Programming is a recursive act, as shown by any code/programming being done above machine language. And it follows that it is of such recursion that Software will become genuinely free, or otherwise contridict its own primary concept and purpose.

NOW, with this in mind, it becomes irrelevant what software creation is kept secret.. sorta like all them good songs and artworks you never heard of cause they were never published or promoted... but for anything that is generally used, then what would the problem really be in opening the source up to at least inspection?

Locks are for honest people, cause anything we build we can break. If you want your system secure, than do allow others access to it and that means also not connecting it to the internet where way many access "ports" on your system.

Wanna do math with roman numerals? have at it, but I prefer to use the easier and more powerful Decimal system with its "nothing can have value" zero place holder.

Imagine if that was kept secret ..... who'd have computers today?

Re:Why closed source works, in the larger sense... by cranos · 2004-12-03 22:42 · Score: 1

I thik you are ignoring a basic fact re Closed Source efficiencies(sp?). With closed source you suffer from vendor lock in, with all the problems and upsides that entails - slow service, bugs not fixed in a timely manner, vendor going out of business, hugely expensive upgrade paths etc etc.

However with Open Source there is more of a chance that another vendor could step in to pick up the slack with a minumum of system breakage.

I guess what I am trying to say is that when considering ideas such as business model efficiency you have to take into account all aspects of the business relationship, from initial contact through to potential fuck ups on both sides.

Tim Bray is a mole, tell him to go stuff it by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 00:01 · Score: 0

Tim Bray is an employee of Sun, the company which has declared war on linux .

Is this the best person to act as an advocate for open source? The guy writes a few half-baked paragraphs supposedly endorsing the open source model over the closed source, and this is news?

I SMELL A MOLE, folks. Someone placed within our ranks in order to lose our debates for us, and to steer us in the direction that those who would like to destroy us want us to go.

It used to be, when industry or government wanted to plant a mole in a community based movement, they would do so secretly.

Apparently now they think we're so naive and stupid they can actually use their salaried employees as moles.

Give me a break.

Code, protocols, etc. by Propaganda13 · 2004-12-04 00:26 · Score: 1

While I'm a fan of open-source code, I do not feel it is always necessary. On the other hand, I do feel that protocols, doc types, codecs, etc. definitely should be open. (yes, there probably are some examples where they should be closed)

Joe, if you're reading this.... by theolein · 2004-12-04 00:34 · Score: 1

You write: When I worked at Quark, we had a heated rivalry with Aldus Corp (now Adobe) and their product, PageMaker. Quark introduced several key desktop publishing features in version 3.0 that essentially cemented our lead over PageMaker in the DTP market. Had Aldus been able to get a hold of our source code, Quark's trade secrets, along with the enormous amount of money we had invested in R&D to develop QuarkXPress 3 would have been for naught. Aldus would simply have copied our algorithms and updated their product to match ours.

Joe, you neglect to mention the rest of the story and the other side of the closed source coin:

What fucking happened to Quark Express after its version 3 triumph? As with any monopoly, it essentially sat on its hhuge fat arse and didn't do anything until it released version 4 almost 6 or 7 years later.

6 or 7 years!!!!!!!!!!

Quark simply ignored any user problems and sat on its fat behind until they themselves decided that they could make some more money with an essentially useless and horribly expensive upgrade to Quark 4 and then years later Quark 5.

Quark only started panicking when Adobe started stealing Quark's customers left, right and center with Indesign.

The problem with closed source is that it offers the clever innovator that first made a bale of cash with his product absolutely no incentive to improve it later on. Look at Quark Express and look at Microsoft as a whole. I wouldn't exactly call Microsoft innovating, as much as they love to throw that word around.

So where'e the middle ground? Or does the fact that you work for Microsoft make you blind to alternatives?

Re:Joe, if you're reading this.... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 12:22 · Score: 1, Interesting

All that BS happened after I left Quark. However, I think you're confusing a company's business practices with how it chooses to control its source code.

