Slashdot Mirror
Lawsuit Says GPL is a Price-Fixing Scheme
Soko writes "Yes, it's real. The crack team of Daniel Wallace and Maureen O'Gara have ganged up once again to protect their version of "The American Dream," he by filing a lawsuit in Indiana court saying the GPL is nothing more than a price fixing scheme designed to drive software vendors out of business, she by parroting the proprietary vendors' "The GPL kills business" mantra (as well as a few well placed insults at the free software community). I found the story on Groklaw - no links to Ms. O'Gara or Mr. Wallace from me. I'm still kind of dumbfounded at the audacity of Mr. Wallace, but wonder if he has an angle that might have a slim chance of prevailing." This Google search reveals some of Daniel Wallace's views on the GPL.
They're just mad because you tk ther jeb!
...are you telling me it isn't a price fixing scheme?
I'm surprised that Slashdot actually posted this drivel on the front page (well actually the real surprise was the lack of spelling errors!) As has been the case for several months now, O'Gara's articles have become deliberately more provocative and frankly ridiculous as she attempts to push up the banner hits on the LBW/LBN website. I don't think she even bothers to cite anything resembling a fact anymore, but simply blurts out the most ridiculous thoughts that she finds stomping around the inside of her head.
;-)
For anyone who isn't aware, one of the other regular "writers" for LBW/LBN was recently outed, caught trolling on the SCOX message board to pull in more hits with his crackpot theories. It's looking like a company policy.
There's no doubt that MOG is simply using this Wallace fellow to help finance the ailing website. Personally I'm not going to visit it, and I'd suggest anyone else with any sense also not bother. The slashdot effect is exactly the thing they wish for over there... unless everyone visits with Lynx, or images turned off, of course
LBW/LBN is fast becoming the "Jerry Springer show" of the tech news sites...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
How? Who are the conspirators in this 'scheme'? If I had to file a suit of this nature anywhere, Indiana is a good choice (trust me). But still - it just seems plainly rediculous on it's face.
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
How does it fix prices, if there aren't any?
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I EAT COOKIES
what's so bad about fixing the price of software?
What will they say next? Using FOSS contributes to global terrorism? That everytime you download FOSS, the drug cartels profit? That FOSS consitiutes violates RICO laws?
Price fixing my foot!
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
GPL is still too busy doing this whole "war on terrorism" conspiracy where the ruined countries can't get anything but GPL.
It's "crack tEam," damn it! Copyediting is not rocket science, people. I should know.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Bottled watter companies file lawsuit that running tap water is a price fixing scheme! Oxygen tank manufacturers claim air is a price fixing scheme! Recording Industry says making your own music is a price fixing scheme!
Is a crack tram anything like a crack house? On wheels maybe?
Let's sue the Mozilla Foundation because they're obviously plotting to overthrow Microsoft and IE! The competition isn't right! Oh wait...
These evil corporations that provide Free GPLed code for free, that they are into price fixing! Their evil plans are clear now: create Free Open Source Software, hook people on it and then charge exuberant amounts of money for it. One Billion Gajillion dollars!
.
But seriously, what a ridiculous statement. Most GPLed code is not even released by corporations but by independent willing participants: you and me.
You can't handle the truth.
I wonder if after this point Maureen O'Gara will continue to present herself as an "analyst", since her hired-hand work at this work is now well outside of PR-- and arguably taking even more active participation in the war against open source than many of the corporations involved directly have at this point.
How can one simultaneously report on news and create news?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
They use Linux also, so they are part of the plot. Trust MSN search, they are IP-Safe (TM) (R) and (C), or use the library.
-Charlie
P.S. The above was sarcasm, but on a serious note, the top two Google hits are to MoG sites or stories, so you might not want to give them the hits, try the cache at the very least.
Read the complaint that is linked in the groklaw story.. (http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/Wallace-Complaint.pdf)
It starts out as "The Plaintiff Daniel Wallace......"
and in the damages section changes to "The Defendant Daniel Wallace..."
what a moron..
---- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't
I always thought that the idea of a price-fixing scheme was to drive prices *up*. What they have said makes absolutely no sense. Free software is causing prices to go up? I think not...
If anything, free software drives prices down (remember when IE was released for free, while Netscape was still selling for $30?). Oh, the commercial software industry is dying too. Then why is Windows still the most popular operating system in existance?
It's an absurd lawsuit brought by a nutter.
/. is because it pertains to the GPL and we all need a good laugh on a monday.
This is nothing new. Happens all the time. Only reason it's on
Hey, where's the foot icon?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The slashdot blurb here says that David Wallace and Maureen O'Gara filed this lawsuit. The Groklaw link however seems to be saying that David Wallace filed the suit and Maureen O'Gara was merely acting as volunteer PR shill for it. My OP post above took the slashdot blurb by its letter.
What exactly is the relationship of Ms. O'Gara to this lawsuit?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
It has nothing to do with reason.
It has nothing to do with justice.
It has nothing to do with quality and or merits.
It has nothing to do with "who deserves to win".
If not SCO, then someone else will win. It will be the stupidest ruling in the history of law, no doubt, but somehow it will win. IBM on our side or not. I am not a troll, though it should be obvious I'm far from being an optimist.
I hope I am wrong.
All that said, does it suprise you that with SCO being an embarrassment, that Microsoft would start up a few other legal experiments? They no doubt have people whose sole job is to dream up possible litigation, and we can expect 1-3 of these things per year, until one succeeds or they run out of money. Guess which one will happen first.
it is a price fixing scheme. Richard Stallman and the rest of the GPL crowd are scheming to fix the price of software ... at zero!
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The software industry is a service industry operating under the guise of a manufacturing industry.
:)
Of course there are some exceptions -- the gaming industry, for example (though MMORPGs have the "subscription service" thing down). Unfortunately I can't name any others at the time but I'm sure there's more.
The GPL isn't a price-fixing scheme...it basically exposed the current artifically inflated price-fixing scheme that is proprietary software.
Adapt and evolve, baby. Or cry about it all the way to extinction.
...because it's sensational and bound to score many hits. More hits means more revenue from advertising. The only difference between LBW/LBN and /. is that the former has a deliberate policy of twisting the facts to up its rating whereas the latter has the policy of choosing sensational headlines without having editors to check them.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Okay, normally a price-fixing scheme artificially inflates pricing. Price fixing laws are there to protect the consumer, iirc, and I'd say the GPL is the ultimate consumer protection.
Wouldn't dumping be a more accurate complaint, since anti-dumping laws protect other businesses from large competitors selling for below cost? But since there's virtually no cost involved in making copies of software and the R&D is typically recouped by service contracts with IBM, Red Hat and the like, this lawsuit would appear to fall under the catagory of 'hilarity'.
I don't mind paying for software (except for basic OS and utilities), but if you're going to charge me for it, you damn well better be offering a better product than what a bunch of students and professionals crank out in their spare time for free.
Too bad she isn't attacking the oil industry ...
because then she would know what "price fixing" really means.
Read the complaint, it's hilarious. I don't understand if he is claiming the price fixing is to free, or not free. Then again, his argument doesn't really make any sense either way.
Maybe they should GPS track all GPL software authors. Then businesses can see what GPL users are in the registry and track their movements. :-)
(Seriously. The only time GPL hurts businesses is when they use code and don't honor the GPL. Their their own stupid ass mistakes.)
I just have no idea how to respond to such lunacy...
BlackNova Traders
business practices addressed by legislation, i.e. giving away M$ windows based computers until Apple is out of business, until the GPL software drives someone out of business AND then requires payment.
Free Market == Price Fixing Scheme?
Wow. The Libertarians will be shocked.
the way they have thought this up is obvious enough - what do FOSS advocates complain about the most? MS driving up and "fixing" software prices. so if you want to annoy someone the most you accuse them of the thing they hate the most. their logic will go something like this "FOSS destroies businesses because no business can compete with free" and if your a simplton this appears true. but business's compete on much more then price. Businesses will use whats best, not whats the cheapest, and they certainly don't give a toss about licenses.(something which will make RMS foam at the mouth i'm sure) this is the simple hard fact of life. they can't stop someone giving something away. a similar, but not exactly accurate analogy would be to say selling 2nd hand cars is price fixing because they are cheaper then new ones. bottom line - software businesses need to stop crying about competeition and get on with providing a product. here any CEO that needs a fucking tissue i'll mail you a box of kelnex
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You know, if you don't like GPL software, don't buy it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
but wonder if he has an angle that might have a slim chance of prevailing
Put any issue like this in a court, especially in front of a jury, especially in America, and literally anything can happen, regardless of the lawyers or facts on either side.
Juries will do what they think is justice based upon what they think they understand.
Saying that SCO's case is lost, or this one would not stand a chance is simply not legitimate. Many experienced legal commentators seem to tend to give either side in just about any major case a 50-50 chance of winning. That is why the smartest thing you can do is to figure out how to stay out of court, unless you are evil and rich and like injustice. Over the long haul it may get corrected, but the courtroom is a roll of the dice.
That is also probably why jury-tried issues carry little if any weight as legal precedence. While it would be very incorrect to say that the facts are irrelevant, it would also be very incorrect to say that they will carry the day or that this or any other issue could not be won in court, especially before a jury.
To rid the world of those pesky public libraries...
*grumblecakes*
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Technically speaking, its all true - FOSS is a (somewhat loose) form of communism, the GPL is like cancer and free programs that are often better than commercial counter parts may drive products out of business. My point is, who cares? If America is a free country how can it be dictated what people code in their 'free' time? if you choose to work for nothing why should you be stopped? Should charity/volunteer work be banned too? Ok so thats a little simplistic view of what this lawsuit is about but hey..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think there issue is more with Open Source than with any particular Open Source license.
When a company such as M$ has a stranglehold on the industry. The most effective way to compete with them is with technology which cannot be assimilated by M$. M$ has killed many competitors by either pricing them out of the market, acquiring the technology or by hiring away the key developers.
In my mind, the Open Source movement was a natural response to the strongarm tactics of M$.
-b
Apple makes a good case study for the massive negative impact of GPLd software. You can see how their profits have been plummeting since they (partially) embraced the Open Source model.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
Indiana is legendary for it's hospitality, in fact Hoosier Hosipitality is known worldwide for the way we treat people who visit us.
Maureen O'Gara on behalf of the State of Indiana, myself, and everyone I know, Get out, go away, shit in someone else's yard or you'll deal with opensource terror, I guarentee it.
They must be smoking something, because the last time I checked, the majority of all software released under the GPL, had binaries for their software (Windows, *NIX, etc...) for free. And not only that, but the Source Code as well. So how can something "free" be part of some mass conspiracy to "price fix"?
Obviously Free Software creates an illegal monopoly on software and destroys competition by giving the products at throw-away prices...
Yeah, that's what it is!
You can't handle the truth.
No, don't do that, otherwise, you'll be spreading the image of free software advocates as harrassing nutcases. What would this accomplish? Do you think that your comment will be the one that changes his mind, the one that causes him to turn from the dark side? Your time would be better spent advocating free software instead of attacking people who don't.
