Posted by
michael
on from the secrets-and-lies dept.
Tim writes "Tim Bray and Microsoft's Joe Marini are doing a back-and forth on Open Source. Tim serves (open everything), Joe returns (secret-source is good business) and Tim volleys (the closed-source niche is shrinking)."
XML Comparison
by
xetaprag
·
· 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
Jason+Earl
·
· 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.
Is Some Software Meant to be Secret?
by
JohnGrahamCumming
·
· 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.
Re:Nothing new
by
danheskett
·
· 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:Half-and-half
by
neosake
·
· 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
-- "When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
Re:Open/Closed
by
Apathetic1
·
· 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:Competition
by
Quill_28
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
'but yet is free and more reliable.'
I didn't know open source was always more reliable?
closed vs open source = products vs services
by
Spy+der+Mann
·
· 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.
Closed Source for External File Formats
by
Sheepdot
·
· 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:Is Some Software Meant to be Secret?
by
BrynM
·
· 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...)
can't we just get along
by
jonathanduty
·
· 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:Open/Closed
by
RealAlaskan
·
· 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.
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...
Secrecy OK in short term, terrible in long term
by
davidwr
·
· 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:Scientists (open) vs Businessmen (closed)
by
matrix0f8h
·
· 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:Screw IIS; I use WinApache on my desktop PC
by
SCHecklerX
·
· 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).
Re:On the contrary
by
zurab
·
· 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:Half-and-half
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· 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.
First mover advantage and Intellectual Property
by
Kris_J
·
· 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.
Re:What happens when it's not secret anymore?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· 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:Joe, if you're reading this....
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· 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.
Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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!
What I find funny is that the closed source guy is using php for his pages, even if it's running on IIS
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
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?
'but yet is free and more reliable.'
I didn't know open source was always more reliable?
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.
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.
- 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...)
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??
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:
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.