Quark being an a$$hole company has nothing to do with open/closed source. Open source companies can just as easily become 800-pound gorillas as can their closed source counterparts.

Let's assume that SAP open-sourced their product, and instead subsisted on service revenue. OSS would not prevent them from creating a huge interlocking ecosystem inside the customer's IT dept, leading to bad behavior. After all, what would the customer do? Throw out all their investment in SAP's products, break their service contract, and just find somebody else? That would be devastating on their internal processes, not to mention all the retraining you would have to do.

OSS is not a counterweight to bad companies and bad business practices. Anyone who thinks so just simply does not understand the nature of business. Companies that are bad actors will just find another way to lock their customers in.

Oh, and by the way, Adobe only started kicking Quark's ass with InDesign because Adobe hired all the Quark engineers to build a better product. Seriously.

Marini speak with forked tongue by sacrilicious · 2004-12-04 01:04 · Score: 1

Joe Marini wrote:

Now imagine that you're the one competing with somebody like Macromedia, or Adobe, or IBM. You have a great idea for a product, you've done your market research, and you want to make a go of it. Now imagine telling potential investors and customers that yes, because your product is Open Source, anybody can read the code and see how you solved a particularly prickly problem that up until now nobody else has tackled well.

So he's concerned that innovation will be stifled? I find it disingenuous that someone from Microsoft would put this argument forward, given that Microsoft files more patents then just about anybody, and that collectively the big corporations use patents to prevent the entry of competition. This "circle the wagons" use of IP by big companies becomes, in my opinion, a good argument for open source innovation, where practically the only basis for grass-roots innovation will be that the innovators did not have a business plan that could get crushed.

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Re:Marini speak with forked tongue by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 12:15 · Score: 0

I'm brand-new to Microsoft, and I like to think that I'm helping to make a difference in how the company does business.

Say whatever you want, believe whatever you want, but my career prior to Microsoft and since I've arrived here speaks for itself. I've always been in favor of level playing fields and respectful competition.
Re:Marini speak with forked tongue by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-05 02:42 · Score: 0

oh do shut up.

Longevity by oliverthered · 2004-12-04 01:27 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, one of the biggest problems with patents (especially software ones) is the length of time they last.
I think 3 years from the drawing-board to the market is reasonable, and it will give you a good couple of years head start on you competitors.

Short (well shortish) patents will driver invention because companies will need to keep creating new things to ensure there niche instead of relying on reviews from outdated ideas.

Also, if a patent expires in 3 years, it doesn't matter too much if it was a poor patent to start with.

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thank God the internet isn't a human right.

Re:Longevity by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-04 20:16 · Score: 1

Also, if a patent expires in 3 years, it doesn't matter too much if it was a poor patent to start with.

I agree about patents lasting too long (because they were invented at a time when technology was more slow paced). But the above quote has a big problem. Look at the following two time periods:

1 - The time it takes for a bad patent to be damaging and thus "matter much".
2 - The time it takes for a patent to be profitable to the filer and worth doing.

The problem is that these two time periods are necessarily identical in length. The only way for patent time periods to be short enough that bad patents don't matter is for them to be short enough that they aren't worth filing. Whatever breakpoint that is (and really, it varies by which industry you are talking about), it is the same breakpoint for both 1 and 2.

So no matter how you shorten patents, no matter what you arrive at, presuming it is still a useful period of time, then it will still be necessary to watch out for bad patents, becuase they will still be damaging.

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Two things by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-04 02:06 · Score: 0

1) Many companies (MS for example) spend a lot of money developing software. Why should they just hand out the blue prints if they don't stand to gain anything by doing so? It seems to me there is room in the world for more than one approach. You kinda have to admit MS is doing ok so far with their approach (how many ga-rillian dollars are they puliing in every day?).

2) Patents - Don't hate the players, (IBM, MS) hate the game.