Also, is it so hard to imagine that you would be sued by this guy for harassment?
It's just like those Habitat for Humanity bastards, conspiring to drive down the wages of building contractors!
paintball
Juries will do what they think is justice based upon what they think they understand.
If I'm not terribly mistaken juries are not permitted to rule on issues of law, only those of fact. This particular suit appears to be demanding nearly purely a ruling of law.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
(By the way, anyone else think PJ's comparison of herself to the victim of a Gestapo interrogation is just a wee bit over the top...?)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
period.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"Motion to dimiss your honor. The plantiff is clearly on drugs."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The guy is from New Pal that city was founded by the KKK, and I honestly didn't think any of them knew how to use a coputer.
Or at least it appears that the side suing doesn't know how to spell "business" in the first place, IMHO.
...
Next thing you know they'll claim the LGPL cures warts. It doesn't because everyone knows that LGPL is not Lettting Gullible Persons be held Liable for silly things
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
..to me. I think that was the point.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Only a court could make you charge money for something that you want to give away! Then again, giving IE away was what got Microsoft into trouble way back when... ...at least insanity is consistent!
You realize, sarcasm apart, that this "price fixing" or "unfair competition" is exactly what all of the TelCo's and the Wireless carriers are claiming about municipal WiFi efforts...
It's sad that corporations think that they deserve special favors, or believe that they will receive them for the right price...
oh wait, they believe it because it happens...
...because he seems to have great difficulty understanding the difference between a contract and a license. They are not the same.
Huh? By your logic, we should just shut up?
Telling someone your opinion is not harassment.
By all means, lets call the guy and give him our opinion! The only nutcases are the ones who try to shut up other people from expressing their opinion.
I cant beleive the conspiracy theorists haven't mentioned some type of MSN connection yet.
"Really now, how does the GPL fix prices when it allows anyone to charge any amount of money for GPL software?"
And as people are quick to point out about digital goods. They have no value... oh wait, wrong discussion. No "asking for, and getting" are two different things. Plus much like Wal-mart it puts pressure on software practitioners to the lowest price possible.* It most certainly doesn't put pressure on anyone to raise them.
*Throw in globalization and really let the fun begin. Software's free, and the person writting it is damn close to it.
The GPL is about freedom to use and modify the software, not price.
Please will some `GPL` lawyers countersue these greedy tardnips for there anti-competativeness. Given there trying to put anybody who charges for software ahead of the game by countering free software under GPL then I can only conclude that in itself there lawsuit is anti-competatibve and as such in breach of other law's.
:>. Wonder how they could get about without using `ANY` GPL software at all. Think linux, think CODEC's think small appliances, think!
Send em some cookies and tell em to FOAD as its all there worth.
PS can they amend the GPL to prohibite anybody that goes to sue any such software maker that is released under GPL. That they be banned from using it as it would in a sence be spying so from a software perspective can we just shoot em
908-835-1387
That number has been disconnected now. The telco message is saying calls are "now being taken by 610.438.2241"
Do you love freedom??? Do you love freedom!!! DO YOU LOVE FREEDOM!!!!!!!!
1. Write free code.
...
2. Open source it.
3.
4. Profit!
sigh
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
First they legalize DST, now they're going to illegalize open source.
It is all falling apart.
"Adapt and evolve, baby. Or cry about it all the way to extinction."
Says the member of a community who's jobs are going overseas.
I always thought that the idea of a price-fixing scheme was to drive prices *up*.
Yeah -- they'd make a better argument for product dumping, where an out-of-country manufacturer releases a product into the market at below cost. If this dude is serious about stomping out the GPL, he might try the dumping angle for GPLd projects whose development teams live outside of the country. There could be a strong argument made that developing software doesn't cost $0 -- factor in, at the very least, machine depreciation and bandwidth.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I don't think that driving software businesses out of business was the design goal of GPL.
However, Microsoft Windows license is more likely to be a price fixing scheme designed to drive other software businesses out of business.
No, don't do that, otherwise, you'll be spreading the image of free software advocates as harrassing nutcases. What would this accomplish?
Well, I know that I go out of my way to avoid annoying or otherwise provoking nutcases in general, let alone a whole mess of them like OSS has backing it. So maybe it might accomplish something...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
See Mail Bag: Practicing Law Without a License, in which Daniel Wallace's crackpot Anti-GPL arguments are utterly refuted.
Actually the one and only price fixing we saw imposed on a GPLed product was the $699 license by SCO.
Until the GPL is challenged in court its going to pretty unclear if it will or will not stand up. (ducks for daring to say this on /.) - personally I don't think it will, but until we have legal precedent we won't know. FYI : My wife is a lawyer, although working in M&A and she doesn't think it would stand up, but as she says the courts are prone to not making sense at time.
But thats not whats relevant here. This story is all about Maureen O'Gara trying to generate page impressions, and she has succeded again.
I love the GPL, so please don't think I'm trolling. But after reading the article (first one linked on grok) apparently the GPL does fix prices, that's a legit arguement. It really could put legit software manufacturers out of business. It's like giving away sugar, but then saying that anything cooked with it must be given away free too. And that you can never sell the bowl you mix the ingredients in.
So far vast majority of the comments are simply dismissing it as lunacy, drivel, etc. Except for a few comments (3 out of 50 on my count) there is basically no actual counter argument. I think 'open source' software is VERY important...but until very recently I used it simply and only 'cause I was too cheap (and poor) to pay for software...I can't prove otherwise but I bet a huge number of people also 'love' OSS simply because its free.
I DO see a point that GPL is a form of price fixing. We have decided that having libraries which provide free books is more important than not having this facility...so make an exception and make the publishers, authors live with 'free books.' Is GPL software just as beneficial, (I believe so) but there is a legitimate argument to be made against it.
Communism, all people having equal, etc., sounds like a great idea...but sometimes seemingly great ideas have unintended consequences. Is GPL software like communism or like public libraries?
What if GPL doesn't win a case like this one...will we claim that the ruling showed some weakness of our system while using the same judicial system's ruling on Microsoft's monoply as a pillar of our argument against M$?
(actually I used 'we' only because I'm too lazy to write a more coherent argument...and 'cause I'm writing this as an anonymous coward)
The sad part is FSF will have to actually defend themselves at court. IANAL, is there some procedure in which a US court throws out a lawsuit because it's too fucking ridiculous?
Linux or any other GPL'd software...
you support communism!
Not very much.
When everybody has a compiler, what is your bland piece of software worth?
Not very much.
Without entering into whether or not it's right, the GPL definitely raises the bar on what makes a marketable piece of software. I think the everybody-owns-the-factory analogy is pretty appropriate.
Once upon a time, people made a living by delivering ice to your home. Now we have freezers and make our own ice. What kind of money can you make delivering ice?
Not very much.
Does that mean you should attack the freezer manufacturers or does it mean you should find a better way of doing business?
Apparently, the answer to that question will be decided in a court of law rather than the court of common sense.
The truth is that Free Software does destroy business. If your not allowed to own your code, than you can't control the economy based around it.
That looks like a Fax number to me, though. I mean, who would allow their actual phone number to get out on the internet?
My little site.
Correct, and misses the point. If people give away things emass will that have an effect on the market? If a large group of people give away food, will that affect the grocery stores? If a large number of people give away movies and music will that affect those selling the same?
Anyone catch the LinuxWorld Award Show advertisement on the side. I normally don't click on advertisements, but never turn down a shot to get a good laugh from these 'Software Award Shows'. Surely enough, they didn't disappoint offering a picture of what promises to be the keynote speakers performing the YMCA right on the front page.
While I have never taken a class on anti-trust a pretty good summary of what is required is at http://law.wustl.edu/Organizations/SBA/Outlines/Up per%20Level%20Outlines/Antitrust/Drobak/Antitrust% 20(Drobak1).htm
I can see several problems, first of all he has to allege that the scheme harmed him- he is alleging that the GPL has driven down the job market for computer programmers, something that seems hard to prove.
He has to show that there is an "anti-competive activity" he is alleging that this is the GPL itself. In order to do this he is charcterizing this as an "adhesion contract", that is a contract that one party has no real choice but to accept. This seems laughable given that the acts that invoke the GPL requirements are completely voluntary, I personaly have never accepted the GPL because I am not a programmer and don't distribute softweare. Yet I use GPLed softweare extensively. This is very much in oppstion to the licesne agreements that came with my proprotaty stuff.
What do you call "thier" then?
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Well, technically, if you think about it, OpenSource is price fixing: price fixing to be free. Seriously, how can anyone compete against a competitor that does not exist, but only in virtual words, IRC chat rooms, bulletin boards, e-mail lists, and instant messenger? Not to mention the fact that the work and software they produce is provided as is so as long you provide the source and any modifications anyone make is always provided along with it? And oh, let's not forget, that it is suppose to be free? Hmmm... last time I checked, free still meant free, and free doesn't cost me a dime. These 'lawyers' are just whining because they represent a group of individuals whom can't seem to compete in a market where no matter how much money they throw at a problem, a good solution seems to be a free one. They can't compete, so they try to stomp their supposed competition. This is equivalent to kids in school that complain about students that make excellent grades in a classroom environment where the teacher grades on a curve. The individual students that 'screw up' the curve for the rest of the class because they work their butts off to achieve their best work is penalized by bullies who beat them up afterschool because they are too lazy to do the work themselves, so a few hired goons to beat the snot out of them...
Even in the real world, everything is still like high school.
I say, let the smart kids 'screw up' the curve. Or in my opinion, raise the standards for all of us.
Seriously, though, it was a vivid, offensive image. Which is worse, the victimhood of Groklaw or the Nazihood of Groklaw's detractors? I don't know, save this kind of rhetoric for when Bill Gates is elected President or something.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
I hope the courts will throw out the case very fast, by declaring that free of charge means no price, therefore price fixing can't be an issue.
On the other hand, the defence can easily prove, that a software company, M$ has managed to rake in so much cash than very few other corporations did, against all the hurdles of "GPL price fixing".
I wonder who pays the legal bill for these guys?
is what they should have attended at Uni.
Anyway, I believe it's like this:
In any healthy economy, competition breeds innovation. There are different levels on which you can compete: price, quality, and customer intimacy. If somebody is giving away (regardless of wether it's open source or not) a similar product to your own, you cannot beat them on price. It follows that you will then have to compete on quality - in software, that's features and stability.
You can also compete on customer focus (see McLaren cars, for example - they come equipped with a car hpone that has a "connect me to the nearest mechanic, ASAP" button - they will also fly somebody out on their own cost if your car happens to break down somewhere where there is no authorised service centre).
Software vendors have been notoriously bad at providing said customer focus, so what's left is really to compete on features. This strategy will invariabley lead to innovation. Now repeat after me: THIS IS NOT A BAD THING!!!
Surely the author meant "cracked team".