"A novel device for..." by Doc+Ruby · 2004-12-04 05:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

No, patents protected only devices, for a long, profitable, sensible period of centuries. If you make a patented paperclip by casting molten steel, rather than twisting steel wire, and the paperclips are identical, you're violating the patent. That patent need not identify the machine that makes the patented paperclip. The paperclip-making machine itself might have a patent, but if it makes a paperclip already covered by another patent, running it is illegal.

Believe me, a substantially rich branch of my family started in the cardboard box sales business, grew into the box-manufacturing biz, then made (& patented) machines for making the boxes, and expanded into supplying machines (tools, assembly lines) to make the machines that make boxes. All shipped around the world in cardboard boxes. Every step of the way they innovated, and licensed any device in the "process" already protected, but necessary to their new process. They probably have now obtained a patent on the process, though it's worthless, except to protect themselves from a frivolous claim by another with that patent to interfere with their process. If someone had done that first, in the early 20th Century, they would not have had room to innovate, the US would have had a lot less boxes made, and we'd all be speaking German.

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Re:"A novel device for..." by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-04 20:24 · Score: 1

Look at the way patents are phrased. It's NEVER "this is the device I am patenting." It's aways "A process for doing blah blah by means of blah blah." A paperclip patent, to use your example, would be titled something like "A process for fastening a small number of thin sheets of something together by use of a bent wire." The reason it's like this is that what an invention is, is largely a function of what it does. A small thin bit of wire, used to, say, act as a crude thermal fuse in an electric device, would not violate a paperclip patent, even if it was made from the exact same type of wire, was the exact same length, and was coiled in the exact same way.

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Re:"A novel device for..." by Doc+Ruby · 2004-12-05 05:45 · Score: 1

You are 100% wrong. You would do well to heed your .sig, in terms of talking "through your hat".

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Re:"A novel device for..." by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-06 06:29 · Score: 1

I hate that you can't cut&paste from acrobat reader. But here is the relevant part of that link, re-typed by me:
"This invention relates in general to a fastener for holding a plurality of objects. More specificlaly, an improved method for holding a plurality of objects."

Note it is "an improved method for holding".... that's the thing being patented - the "imrpoved method for".

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Re:"A novel device for..." by Doc+Ruby · 2004-12-06 07:01 · Score: 1

The *fastener* is the method. Not the manufacturing process for the method. That's what the term "method" means, a "term of art", in patents. It's a method for holding, not a method for making a holder. My point. Thank you for the backup.

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Re:"A novel device for..." by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-06 07:52 · Score: 1

Not the manufacturing process for the method.

I didn't *SAY* manufacturing process. I just said "process". Thank you for the strawman fallacy.

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Re:"A novel device for..." by Doc+Ruby · 2004-12-06 09:48 · Score: 1

You are defending the "process patents" that I attacked at the beginning of this subthread. Paperclips are not processes. They are "methods", in the archaic parlance of patents, but they are methods as a physical device, not a series of human transactions. If you want to split hairs like that, you'll have to find another way.

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Re:"A novel device for..." by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-06 11:17 · Score: 1

There was no context in your original post that I could use to guess that by "process patent" you were talking only about patenting processes performed by human beings and not "processes performed by devices. I wasn't splitting hairs. Your post didn't make the distinction you are claiming it did. Now, your *NEW* point, that I would agree with - you should not be able to patent that actions taken by a human being to perform a task.

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Re:"A novel device for..." by Doc+Ruby · 2004-12-06 11:43 · Score: 1

TapeCutter posted:

'In legal terms "process patents" are a brand new idea'

and you started defending patents as protecting only processes:

'All patents are patents on processes, not patents on the end result of that process (if you make the same widget in a different way than the way that was patented, you have not infringed the patent.)'

BTW, that's where you claimed that patents protect the manufacturing process of the device, not the device.

Then I joined TapeCutter, distinguishing processes from devices:

" No, patents protected only devices [...T]hat patent need not identify the machine that makes the patented paperclip".

You tried to claim that patents protect the manufacturing process, then you tried to conflate "process" with "method". It's not going to work. Especially when we agree that process patents are bad.