Tech Public Policy stuff
typical robber-baron activity: fuck the masses by appropriating the fruits of their labor.
who is she? leave a comment!
Testing the GPL in court over an issue like this only strengthens the GPL. As others have already pointed out, the GPL doesn't specify a price for software, so the suit is rather absurd/hard to win.
Once this suit is put to rest, then it will be significantly harder for someone to argue the same point.
eskwayrd = m^2c^4
..... consumer choice....
Ok. And I dislike MS's EULAs, but if I use their software, I'm stuck. If you use GPL tools, you're stuck.
BenCurry.net
"... and replace it with a commons of Free Software created by academics, government-sponsored developers and volunteers."
Basically:
A few (Businesses)--->Many (the community)
Fine as far as it goes. However people forget exactly why a society has "a few" that do some things. Division of labour/skill because we all don't have the time to be all things all the time.
A consequence of the above is that expertise can be accumilated, and incentives can be brought to bear to do things that a community (mob) wouldn't be motivated to do normally. e.g. write documentation, design usable interfaces, create nice art.
Presently we enjoy only those things that scratch an itch, and don't take great amounts of effort (no GPL tax software) and tease outsiders to use it by layoring "pay by the itch" on top of it. e.g. services.
it's about time someone said the truth about linux hippies and their virus known as "free software".
but they will never keep, THEIR FREEDOM!!!" - Wallace
Um...the GPL *is* communism. That's the entire point. It's a way of creating code for the community, and forcing those that use said code to in turn contribute to the community as well. Of course, there's nothing at all wrong with that, and we're not in the Cold War era anymore.
Microsoft was sued today for "price fixing". By bundling products such as "Notepad" and "Solitare", Wallace claims the move is designed to drive software vendors out of business; and O'Gara parrots the proprietary vendors "OS-Bundled Applications kill buisness" mantra.
Experts expect the result will be the complete removal of all "application layer" software from the Windows where 3rd party competition exists or used to exist, as well as any "late additions" to the OS that are or used to be provided by 3rd parties (such as network support, etc).
This was settled long ago; Wallace and O'Gara will lose.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
No, don't do that
Yes, and also please do not mail bomb him. That would make baby GNU cry.
Daniel Wallace PO box 572 New Palestine IN 46163
Well the whole "The GPL is unconstitutional" angle failed. So someone had to try something.
I think you can expect a new attack on the GPL every so often just to test how close attention people are paying.
-Kyoya (yeah I didn't want to look up my password)
Strike 3: clueless or sycophant judge
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
While I think you are being overly cynical (or perhaps not, alas) I also think that if the GPL is struck down here in the good old "Land of the Free"(TM) that this would not significantly slow its adoption world-wide. ... must... resist.. urge.. to quote Kenobi...
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Most people posting on /. in regard to lawsuits brought against MS for bundling IE or their media player were pretty happy someone was going after MS. Now that some idiot is suggesting the same thing against OSS, sanity prevails on /., and people realize how ridiculous such lawsuits are. Of course, if MS was sued tomorrow over bundling, people here would rejoice, because they're not rational enough to keep a consistent opinion, but instead react emotionally based on who is being sued.
Vote for Pedro
There is a rather vocal individual in the comp.lang.lisp group that makes the argument free software is evil, because it makes it impossible to charge enough for software to make a living. To be fair, he feels this way about ANYTHING for free, so while I strongly disagree with him he is consistent. I'd dearly love to hear him and Stallman have an hour long debate, but I doubt it will ever happen.
People seem to think they have some kind of entitlement to profits. People, the world doesn't owe you ANYTHING. Generally speaking, if you can't convince people to pay you money for your work, it's your problem. If part time hobbiest developers can create free tools that are better for the price than your commercial ones, I'd say you need to work harder.
In a true capitalistic system, profits are VERY hard to come by. This is a good thing, because people work hard without sucking in a huge amount of resources, to the betterment of society. Competition sucks, because you never get to rest on your laurels. You have to keep running to stay in place, and frankly that's BY DESIGN. It is very nearly the whole POINT. You have to really produce something people want to get a profit, and you have to keep innovating to keep it. If volunteer efforts can produce a free tool which is good enough, that means you need to step it up a notch to produce something people want to pay you for. After all, you're expecting to be paid, so you should be able to put more time/energy into it.
Seesh. What ever happened to doing something just to make the world a better place, or make other people happy? Now it's price fixing. I feel very sad when I see this kind of thing, because it underlines how little regard we have for the world around us. The world is a cold, empty place when people generously and cheerfully giving you something out of the goodness of their hearts is looked upon as price fixing, and it's enough to make me sick.
The worst part of it is, in many these companies are making a profit over and above what they are paying their employees, and yet somehow this isn't enough. Providing people with productive, well paying jobs isn't the point, the point is MAKE MORE MONEY.
At some point in the future, we are going to hit a situation where our economy CANNOT, because of limitations of physical resources, be driven by growth. It will have to be steady state, and I think the US is doomed when this happens because we don't know how not to be greedy, to appreciate the community around us, and be happy that it is prospering. We are focused on ME,ME,ME, and it can't go on forever. The Earth is finite, and the energy costs of space travel are not economic on the large scales of the global system. We WILL have to face it, and when we do I hope we can remember how to be human beings, and not just profit machines.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
I have a question. If I link to libstdc++ from GNU which is GPLv2, in my proprietary C++ code, then does that make my app my default GPL? By the court definition it seems that would be true.
If so, that is terrible!
Isn't the point of price fixing to hold the price of a good above the equilibrium price (think OPEC, DeBeers)? How dare someone give something away for free. How dare someone provide value for the community. How dare someone put buggywhip manufacturers out of business.
"brxref
This is just the latest example of a TOTALLY
frivilous, vexatious and worthless lawsuit which
is only being taken seriously, at all, because
of the flawed Process Rules in the US.
If you look you will find the usual meaningless
Statement of Claim, no valid theory, and a CLEAR
and UN-AMBIGUOUS understanding that the honourable
court will do anything it can to prevent the action
being struck out in 14 days, for want of any discernable CAUSE of ACTION.
This is the only reason that SCO is still in the courts,
anywhere with a sane judicial system would have this action dismissed, by a MASTER, for want of cause, and costs in any event within 15 working days.
The only restriction the GPL puts on pricing is that you cannot charge more for a copy of the source code than you can for a copy of any binaries. This is to prevent people from charging (for example) a few dollars for the binaries but millions for the source code, which would effectively nullify the GPL's given rights to further modify and distribute the software. That guy really doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. >=(
from here:
WHAT IS PRICE FIXING?
What is price fixing - legal answers at FreeAdvice.com's business section
"Most state statutes provide that fixing the price of a product or service in agreement with another individual or business is illegal. The general rule provides that a vendor may not in combination with another vendor agree to set a certain price thereby creating a fixed price within a certain market. A business acting on its own and not in concert with another may use legitimate efforts to obtain the best price they can, including their ability to raise prices to the detriment of the general public. Also, conformity of prices within a given product is not illegal unless such conformity was created by a combination of vendors agreeing on a set price. For example, where competitors agree to sell their goods or services at a specified price, minimum price or maximum price and they receive profits from such an agreement, they are in violation of price fixing. Additionally, setting a price to be charged only within a certain area in order to get rid of competition or to create a monopoly is generally illegal under most state laws. A majority of states have also enacted a "Below-Sales-Cost" law wherein businesses may not sell goods below cost if they do so with anti-competitive intent or effect."
So, giving away something at a loss to drive competition out of business is illegal. I've never been a fan of anti-trust legislation, and now maybe anti-MS zealots will see my point of view if these laws start affecting them adversely.
Vote for Pedro
I would liken this to a lawn mowing service sueing Joe Sixpack for being a good guy and mowing his elderly neighbor's lawn for free. Wallace seems to be making the case that the availability of free software prevents him from getting a job and he's placed the GPL at the head of it. AFAIK you can charge for GPL'd code, right? To me, this is the very spirit of competition, same for municipal WiFi efforts. These efforts foster a commercial environment where competing means more than price. Wallace should be spending his time thinking about what he can offer that free software can't or simply find a new line of work. If you can't stand the heat, shut your pie hole and get off my lawn!
Infamous Jum
Could this be the start of a yet another new and dangerous free PR Campaign to slander OSS? Step 1: Bring frivolous and sensational lawsuit Step 2: Make lots of noise in front of the news tv cameras Step 3: Rinse, Wash and Repeat Step 4: Wait for the propoganda to take hold upon the sheep. What's in your head? Zombie... zombie.. zombie..
Wait a minute! HOLD THE TRAIN.
I'm confused now. I've been reviewing all these reports that Linux has a greater total cost of ownership. So damn. What's this? Now it's unfairly fixing the price too low?
I don't get it! What am I missing here???
Someone help a poor capitalist out...
---
Moral of the story: You can't have your cake and eat it too.
I'm still kind of dumbfounded at the audacity of Mr. Wallace...
That was shameless.
Direct away from face when opening.
Beacuse its absolutely ruined IBM.
I am Spartacus
If you're a developer, and you release a useful project under the GPL, chances are you'll get patches back that'll teach you a think or two.
Happened to me today, in fact.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
You know what gets me...
Is that companies who back these kind of ideas are the same ones who will outsource your job to save a buck. In a SECOND.
So they cry when anybody taps their market (be it VOIP, FOSS, or whatnot), and they lobby for laws to *protect* their business. Yet they have no problems doing this to PEOPLE.
Companies HAVE a responsibility to their customers, and the cities/towns/COUNTRIES they do business it. They should be MADE to give back instead of just taking taking taking.
I'm tired of hearing stuff about "well it's their coumpany and they can do what they want." This way of thinking is really wrong, IMHO, and is just a symptom of how they have brainwashed everyone. Morality doesn't seem to exist in the corporate world, everything is for the blind pursuit of profit... generally by crawling up the backs of hard working people, then kicking them down when they reach the summit.
Pure capitalism is faulty, somebody needs to reign these greedy people in. It'd be nice if someone could pull the wool back up, from over the general public's eyes.
this all makes me so bloody angry.
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
Obviously, it's so inept it fulfilling that end, that it can be mistaken for nearly anything.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
15 USC 13c Exemption: Nothing in the Act approved June 19, 1936, known as the Robinson-Patman Antidiscrimination Act, shall apply to purchases of their supplies for their own use by schools, colleges, universities, public libraries, churches, hospitals, and charitable institutions not operated for profit. Free Software Foundation is a Maine not-for-profit corporation. His case must be based on Section 13, nothing else makes sense. Yet Section 13 is limited. This will be summarily dismissed with extreme prejedice.
I feel much better now. Thank you! ^^
No, it's volunteerism. It would be communism if you forced others to use GPL'd code. But they don't have to.
"Free" Software in general, and the GPL in particular, is a clear infringement of software companies' Right to Profit, as enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
What do you mean, there's no such Right? You must be joking. Well, let's get rid of one the ones we aren't using anymore (how about "no unreasonable search and seizure"?), and slide the Right to Profit in there. Who's with me?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Most of Apple's increase in profits in this time frame came from iPod, which is decidely not open source or GPL.
Disclaimer: I grew up in Indiana. I don't live there any more.
I wonder how Microsoft is involved this time.
Oh guess what...Not only is baseball exempt from antitrust laws (See Section 26b), but so are not-for-profits. Just like the good Free Software Foundation, a non-profit Maine corporation. Section 13c Nothing in the Act approved June 19, 1936, known as the Robinson-Patman Antidiscrimination Act, shall apply to purchases of their supplies for their own use by schools, colleges, universities, public libraries, churches, hospitals, and charitable institutions not operated for profit.
Mod Proxy HTML with Binary for free
The author of this module charges 50 British pounds for the binary. However, since he released it under the GPL anybody (including myself) can compile and undersell the author. In my case I decided to go with the price of free.
On top of that, since I only supply the win32 binary, I offer everything you need to know to compile the module yourself. This way you can get the latest source (if my copy happens to be out of date) and compile it yourself and still save 50 British pounds.
The only reasons this author is still being paid for a binary from him are
a) people don't know you can get it for free
b) people want to support the author
c) people are afraid that my version is "tainted"
d) people can't compile the module themselves
e) people think my version is out of date
An effective way to destroy the income flow of a GPL author is to advertise, ensure it's not tainted, make it unnecessary to have to compile, and keep it up to date.
That leaves only those people who want to support the author.
This is why the GPL is a terrible way to make a living. If you release it under the GPL it can be sold for less than the author's asking price by anyone. The authors do all the work and everyone else in the world can profit from it or simply remove the possibility of the author to make a decent amount.
It took less than two weeks for my mod_proxy_html page to show up on Google on the front page right under the author's page.
The GPL quite simply fixes the price at 0 and there's nothing the author can do about it except change their license agreement.
Work Safe Porn
Stop repeating this idiocy! Just stop it!
GPL is as much about price as anything else. It doesn't just guarantee your freedom to modify and distribute the modifications to other paying users, it also guarantees the freedom to redistribute to non-paying users.
*ding* *ding* *ding*
This just in:
Cooperation deemed uncompetitive!
Juries do not establish legal precedent, judges do. Quite simply this is b/c the role of the judge is to lay down the legal framework, and the role of the jury is to decide how credible the evidence presented is and then apply that evidence to the legal framework provided by the judge. When was the last time you saw a judge cite a jury's opinion as a basis for legal precedent? Or, for that matter, when was the last time you saw a jury-written opinion?
Ok, this guy may be a joke.
But what if [Pick Your Favorite Evil] decides to fund a real research to find a way to manipulate the laws until they make the GPL look illegal?
I guess it already has been done, by a number of companies that have interests on OpenSource. We can only speculate about their findings...
I don't know about the USA, but here at Brasil the GPL is a contract. And here, a contract is treated as a "law between peers". So, as long as it doesn't go against the legislation, it's as valid and enforceable as an EULA. Only that an EULA normaly restricts your rights, and give you lot's of rules to be followed... and the GPL grants you rights, since you follow some rules.
I'm not a lawyer, but it would be interesting to see how the GPL stands against the legislation of every country in the world. Pehaps the FSF should put a map online, wiht green areas pointing where the GPL is valid and backed by the laws, and red areas where it's just a bunch of words with no value.
The USA should be painted yellow, I guess.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
Bwizniss?
Okay, let me see if I can distill this down a little bit. I've never heard of this guy before, but his ideas sound worthy of a little analysis, at least.
Contrary to the subject of this story, which equates the GPL to an corrupt trust price-fixing scheme, Mr. Wallace instead seems to consistently promote the idea that the GPL is invalid based on an interpretation of derivative works that requires consent from their author, in addition to the original author, for distribution.
He points out that the FSF and the GPL do not consider such consent to be necessary. He makes a distinction between a unilateral license, like the owner of property letting you borrow their property for free, and a mutual agreement, like you renting property. He claims that the GPL is more like the former, one-sided grant of license than the mutual agreement. Most importantly he claims that a derivative work, to be distributed under copyright law, requires the consent of both the original author and the author of the derivative parts, ie. a mutual contract rather than a one-sided grant of license. He argues that the GPL places no value on the consent of a developer who creates a derivative of a GPLed work.
The crux of his argument seems to revolve around the recursive nature of the GPL. He argues that the GPL may well be valid with regards to an original author and one derivative author. But since it is not a bilateral agreement, the GPL cannot then go on to bind the derivative author to it's terms with regards to distribution of his own work. That, he argues, requires the mutual consent of the original and derivative authors.
As far as I can tell, without having spent hours researching this, it boils down to a choice between two interpretations: either the original author is all-powerful in dictating terms to all successors who create derivative works based on the original, or, each author has dominion over his derivative work, with that work being made possible through mutual agreement with all prior authors, and with distribution of that work to be made possible by agreement of all parties. Mr. Wallace argues that the FSF and the GPL rely upon the former view, while copyright requires the latter.
Discuss...
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Now I can say the world has lost it.
The hell? Let me see SBC has stolen any chance for me to go to anyone other than them, Apple and Windows are the only major game in town, so unless I'm tech savie that leaves few alternatives. What I'd like to know is how is it these people come up with their prices. I'm serious. How do they figure they'll last on their business plan? Any real thoughts on this? I meen like does that meen Ambrosia and Bungie should be sued for price fixing? Since they make kick ass products at decent prices?
What next I write something for free and give knowling giveit away, I can get sued? (Actually I did get yelled at once because of Java app with a if/then loop with out a end statement or break check, took down my school entire network...don't ask...the fact I'm admiting it to 60trillion strangers is odd.)
The assertion of price fixing is ludicrous.
First we must distinguish between the concepts of price, which is determined by the seller, and the value, which is determined by the buyer. The value of something, at any given moment, is the amount that the highest bidder is willing to pay for it; no more, no less. While the seller is free to set the price of their product where they want, the fact that someone else makes an equivalent product and offers it for less is a perfect example of a free market in action. You cannot control the value of your product.
Didn't you hear the results of the American election late last year?
I mean, this story is pretty stupid, but I must say I've heard stupider things...
Price fixing can be used to drive prices down as well. Think of it this way, if prices are driven down below an acceptable profit margin, then businesses will be driven out of a particular market. Thus, if a firm can hold out long enough (i.e. sustain the lost), all of it's competitors will be driven bankrupt or leave the market. And what you are left with is a monopoly.
Classic antitrust doctrine. Vanderbilt used this strategy a bunch in the 19th century (drove out shipping competitors first, then used the tactic to drive out RR competitors). Look up the terms "predatory pricing" and "raising rival's costs" - allegations in the MS antitrust trial.
Of the various weaknesses to pick at in this suit, the inappropriate use of the term "price fixing" is not one of them.
Free software isn't free until it's been written. Charge for your labor and you don't need to exert control over users afterward. Doctors and plumbers don't expect to do their job just once and then kick back and cash checks for the rest of their lives.
Your main point has been answered to ad nauseam. No one is placing a limit on being paid for the writing or maintenance of private code. The OS and basic software needed for the average box does not need to be private and in fact is probably better if it is not as we apply common standards to common purposes.
How many instances of something like "Office" do we need? If just one, then it might as well be based on open standards.
probably time would be even better spent writing free software (as opposed to any form of discussion about it).
"The crack tram of Daniel Wallace and Maureen O'Gara have ganged up once again to protect thier version of "The American Dream", he by filing a lawsuit in Indiana court saying the GPL is nothing more than a price fixing scheme, designed to drive software vendors out of business, and she by parroting the proprietary vendors "The GPL kills buisness" mantra (as well as a few well placed insults at the free software community)."
Are Slashdot editors always intoxicated when writting their articles?
It's cheap because the taxpayers are already subsidizing the big ISPs by providing free telephone poles for them to run their wires on as well as government guaranteed monopolies. I take it you prefer fascism to communism? Either way, it's not capitalism. Free market rules do not apply.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it true that no one FORCES anyone to use GPL code in the first place? What's the argument here, really? Don't like the GPL? Don't use the damn code!
This is simply a way for a few to profit from others work. No corporation can buy it exclusively and that must really piss them off as this is an age where corporations simply buy out their competitors. I do expect to see battles fought over this, but I'm hoping that there is still fairness and sanity left in our creaking justice system.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
It is good for business because ALL THE OTHER BUSINESSES BESIDES THE PRODUCING INDUSTRY BENEFIT. With virtually free gasoline practically every product you buy will cost less. Software is a little like gasoline to many industries. Free software is a free public good that is non-scarce and infinitely divisible.
Is it good for the programmer job market? No. Tough titties, it's good for everybody else. Yours isn't the first industry to be decimated by progress.
I find it weird that Americans are so "anti-communism" as if its an evil thing. It's not that bad at all! Of course, I personally don't think it would be the best way to solve the problem of unlimited wants and needs with limited resources. Software is a bit different because it can be duplicated an unlimited number of times for next to no cost.
Anyway, lets look at it:
-OSS: Its communism because everyone works on it for nothing! ner ner.
-Proprietary: Its communism because its all designed from the middle and given to the masses even though they may not like it and have no control of it. ner ner...
I am Australian but I have lived in the US for 6 months and I discovered that the US is unbelievably capitalist with a huge FEAR of anything socialist. Here in Oz, we have a mixed economy that is predominately market but has some socialist aspects such as unlimited welfare (the dole) and free health care (medicare). It think its a good balance.
Anyway, my point is that we should have a BALANCE of OSS and proprietary software.
Can your karma go above being Excellent?
People often seem to ignore the fact that GPL'd software can be sold for a profit. When Richard Stallman first developed GNU Emacs, he sold copies (w/ source code, of course) for something on the order of $100. Sure, most GPL software comes at no monetary cost, but one cannot blame the GPL itself for this fact.
Seems the root of this assertion that "the GPL is a price fixing scheme" is the notion of intellectual property-- that is, that for lack of better ways of promoting the arts and sciences, ideas are treated like property, and are owned, sold, borrowed, traded, etc. like any other property, such as cattle. If ideas can take up shelf space, same as goods, and be worn out and replaced with mass produced copies, same as durable goods, then I suppose they can have their prices fixed, same as material goods. Maybe they should try arguing that the GPL is a wage fixing scheme that sets wages below minimum wage.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
with that work being made possible through mutual agreement with all prior authors
Excuse me, but this should have read "with that (derivative) work being made possible through grant of license by all prior authors."
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
But there is no doubt in my mind that free *anything* in this country will eventually become illegal. Even air!
It's just this simple: Money drives the government. If you owned a multi-billion dollar company and somebody else gave away what you sell, you'd want laws passed against it, wouldn't you? Well, if all you have to do is buy a few politicians (or place a phone call to one you already own) what's stopping you? Only the fact that you haven't thought of it yet.