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make install -not war
Re:"A novel device for..." by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-07 08:34 · Score: 1

You tried to claim that patents protect the manufacturing process,

Stop lying. I already said that is not the case. At most you can claim I didn't communicate it well - at MOST.

Especially when we agree that process patents are bad.

No we don't. We agree that HUMAN process patents are bad.

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Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:"A novel device for..." by Doc+Ruby · 2004-12-07 08:39 · Score: 1

Liar in denial, I repeat from your post:

"if you make the same widget in a different way than the way that was patented, you have not infringed the patent"

"Make the widget" is manufacturing.

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Re:"A novel device for..." by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-07 10:41 · Score: 1

And I repeat from my post: At most you can claim I didn't communicate it well.

The first time you thought I meant that is forgivable - it could mean that. After the clarification you keep doing it. That is not forgivable.

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Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:"A novel device for..." by TapeCutter · 2004-12-09 21:01 · Score: 1

You are a very patient person, lol.

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And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Re:"A novel device for..." by Doc+Ruby · 2004-12-09 21:16 · Score: 1

If only I had a machine to draw out the Slashdot posers, collect their contradictions, and post them in italics... ;).

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Computer networking classes and hard luck by tepples · 2004-12-04 06:23 · Score: 1

I just had my friend who graduated with a CS degree as me the procedure to setup a wireless network in their house. He, however, is a classic example of getting into the market for the money, but no love of the technology.

If your friend knows CS but not Wi-Fi, that doesn't necessarily mean he was in it purely for the money. Perhaps your friend was just unlucky enough that other students filled the computer networking class offered by the university during his BSCS before he could sign up. This happened to me.

Re:Computer networking classes and hard luck by grioghar · 2004-12-04 06:56 · Score: 1

That's fine and dandy and all, but if you have a love for the tech, you're digging across the 'Net, reading manuals and peer reviews, product details, howtos, faqs and the like.

This is how I worked my way into the IT Field.

He got a degree without really caring about the tech.

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Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do

For IIS, or for Windows by tepples · 2004-12-04 06:27 · Score: 1

Please note that the 2K Workstation's EULA states that you can not have more than five network connections to your machine at once.

Does this EULA provision apply only to IIS bundled with Windows 2000 Professional, or is it for all TCP connections on the whole machine? If the former, then do like I did and switch to WinApache. If the latter, then Microsoft could help the RIAA and MPAA fight peer-to-peer file sharing because many P2P protocols involve more than five incoming TCP connections.

Process... by TapeCutter · 2004-12-04 12:42 · Score: 1

If I patent "the wheel" (as an enterprising Lawyer in my city did!!!) it means that you cannot simply change the process that makes the wheels and everything will be ok. It covers ALL wheels and prohibits others from copying your INVENTION of a wheel. Until recently it did not cover the "process" of making the wheel and others may well hold patents for inventions that are used in that process. Software is a process that uses the invention of a computer the only protection it deserves is copyright. This scares the shit out of large software houses who have trouble enforcing the copyright. So they (and others) lobbied for laws to own the process, they won but totally fucked up the reason why the patent office was there in the first place.

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And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.

Re:Process... by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-04 20:30 · Score: 1

You can't patent "some round object that looks like this (show picture of a wheel)". The wheel patent has to specify the process the object is used for. (I'm not going to go look it up, but if you do, I'll guarantee you the patent would talk about the use of the wheel to move things over a distance. The reason this is needed is that so many objects are identical to each other, and so many inventions are just cases of applying the same old previously existing objects in some new way, to perform some new process.

A pie pan, turned into a flying toy by turning it upside down and throwing it while spinning it, is a completely different invention from a pan to hold pies.

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Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.

Computers aren't Turing Machines by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 07:03 · Score: 0

they can only hold a finite number of states, and we only let them run for a finite amount of time.

Finite state machines are decideable, so the CS theory approach doesn't buy you anything.