Don't gimme any bunk about the First Amendment. Anybody who doesn't think this country already wiped it's feet on the Constitution a long time ago is living in Wonderland.
I'm already an outlaw ten other ways, for consensual victimless crimes; I guess I might as well be a criminal for giving away free programs, too.
They mispelled 'Moran'. Should read 'Moran Says GPL is a price fixing scheme".
Morans.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Price fixing generally involves colluding and coming up with a particular price. One only has to look at the vast range of prices the various vendors charge for their distributions to know that it is false at face value.
Without collusion I don't see how there can be any fixing and I don't see any collusion here.
The FSF wrote a licence for whatever reasons make sense to them.
Each vendor independantly chooses to use the licence for their own reasons.
One of those reasons is surely because it helps provide an efficient (cheap) development model but I don't see that as price fixing. Novell, Red Hat, the FSF etc etc aren't getting around a table and discussing price. The vendors are just choosing an efficient software source for themselves and the FSF isn't doing anything related to pricing at all.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
As has been the case for several months now, O'Gara's articles have become deliberately more provocative and frankly ridiculous as she attempts to push up the banner hits on the LBW/LBN website.
:)
-----
Might want to look again. There's NO LINK to her article from here. Yes, there's one to Groklaw, and it does contain a text link (not a 'clicky' one) to the article in question, but c'mon, that's a small price to pay for the humour here
Solution: Come up with original ideas for software, or original applications for that software. Guess why there is so much money involved in Linux, a "free" piece of software.
There are tons of application areas that can compete against open-source; in most cases the same ones that can compete against closed-source successfully also - my company occupies one such niche. We could have an open-source competitor (or even a closed-source competitor) in theory but there isn't mostly because it's deep technically, has a small end-user market size requiring a high-touch sales process and it requires some expensive hardware to create a useable solution - yet we charge $20K-150K per copy for our closed-source software not counting hardware.
Of course, finding a good niche (aka product/service differentiater) is what you do for any business. The fact that he hasn't figured this out simply means that capitalist Darwinism has worked properly - he was destined to fail because of his inability to adapt to market conditions. Time get a clue - maybe he believes in faith-based business - if you pray for you product to sell it will regardless of your business acumen. What do you bet he's trying to claim he can't compete with his a web server, mail server or database server product!
If you like the GPL but still want to make money on your "software product," then publish the binary and ask a certain "ransom" to have it GPLed. If it's popular or useful enough, you'll get your cash soon enough, then you can release the code via GPL. Not only have you profited, but you have also given back and helped everyone (and yourself) out the way you would have if you had published it under the GPL to begin with.
I still don't know why more people don't do this. Is it too much of a hassle?
If you think Ms. O'Gara just needs a good roggering to loosen her up. Sounds like she's just being a frigid bitch.
Did you read the article? Everyone will be forced to use GPL code because proprietary vendors will be out of business.
Why shouldn't municipal governments provide wi-fi? Internet access has become an important service, and is there some part of the US, Canadian or any other Constitution that I'm unaware of which guarantees "profit and unending dividends for all [businesses]"? The economy should serve society, not the other way around. Cities don't just decide to offer these services without a mandate from their residents, and if residents of a city want municipal wi-fi, some telco should certainly not be able to over-rule that just because their profits are at risk!
It's not the "nanny-state", it's democracy. What it damn well shouldn't be is corporatocracy.
Freedom: "I won't!"
In what nanny-state, commie pipe dream is it the government's responsibility to provide internet access to people who can almost certainly get it cheapy from commercial ISPs?
You got it backwards. When a town votes and decides to turn certain services like Internet access over to a public utility, that's called "democracy". Perhaps you have heard of it.
When the state government comes in and negates the will of the voters in some corrupt scheme to help commercial campaign contributors to make more money, that's "real communism" (i.e., corrupt, centralized government).
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Every time the GPL gets bashed, the is inevitably somebody who can't stand to play fair. (You're welcome, choir. I'll be preaching again next week.)
What's particularly entertaining about the OSS community is they use examples like this to push the idea that OSS avoids duplicating work and reinventing the wheel...
...Yet 90%+ of the OSS software out there is nothing more than a duplication of other OSS software.
Please, think of the consultants.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Looks like somebody has completely missed the point. "Free Software", whether or not you agree with the ideology, has nothing to do with cost. I can't believe nobody's torn your strawman argument apart, but as long as you continue to view Free Software as "gratis" software rather than "libre" software, you have no valid point to argue.
This poo is cold.
Last time I looked, no ISPs where making extraordinary profits. At least any publicly traded ISPs that I can find.
Unless, of course, the only tax payers involved are your local, fellow rural citizens... but that is not likely now-a-days. Seems all money gets sucked into some central planning committee, before being re-distributed. At least that is how it is here in California.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
GPL is a grant of rights that the author has under Copyright Law.
To somehow deny to GPL requires first abridging individual rights that are held under copyright law, and if you manage to do *that*, you'll set a precedent that can also be used to divest many others of their intellectual property.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
stupid.
is really about price fixing. The software pricing model is broken and the GPL is attempting to fix it.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
It's a pity Ayn Rand is dead, she'd be creaming her pants over this one.
Silly rabbit.
Cisco makes its' money selling (mostly) hardware, and support services. They employ hundreds, if not thousands of software developers, but "give" the software away for free, or as part of a service contract.
Though I doubt cisco is likely to "free" their software, for fear of possibly giving away something of value, the fact remains that the development of their software is NOT paid for by selling the software, but hardware.
Same with Sun. Solaris is paid for by hardware sales, and services.
and red hat employs a lot of software developers that write a free OS - they make their money by offering legitimate QA and support services, all of which employ MORE devs.
Hell, the company *I* work for is only 50 people large, and of that, more than a quarter are software devs - and we don't sell software! We sell services.
The suggestion that the only way a software developer can be employed is if the software costs money is crap, for anyone but *pure* software companies. And even they can make money! Look at Jboss, or Mysql, or Jcorporate - all software companies, giving away the software and selling services.
When you litigate Pro Se (without a Lawyer) as Dan is doing here you are responsible following all rules and procedures of the court. The court BTW will cut you NO SLACK if you are pro se. The judges and lawyers will make sure that every i is dotted and every t is crossed just so. Any mistake and the judge can and in most cases will toss the case out on its ear.
it's volunteerism. It would be communism if you forced others to use GPL'd code. But they don't have to.
communism has nothing to do with forcing anyone to do anything. but i understand your ignorance. you've been spoonfed daily with good ol' american propaganda. the way GPL works, is communism. and as you can see it can be a very good thing.
Yes, but the REAL point is that the terms
of GPL does affect prices. When everyone is
allowed to distribute unlimited copies it
does not take long for prices to drop all
the way down to zero! This is a direct
result from the terms of the GPL (which speaks
nothing about price).
Maybe you should tell that to all the commercial Linux distributions, then. Red Hat, Novell, and others seem to be making pretty good money using GPL code.
This poo is cold.
GPL for life! Jeremy MCSE MCSA CCNA http://www.n2networksolutions.com/ Arizona computer consulting
It would be communism if you forced others to use GPL'd code.
Communism != totalitarianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarism
I personally promise to actively participate in software piracy, as in making copies of commercial software and distributing them as widely as possible. I am sick and tired of these companies and lawyers trying to ruin a what is, at it's core, a humanitarian movement.
Yeah, I'm asking for trouble, but it's a fight worth fighting.
Never attribute to malice that which is easily explained by ignorance. Hanlon's Razor, I believe. Maybe I'm ignorant about F/OSS, but I admit it and I'm being open minded about it.
I see quite a few posts in this thread about free (as in cost) software, software with a zero dollar cost - that drives my question (whether right or wrong.)
As for free is in freedom (libre) software, hell I support that (did a presentation today on an application I coded in Java in Eclipse, deployed onto a SuSE 9 server.) My choice. Funny thing is that my company paid about $3,000 for the software (WSAD 5.1.2, box of SuSE plus annual maintenance, etc.)
I'm not against the Libre software movement, but I genuinely believe that the 'gratis' software movement is screwing things up for all of us.
That said - if FOSS isn't about 'gratis' software, maybe we need to start bitchslapping the folks pushing it that direction. If it is about 'gratis' software - someone needs to explain it better than 'well it has been explained ad nausium' or I am going to continue to think it is worse than stupid (it's destructive to software development as a profession.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
How the he|| is the GPL forcing people from not buying inflated software. People still have the option of still spending $700 for a MS-SQL license. You DON'T have to use MySQL.
It seems to me that these people represent companies that can't innovate or have an original idea. It's called competition. Everybody benefits.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I didn't say shut up, I said don't call the guy at his house. Bugging someone like this is harrassment because it is obvious that he already knows your opinion and does not agree.
If you disagree, then post your phone number in a reply and I'll be happy to call you and give you my full opinion.
public libraries are killing bookstores
free soup kitchens are killing restaurants
taking hikes is killing gymnasiums
broadcast tv is killing cable
Okay. Justify to me why I would want to pay you for your half-assed code when someone else, who is independently well-off, offers the same functionality as a community service?
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
I will laugh my A** off if this succeeds, but I suppose its just deserts.
Hi, communism is the revolutionary theory of marxism. Marxism is a rather complicated theory involving a notion called dialectical materialism. This has fuck all to do with the GPL. The GPL is one thing, and one thing only: sharing. Nothing to do with communism or marxism. But then again, this is Slashdot, where you can equate apples with oranges and get bananas, and that is 'insightful'.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
the FSF is incorporated in one state and has a mailing address in another. happens all the time.
We don't disagree: that was my point.
This article should be modded -1 Flamebait.
...but is it art?
unfortunately you can't really have the libre without the gratis
if you had to pay per unit licensing for every little bit of code you used then collaborative programming would go nowhere as projects would quickly become far too expensive to use
people coding as a hobby will always be destructive to certain segments of the software development profession
software thats freely availible will also be destructive to some segments (companies that sell boxed software)
but at the end of the day there will always be software that companies need that noone wants to develop for fun and someone is going to have to pay to have that software developed because they need to use it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
" I find it weird that Americans are so "anti-communism" as if its an evil thing. It's not that bad at all!"
You need to read up on history. Nothing like the cold war to bring back some bad memories.
Free as in 'cost zero dollars'
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Note the line about "'free' as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'"
some of the business managers hear that mantra one too many times and interpret it as 'we don't need to pay developers as much because software is supposed to be free'
If your manager is stupid, that's not my fault.
I'm not very well-versed here, but the free software movement appears to be about voluntarily giving up much of your intellectual property rights on software you develop. I don't see how this could lead to the problems you have with it.
2: Has he really managed to keep that number given the likely calls of outrage made to this number now that it has leaked out?
3: If he has changed/disconnected his number, does that make his filing invalid because it does not provide accurate information anymore?
Enquiring minds want to know.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Um, everyone in the public phonebook?
the GPL is nothing more than a price fixing scheme
Actually, it's not the GPL which is a price fixing scheme, but copyright. As in copyright allows the author to set any price they want to license their work. Somehow I don't think Wallace, O'Gara, and countless others quite understand this simple fact (or are not willing to admit it, as this pseudo-monopolistic characteristic of copyright seems to fly in the face of other free market ideals).
The GPL actually removes this restriction by allowing a copyrighted work to be licensed for any amount of money desired by any party with a copy of the work. Zero just happens to be the most typical number, for the practical reason that it is difficult to get customers to pay exorbitant sums for what is usually available elsewhere for free.
Heh, maybe we should just abolish copyright and remove this restraint of trade in all cases. This way anyone could license any work created by anyone else for however much they thought they could get, though this probably isn't the type of "solution" the software industry has in mind.
The ultimate plays for Madden 2006
I am seriously thinking of retiring early, and becoming a non-producer, because more and more, I am thinking, for every dollar I don't make, that is about $.56 in taxes I don't pay...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Next we'll hear about how marriage is an anti-free sex 'racket'. I love this stuff! Keep the crazies coming!
when communism becomes evil is when it is compulsory. A point you seem to have missed widely.
No one gives a shit what you CHOOSE to do for a hobby, who you CHOOSE give the results to, or if you CHOOSE to run off and live on a commune with River Moonchild and a bunch of other random hippies.
It's when you demand under threat of violence (usually via government) that I do these things that we have a very, very big problem.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
You my friend are a huge crybaby. I, for one, think it's great idea as I sit here typing this out in Firefox run under Debian Sarge.
wow. some people just can't take a joke.
*Installs Debian on another 3 machines* that'll teach the buggers.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Communism on any scale large enough that you can't know everybody's names requires a powerful overhead authority, be it a religious deity or a big brother type governmental authority, to ensure that people do not begin to slack off due to lack of direct reward and punishment for their efforts.
Thus communism easilly leads to totalitarism.
That is because slashdot is moderated by monkeys and monkeys like bananas.
I'm an ape you insensitive clod!
they exist to make money. And you can't make money under the GPL if enough people out there don't want you to. It only takes one to make your GPL product free for everyone with no possibility of legal recourse.
"Its not always about money"
With business, it's always about money.
The GPL may not guilty of price fixing but it's most definitly the worst business model ever.
"perhaps they are using the code in-house, and see the benefit of getting the "many eyes" of others working on it, saving their company money in the process"
You'd have to talk to companies like Adobe about that. They're closed source and are swimming in money from products that got out and are still years ahead of their open source counterparts.
Simply because the products exist to make money and so they can hire talent and time. Rather than sitting back and hoping a few people care enough to donate their time and eventually the product might be of some quality.
"Strange how all these attacks on the gpl, groklaw, etc., come just as LongHorn totally fails to wow everyone. Coincidence? Probably not."
Oh yes, I'm sure MS is behind all these attacks. Evil Bill is secretly plotting away. It couldn't possibly be because some people actually have a strong dislike for the GPL and would like to see it go away.
I don't care about Longhorn because Windows 2000 does everything I need it to do. Windows 98,2000, XP and other versions have satisfied all the needs of millions of people for years. Unless Longhorn introduces some spectactular functionality that 2K,XP etc don't provide, it makes sense there won't be a massive movement towards it. I have no plans to upgrade to XP.
I highly doubt I'm unique in my reasons for not caring much about Longhorn.
Work Safe Porn
Corporations don't give a fuck about you, so why should you give a fuck about them?
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
"yet 90% of the OSS software out there is nothing more than a duplication of other OSS software."
;)
Too bad you have no idea about programing. stfu n00b.
You cant copywrite "look and Feel"
GPL ownz u.
danw6144@insightbb.com
email this chode
...and that folks is why I ain't a lawyer!
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
ya, i think they call that "competition". even when software is free, competition fosters improvement.
Your post is off-topic. They're arguing whether or not GPL is communism. So even if you're right -- and i'm not saying you are right -- to say that communism leads to totalitarianism, you fail to acknowledge some factors, which i won't bother mention, that makes GPL an example of a large scale communism without a chance to be a totalitarianism. Unless of course you consider the license itself as "a powerful overhead authority." In which case, it fails to show the ability to give direct reward to people.
Truth is like a shining mirror that's been shattered.
A huge volume of information is given away on the Internet for free!
The other day, I saw some kids in a parking lot telling each other dirty jokes without charging a fee!
Then there was Amy in high school; everyone says she gave away something for free, but I never found out what it was.
Giving stuff away free harms people who would like to sell it, and must stop immediately!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
I'm not against the Libre software movement, but I genuinely believe that the 'gratis' software movement is screwing things up for all of us.
Um, the former implies the latter. And your main point is just spectacularly wrong. Imagine a world where Apache, Linux, Java, Perl, Python, MySQL and all similar "gratis" software never came into being. If you want to run a web site, you have to pay thousands of dollars for the software just to get started. Will the demand for programmers be more or less than in our world? Hint: not more.
And even if free software somehow were harmful to programmers, opposing it on that basis alone is profoundly immoral, as it's an unquestionable benefit to everyone else. It would be the equivalent of candlemakers sabotaging light bulb factories to keep their jobs
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
You'll get your wish. It isn't how much money that either side has that will matter in the long run; it's how fast they spend it. SCO/Microsoft/et. al. are not at equilibrium with their environment; they have to pay layers, PR firms, programers, astroturfers, accountants, etc. to work for them, or else they just *pop* go away.
The F/OSS movement is more like Cubs fans. The Cubs don't pay people to suport them. It's the same with Free/Open Source Software suporters. In the vast majority of cases, no one pays them to do it--in fact, in most cases it costs them (in time, if nothing else) to be "a F/OSS advocate." So their burn rate is...zero.
The more the fight heats up, the worse it gets. More people pitch in on the F/OSS side, while on the other side expensses rise and revenues fall. In the long run, who's going to run out of money first?
--MarkusQ
Actually, it would be better to say that communism is *a* revolutionary theory of Marxism --- one that comes from an awful misreading of Marx.
The GPL is actually quite *un*Marxist, as a True Marxist cheers on the onslaught of Unimpeded Capitalism (which we plainly do not have, as there are brakes on the economy and safety nets put in place in order to prevent the consequences of Unimpeded Capitalism from driving the 99% to overthrow the 1% feeding off of them, followed by the 99% installing some sort of Workers Paradise (not unlike the Christian idea of the Eschaton, though wholly materialistic and without a Final Judgement, eternal life, etc.). The GPL throws a monkey wrench into the works, as it keeps someone's labors from being stolen out from under them with no recompense. The GPL works well with Capitalism With Governor(s) Installed by acting as a governor on the system.
Thus the GPL is about as far from communism as you're going to get, as it is designed to help keep the capitalist system from destroying itself. This makes those who oppose it suspect, as they seem to be very interested in the self-destruction of capitalism, and work to remove the very mechanisms which allow capitalism to survive.
brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
...Yet 90%+ of the OSS software out there is nothing more than a duplication of other OSS software.
Maybe 90% of OSS is a duplication of software (not just OSS), but 95% of proprietary software is duplicative (can't I make up stats too?). At least if an OS project gets it right, anyone can take it to the next level instead of the code rot that occurs when bad business happens to good software.
What will probably happen is a new license will be cooked up and it too will be thorn on the side of MS. Rinse repeat.
The most fun part about this game is that as continue through more cycles of rinsing and repeating, the probability of the anti-open-source crowd's legal efforts running head-first into the First Amendment approach 1.
The only other option would be for the business world to use the nuclear option and try to get restrictions on how source code can be redistributed made illegal. I doubt any of the big players would dare go for that option. It would invalidate the BSD license and that's not a happy thought for even the likes of Microsoft.
Every time you run GCC with -fomit-frame-pointer, an angel gets its wings! At least I fgure that's why so many people use it.
:-)
And Pope Benedict XVI? An Emacs user I hear.
So I think you have it backwards.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's simple. Certain classes of software have become commodities. Operating systems, window managers, compilers, powerful text editors have all been adopted by the programming community at large as community projects. As a result, some kinds of software now have a zero dollar cost.
As a professional developer you should see no contradiction in sitting in front of a workstation running nothing but Free Software and earning a fat salary in providing your employer with software to their precise specifications and unique requirements. It may be specialized software for resale, it may be for internal use, trade secrets or patents (a legitimate one let's say) may be involved, it may require more programming and domain knowledge than is available in the programming community for open source projects (Human Computer Interface experts, or cryptographers), or it may be tied to expensive/rare/controlled equipment.
In some cases a company may hire a contributor to a Free Software product that has become misison-critical for them. Imagine the difference between paying for a support contract and employing one of the lead developers (or fixing a bug rather than reporting it). I always try and build in costs for some custom coding whenever I propose an open source product, it's good for the community and gets bugs fixed.
There are many reasons to pay for software or to pay people to write it. Even if Free Software sweeps all before it. There are plenty of cases where you need software to meet a specific schedule - a game to tie in with a movie, or an accounting system to meet new regulations.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Why? Because that is the day Copyright law itself has fallen.
GPL is the flip side of copyright. You simply cannot question the GPL unless you first eliminate copyright laws as we know them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The only way out of this is to force all software writers to publish their source code for everything. Heck, they list the ingredients of soda pop! If I'm going to load it on my computer, I want to know what is in it. (my computer is diabetic). --Slithy
Quite right, parent should be modded insightful.
It's not like this hasn't happened before, after all...
There's the occupation known as "scribe"; a person who, for a fee, writes letters, petitions, etc, for illiterate people. This occupation is in demand where literacy levels are low (and sadly, this is still the case in many poorer countries today). In more developed countries, it's common for the mass of the population to be able to read and write by themselves, without assistance. Tough luck if you used to be a scribe ...
... but hey! which situation is better? Who would seriously reject mass literacy because it's tough on scribes? Only a complete idiot/sociopath like Daniel Wallace.
No, what's entertaining is this is the first time in many years of reading Slash that I've seen this opinion expressed (normally quite the opposite), and it comes not from an OSS advocate. Straw man, look it up.
There are 3 different prices a business can charge:
1. Less than the competition : dumping, unfair competition, predatory pricing
2. Same as the competition : collusion, price fixing
3. More than the competition : gouging, profiteering
90%~ of all software development is for in-house applications.
Case Closed.
Note: If you can't figure out how this applies, please reply and I'll explain further.
Naturally, NOW would be the time I suddenly DON'T have modpoints.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Mod up!
Richard Stallman's explicitly-stated, long-term vision for the GPL and Free Software was to eliminate the software industry as we know it and replace it with a commons of Free Software created by academics, government-sponsored developers and volunteers.
Care to back that up with any ACTUAL quotes and not your own interpretation of them?
When it comes down to it Stallman cares not if software is commercially produced or academically produced, as long as users of the software have the ability to modify it themselves as one would a car they had bought.