There are formal proofs of equivalence, but there are also informal proofs that courts can use, such as expert testimony, to determine if two algorithms do "essentially" the same thing.
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Closed-Source Niche by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 09:54 · Score: 0

(the closed-source niche is shrinking)

Uh, yeah right, whatever. Get a cluestick. The vast majority of software is closed-source. Hardly a "niche". And I'm willing to wager it stays that way for a very long time.

Frizbee's by TapeCutter · 2004-12-07 01:41 · Score: 1

I will look up the wheel patent if you show me the Frizbee patent. The "wheel patent" is a legalistic demo from an Australian lawyer to show how silly things can get. I do not belive that a pie-plate alone could be patented as "a flying toy" under the old rules. You would be able to register a pie-plate with the trademark "Frisbee" and say things like "beware of imitations" but the pie-plate had already been invented and was in the public domain. A new use for the pie-plate under the old rules was not considered an invention even if the pie-plate was covered by a patent. A "flying toy" that was inspired by a pie-plate may have been.

Let's throw the frixbee argument away and get back to how software(process) patents taken to thier logical extreme are useless. Considering only patents (not copyright), if Bob patents his software then Jill could rearrange a few lines, argue that the order of execution is different and thus the "process" is a novel way to accomplish the same thing and gain a patent. Bill will retaliate by climbing up a few layers of abstraction beacuse the process of "one click" is a broader process that encaptulates any further rearrangements by Jill or Alice the newcomer. The raw logic is driving towards things like a mathematical formula becoming eligible for patent protection or maybe even

The ultimate patent "A Tool: The process of using a non-self object other than "direct sustinance" as an extention to or amplification of the capabilities of the human body. Where "direct sustinance" is defined as hunting, gathering, eating or drinking with one's bare hands"

The only current protections on software that can logically be supported are copyright/left or trade secret status. The idea of patents on software and such has created a new industry in the US that is devoted to milking the inherent logical loopholes of "process" patents. The money they take (or cause to be spent on thier competitors) amounts to a strategic weapon against ALL bussinesses that is available to "anyone" on a highest bidder basis. When I am wearing my tin-hat (my patented use of a pie-plate) I can easily imagine a society where a "consortium" owns the "Universal Computing Machine" patent. This consortium is seen as a good thing, they make it safe by banning unqualified people (non-members) from "practicing computing". I mean would you let just anybody be a dentist? Even if it was just a hobby? Hell no! When administered fairly by an impartial body it is a great idea for Dentists or those who work on "life and death" software systems. A similar leagal tool, placed in the hands of private enterprise to use in a selective manner, is clearly a novel use of the patent office

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And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.

Closed source can't win. by twitter · 2004-12-10 11:18 · Score: 1

my competitors still can't integrate my code into their code (unless they want to GPL their own code). They'd have to understand the solution in a clean room scenario, and re-implement it (something they can do with the binary, anyway). So it is not actually an instant handover to your competitor.

Joe's arguments in this direction fall on their face in no time at all with a little thought. If what he says is true, then Microsoft would NEVER have a feature deficit with any free software. A quick look at KDE, Gnome, Apache or GIMP shows how far behind they are. They don't have the money or manpower to use all the features and innovations that free software users take for granted. If they don't have the resources to do that, no one does.

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Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

Re:Closed source can't win. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-10 11:40 · Score: 0

Your aguments can be turned around with a little thought as well - if the opposite were true there would be a superior free replacement for everything Microsoft and any other commercial software firm produces. The GIMP would be as good as Photoshop (it isn't), OO.org would be as good as MS Office (it isn't), GNOME and KDE would be as easy to use as the Windows shell (they aren't), and I'm not even going to go into the thousands of types of niche software that Microsoft does not even bother producing and for which there are no open source alternatives. Off the top of my head only Apache, Mozilla and a few other examples like editors (Emacs and vim) are integrally superior to their commercial (or "closed source") counterparts, and that's not even considering, say, Opera vs. Mozilla or other non-Microsoft software.
This "deficit" of yours also exists in the other direction, whether you'd like to admit it or not.

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