Remember that what sparked the whole thing was some dodgy print drivers (I think Xerox), which pissed him off as he had no way to fix them. He did not want to vaporize Xerox, just to be able to fix the print drivers and keep working.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Indiana state government once legislated the value of PI to be equal to 3.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
In other words, in a truly Free Market, nobody is entitled to tell anyone - the Government included - what it can and cannot sell. It is your job to provide something better, not to force others to provide something worse or nothing at all.
There is also an important part to your post that you need to re-read. Government's responsibility? Who said anything about them HAVING to? Why can't they just WANT to? What if it works out that it'll cost them virtually nothing and they can piggyback the service on infrastructure they have already in place for emergencies and other contingencies? In other words, isn't it possible for a Government to simply do something purely because they think it would be nice?
Besides, why should anyone be impacted? Car manufacturers aren't bawling about mass transit systems, even in zones where such mass transit is free. (That does happen. Portland's downtown area has a zero price on all busses, trains and trams within downtown.) Why? Because people are most likely to want cars for things cars are better for, such as vacations or towing caravans/trailers. The car manufacturers, in other words, recognize you don't have to own every market in order to do well. You can do very nicely without absolute power.
Likewise, street lights make it technically unnecessary to own a flashlight for outside work. Flashlight manufacturers don't complain, because there are enough times when streetlights aren't any use (such as in rural areas, indoors, etc) that it doesn't impact their business. They co-exist just fine, and nobody gets hurt.
If there are industries that exist in parallel, without complaint, why should ISPs be any different? Indeed, they already argue that they aren't! Their exemption from paying long-distance rates as a carrier, their exemption from telecoms regulations, etc, are all because they exist in parallel to the telecoms market, not in competition with it.
If we are to say parallelism is not recognized, most ISPs would be bankrupt in a week, because the overheads would be astronomical. On the other hand, if parallelism is just fine, then ISPs should shut the F*** up and let people run parallel, non-competing services all they like. Yes, even those people in positions of Government responsibility.
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)
Not that I would agree with the grandparent (as a small-scale OSS developer I don't, actually), but having the people offering quality code as a community service is exactly what he was arguing against. In other words: he fears that having armies of OSS developers offering their work as a community service will destroy the market for the rest of us, who want to earn for living by exercising the software engineering skills which took years and years of hard work to build up. From your (end-user) point of view, having all software in a free-of-charge GPL form is only a good thing, of course. :-)
To be honest, his stance is not without a merit. However, what he does forget, is that the shrink-wrapped software, which stands in direct competition with the GPL software, makes only a small percentage of the world software market. The vast market of custom-built software is largely unaffected by the GPL.
Yes, the GPL could drive a part of the software engineering world out of bussines (at least the part holding on to their old bussines models) - denying that would be just as ignorant as claiming GPL would be the doom for the software developing world as a such. For the industry as a whole, however, it won't make a difference.
...is a gift. A gift has zero value in the economy. Therefore there is no cost associated with developing software in which all the time and effort is donated. You could argue that the value of electricity, depreciation on computer gear, etc. has value, but if that is a gift, you are back in the same place.
Seriously, though. How the hell is anyone going to win a lawsuit based on the premise that it isn't fair to share when it denies a merchant a sale?
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Get back to me when that's even a remotely possible scenario.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If you want to survive, you need to offer something worth paying for. Companies like RedHat can manage to give away the product and sell services to make money. If you want to be able to sell what your competitors are giving away for free, you'd better have a damn good product. And if you can't make it, give 'em the software and make your money on support and other services. The future is subscriptions.
do not read this line twice.
I *was* harassed by a FOSS advocate, as I was coming out of Costco.
I'm walking along smiling, say hi to some guy.
Guy: You're having way too much fun.
Me: Eh, I'm a happy guy.
Guy notices my school badge for Full Sail.
Me: Yeah, I'm going for game programming.
Guy: Linux, it's where it's at.
Me: Maybe, but Windows does what I need it to do and besides, most games are made for Windows.
Guy: Not in the future. You should use Linux.
I vainly attempt to move away to my car.
Guy: Knoppix is where it's at. Go to (whatever Knoppix' site is, I forget) and download it. You just put the CD in and it works.
Me: Yeah, I know what Knoppix is, but I use Windows. I don't want Linux.
I was scared I was going to be attacked with Knoppix CDs at this point.
Guy: You should use it. It's free and open source. Don't you like free things?
Me: Fine, I'll check it out. (FLAGRANT LIE)
Guy: Yeah, you should try it.
I slip into my car, lock the doors and get the hell away.
That is how I was accosted by a FOSS pusher outside of a Costco. There are those that take it to the extremes on both sides of FOSS, and neither are good.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
If there is a powerful, overhead authority, it ceases to be communism. This is why there has never been a communist state. There were socialist states run by the communist party which is suppose to be a stage before becoming communist.
The GPL may not guilty of price fixing but it's most definitly the worst business model ever.
You aren't being imaginative enough. Stabbing yourself in the eyeballs on a streetcorner in Buffalo, New York in the middle of winter and calling it "Street Performance Art, toss your money in the hat" is the worst business model ever.
GPL is a distant 10th.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
You've obviously never read Marx's work or taken a serious class in market economic theory, otherwise, you'd realize the GPL is more capitalistic in concept and in no way embodies a communist ideal.
Intially, communism requires a central authority directive whereby others are told what to make, how to make it, etc. by the central authority. As you can plainly see, no one in the Free Software community *forces* anyone else to make certain software to certain standards. In fact, the whole idea of the GPL is that if you dislike the direction a project is moving in, you can fork the project and make your own. Hardly a central planning scheme. You also have to look at what happens after the product is created: there's no central government that forces people to use this software. RMS doesn't come from on high and threaten to kick you out of the FOSS group if you chose to use x instead of y. You can use whatever you want - even none free software! Again, hardly characteristic of communism.
Your point that "It's a way of creating code for the community, and forcing those that use said code to in turn contribute to the community as well" is hardly indicative of communism - not does it force you to do anything. Intially, I can use OpenOffice or any other GPL'ed software without being require to contribute back. If I create derivative works of said product and intend to release my derivative works, I do have to GPL my product. You've entered a contract - it's no different from if I require a liscensing fee of so many dollars - that's the price you pay for entering the contract. You have the option not to create derivative works and instead start from scratch, creating no obligation to GPL your work. You *choose* to use GPL. And that's the fundamental difference between communism and captialism - freedom of choice.
As for why the GPL acutally espouses capitalism, the reasons seem more obfusated and possibly less obvious if you aren't up on your knowledge of free market economics - but, none the less, it's there. The GPL aids in the free flow of information - by being required to distribute your source code, your consumers are able to see exactly what your product does. Furthermore, this requirement for open source helps the market find its equilibrium price: people are able to make the best product possible, at the least price possible. You're in no way required to not sell your product - all the GPL requires is that you distribute your source code with your product. I can still sell my product for $300 if I want, so long as I include the source code with it. However, distributing it at $300 runs the risk that someone will modify my code to make it better and then sell it at a cheaper price, or might just redistribute copies of my software for free. Thus, I might decide to include some sort of support service as part of my price. Another person might decide to do the same at a cheaper price. I might have to lower my price as a result. This will continue until the market equilbrium price is reached (which very well might be zero - often times, however, it is not. Look at how much the commercial versions of Linux sell for, as an example). Rather than prices being artifically high because a monopoly exists on the product, you have a free market where supply/demand drives the price, which is based on the quality and desirability of the product provided.
Another way the GPL is capitalistic is that, above all, it provides *choice*. The whole point of capitalism is to provide a myraid of choices so that the best product at the best price prevails. The GPL ensures this will happen by preventing monopolies and ensuring consumers are informed. It also aids in the creation of new choices by getting rid of the red tape and bureaucracy usually involved in creating a derivative work. Freedom of choice is the antithesis of communism - it is at the very heart of captialism.
What a lot of people fail to realize is that the US is not compeletly a free market economy. Things such as p
Yet 90%+ of the OSS software out there is nothing more than a duplication of other OSS software.
And you are a very close duplication of others like yourself. Hopefully, in time, evolution will remove certain duplicates.
Sincerely,
Darwin's Ghost
Nevertheless, the value of the program is equal to the value of the time the programmers spent writing it. That value may be zero, because it would otherwise be spent watching TV.
Uhm... the development cost is equal to the time the developer put into it. The value may be much, much greater. For programs like Linux, Apache, Samba, and Mozilla products, that value is several orders of magnitude greater.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I've bought a copy of each RedHat release through 9.0, and I've been party to the purchase of MontaVista Embedded Linux development licenses. Given these and other examples of variously priced GPL goods, I find it likely that the 'price fixing' argument will be debunked.
It's no matter, though. Since it can easily be proved that free software sells at various prices, this argument is a big crock of bullfeces.
Well, the GPL does have some enforcements, in that it forces developers "buying into" the GPL by adding and distributing code to distribute theirs under GPL.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
"Strange how all these attacks on the gpl, groklaw, etc., come just as LongHorn totally fails to wow everyone. Coincidence? Probably not."
Tit for tat. Everyone who disagrees with you is a MS shill, and we think your just plain wrong. Sounds like everything balances out nicely.
It forces no one to do anything. No one is forced to accept a licence, be it the GPL of Microsoft's EULA du jour.
"I see the only model that really works being the Web service - see Google, Yahoo!, and all the other services out there. They all use Open Source software in one form or another, and yet they are not required to reveal their code or give it away, and nobody is screaming for them to either. So doing a website is perhaps the only way to make any money from software now, for the small guy. Of course, you still have to get past the problem of everybody expecting all content on the web to be free too..."
Well let's see.
1-GPL the version under consideration will close that loophole (the fact that it has one shows that it's not bulletproof).
2-The reason a lot of slashdot analogies breakdown is that we're talking about a digital good, all the way. Not a physical product like a cake. Truely Apples to Oranges.
3-The shareware industry is us dimminished by two. They're barely surviving. Were are their services to fall back on?
4-The Megacorp to fall back on. Ironic the slashdot feelings towards them, but yet there OSS viability arguments depend on them so.
5-For those who have been asleep since before Y2K. We've been cutting our throats since then, and the corporations are helping in a multitude of ways. The computer field is the only field in recent memory that willfully puts itself out of a job.
6-OSS and the GPL is about turning the computer profession into an agrarian version of itself. Were everyone is a 1800 "farmer", and the rocket ship, and the livesaving medicine are an "itch" that no one has time or resources to scratch.
Actually, Communism is evil. Not evil in the trying to kill you way, evil in the I know what's right better than you way. Communism is just leftist morality stepping on the individual's liberty of conscience, whereas fascism is right-wing morality stepping on the same said liberties. Communism is also a utopian fantasy, which makes it completely disingenuous. Anyone selling communism is lying to your face, even if they don't realize it.
;-P
Anyway, OSS is communalism, I wouldn't even classify it as socialism. The fear your describing in the US is a misguided fear of communalism, which demagogues have been equivocating with communism for decades. It's really just a tool of class warfare, but they've been so successful, you can't talk about class warfare without being called a commie. Talk about a rock and a hard place...
Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again!
OSS competes with proprietary software in an open market. The balance is achieved in the market if it's regulation (primarily IP law) is properly written and enforced. These attacks are really just "class warfare", if you consider types of institutions and associations as "classes". You could look at the proprietary industry as the investor class, the ones with the capital and the open source groups as unions, NGOs and charities. They all compete with each other to provide specific services more efficiently than other "classes" in the market. OSS happens to be successful at certain types of services, mainly revolving around infrastructure (especially Open Standards like RFC's). Proprietary software is good at other stuff (high-end expensive enterprise stuff, domain specific niche markets).
Essentially, these proprietary types of institutions don't like to compete fairly, they want an unfair advantage and intend to use lawsuits (or buying politicians) to achieve it. It's just like Bush talking about how we can't afford 8% of GDP to insure the old and disabled don't starve in poverty while giving the wealthiest 1% hundreds of billions in tax cuts. If you look at the numbers and facts in either case, it's the wealthy getting wealthier while the little guy foots the bill. Some days, I'm not sure why we don't just shoot the wealthy, the idea that they earned their money fair and square is ludicrous. If the wealth is older than 40 years, it was most likely stolen from black and native Americans anyway. Of course, that's a leftist totalitarian fantasy... don't go mixing that up with communism either
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
everyone knows a crack tram needs a crack ho.
If they make a trial against GPL for this and lose (does someone think they won't?) GPL will be stronger. And if some a**h*** likes to suit with other "interesting point of view" against GPL, better for GPL.
What would you get if Maureen and Daniel managed to shut up long enough to reproduce...... A semi literate village IDIOT!!! (Who has an IQ that exceeds the sum total of his parent IQ's)
Like that's going to happen.
Let's face a few facts here. There will always be companies that want to use closed-source proprietary software for any number of reasons, including, but not limited to: management paranoia, cost effectiveness, non-standard applications, corporate compliance, security concerns, and last, but not least, stupidity.
Let me know when the human race has eliminated that last one. It should happen slightly after the sun goes cold.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I have basically had the same opinion for a while, but please, given that you have lived in OZ and the USA what makes them fear the commies so much? I am aware of the McCarthy(?) trials etc but still that was a while ago now and they still can't seem to over it already...
Yes, but the question is what happens to that software after it has been developed? Is it going to be freely available to everyone (and thus, did the programmer get paid like any other worker, for the hours he actually spent working), or will it be proprietary, letting the copyright holder achieve revenue that is not directly related to the actual work that went into the product.
It would be better for the economy if it were freely available. The idea to withhold the source so you can make money from it over an indefinite period is not only questionable economically, it also puts up technical barriers where they wouldn't have to be.
There is an unspoken premise in your post that free software is only developed for fun, as a hobby. That is not so. It is a perfectly economic thing to do, just that the modes of payment, revenue, and licensing are different than for the proprietary model. They are different in such a way that everybody benefits, and people can still make a living by writing software.
You're not forced to accept, but you're forced to comply if you accept. How you ended up there doesn't change the nature of the system you're in.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Get this: Being open means nothing if people don't care about it anyway (If I was given the design for a table from a carpenter who was being "open" but I don't like carpentry then what good is that going to do me?). Open Source only benefits people who actually know how to program and work outside the industry at the same time, the future looks bright with no specialist software engineers with all development being done by unqualified developers who have no incentive to do it properly.
"And everybody on the dark side attacks Groklaw these days, including Ms. O'Gara, not just Daniel Wallace. I'm starting to figure out it's coordinated, not random. They seem to just pass the baton around, taking turns like Nazi interrogators in World War II beating prisoners, so none of them ever got tired but the victim never got a moment's relief, not that it helped them win the war."
Bwahahahahahahah!! Good one, PJ!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You are forced to comply when you accept: true; but that is true of every licence, not only the GPL. Try accepting and not complying to any one of Microsoft's EULA (and telling them you do).
You are forced to comply when you accept any kind of legally binding agreement: that is what `legally binding' means.
Also, the way you `get there' is important. Most legislations consider void any kind of legally binding agreement which is forced upon one of the `agreeing' parties, so under those legislations, you simply cannot legally force a party to comply to an `agreement' unto which that party was forcefully subjected. (Note that this is essentially taulological).
I think it is fair to give enough credit to the people that wrote the GPL as to believe they know this elementaly facts, don't you think?
"Let me know when the human race has eliminated that last one. It should happen slightly after the sun goes cold."
No - it should happen sometime in this century.
Of course, it means eliminating humans - but what's the problem with that?
It's not like they have any intrinsic value, after all.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
programmers on the on the other hand cant be duplicated an ulimited number of times.
"Actually, Communism is evil. Not evil in the trying to kill you way, evil in the I know what's right better than you way."
:-)
So if a country invades other countries and brings them democracy because it is better for them... they are communists?
And good riddance, I say.
And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
probably lives in a community with a rather lengthy list of covenants, deeds and restrictions, in a condo or apartment (or Mom's basement), where the belief that one's real property is for him to do with what he wants is really quite restricted.
In a sense, the GPL is just like a property covenant or easement. It specifies the terms of usage for the thing, and if you don't like those terms you can't use it.
Oh well. Occaisionally a grad student at a university will get the bright idea to sue the school because it keeps a copy of his master's thesis or PhD dissertation in the library, by policy, publicly available...
your crack house has wheels (crack tram).
Surely if this case is won then it means that Mr Wallace would be able to force software companies to sell him software at a price he dictates because he would be able to argue that any price they set would be detrimental to his ability to make money from his derivative work?
It would also mean that he could get ANY software company to give him software because it would be detrimental to him otherwise, i.e. he can negate the licensing terms. So maybe this isn't a bad thing, we can all get those free upgrades to those "evil-but-necessary" software packages we are all running...
Comunism is the exploitation of man by man, while capitalism is the exact opposite, the exploitation of man by man.
;)
Don't ever mix them up again
For example: Apache, Linux, Java, Perl, Python, MySQL?
I've managed both Apache and IIS, and there is no doubt in my mind that the Apache developers are far from unqualified, and definitely had some sort of incentive to do it properly.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Hmm.. am I reading that wrong, or does it only apply to things that socially beneficial bodies buy for their own use? It seems to say nothing about what they produce.
Personally, I think this whole idea of GPL being a price-fixing scheme is ridiculous. I wouldn't give it a second thought, if I hadn't watched SCO drag things so far.
But... if the FSF are exempt, that would worry me more. I trust the FSF to handle such a case wisely more than I trust independent organisations to fight for the GPL rather than cave under pressure.
no really, it really is a price fixing scheme!
i mean, there are laws against "dumping" right? i mean, if i dump a competing product on the market at a ridiculously low price, i can get in trouble for being "anti-competitive" etc. - you know, the way microsoft got in trouble by giving away internet explorer with windows, which decimated netscape.
no no, that doesn't make any damned sense.
what am i trying to say here?
i mean, if you can just go around giving out free software, that's going to destroy the competition, isn't it? if openoffice is just as good or better than ms office, but it's free - well isn't that a bit anti-competitive? how is ms supposed to compete with that? they can't very well just go and give out ms office for free, i mean, how would they stay in business if someone else is giving away the same thing for free?
what if everyone just switched over to using this free software? seems to me that the whole point of this free software is to undercut american companies like microsoft, and put them out of business by flooding the market with low (or no) cost copies of their products. like how everyone complains about japanese cars and electronics products, or programming jobs being lost to india.
it's not like the free versions are really innovative, i mean openoffice is just a clone of ms office pretty much. firefox is still way off in the distance (market-share wise) to IE. and all these "distros" that want to be the new desktop os, gnome or ubuntu or whatever, they're mostly copying microsoft os products (which copied apple products, which copied xerox parc... ha that's funny, copying xerox!) there are only minor differences, it's still "windows" and "menus" on "desktops" (stupid mixed metaphors) and scroll bars and files-in-folders and word-processors and the same old thing. cheap knockoffs of cheap copies. the software equivalent of fake rolex's and plastic gucci bags, produced by exploited cheap un(der)waged labour.
where would gnu/linux be without AT&T UNIX to copy their original concepts from? where is the innovation, on the scale of "inventing UNIX" in the first place? where are the r&d budgets?
if the best the free software world can do is put microsoft out of business by offering free clones of its products, i guess that says something about the value of software in a market economy.
you know, it's funny that i wrote this because usually i'm kind of a fan of free software. mod me troll or flamebait if you like, but i was just following a train of thought. make of it what you will.
Listen! And understand! The FUDers are out there. They can't be bargained with! They can't be reasoned with! They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until GNU is dead!
Now two years of delays, appeals etc. while we get pounded with FUD like "The GPL is before the courts, you're exposing your business to unnecessary risk". Sigh.
That's disgraceful! Doesn't O'Gara realise that by supplying her shilling services for free, she impacts the incomes of those that charge money to shill for companies? Somebody ought to sue her, or something.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Dumping is when you're selling something for less than cost...
Software has no physical cost, only whatever the developers decide to charge for their time, and that is only a one-time cost which is not replicated for each unit (i can make a million copies of a piece of software for free, but if i want to make a million cars the process of copying is far more difficult and i need to obtain the raw materials for each and every car i make)
If a developer chooses to make his time available for free, then that software has zero cost.. therefore giving it away for free is merely charging "cost price" which is perfectly reasonable.. It could only be considered dumping or price fixing if people were paying you to use it.
The article here assumes that the industry around selling shrink-wrap software has a right to exist in the first place, which is arguable..
Personally i consider the selling of shrink-wrap software to be fraudulent, the price charged is disproportionately high compared to the production cost, and the production cost scales to zero with sufficient sales.
It is the propriatory software vendors who are guilty of price fixing, and yet this article seems to think they have a right to continue gouging people in this way.
My opinion is that people should only be allowed to charge a reasonable premium above the production cost of an item, selling a piece of software for $600 after it has already sold so many copies that the development costs have been recouped 1000 times over is just fraud, plain and simple.
Although if you decreased the price to almost nothing once after the first 10,000 sales or so people may feel even more cheated than they do now..
Free software redresses the balance by assigning zero value to the component that causes nothing to reproduce, that way people who want the convenience of a printed manual, a box and a set of media can pay for it, the boxed-set will always cost around the same to produce and should be priced accordingly..
If you want the software only, you can download it for free.. No more selling single-sheet or even email "licenses", that's an even bigger fraud since you don't even get any physical goods to hold in your hand, nothing to show for it.. And you often have to buy it all again if your "license" data gets destroyed (deleted, lost, burned etc)
So in short, it is the propriatory vendors who are guilty of price fixing, and now they're screaming because people have come along to undercut their fraud.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
This is a little offtopick but I to talk about a link in the blurb:
Daniel Wallace's views on the GPL..
The first page contained the search term in following sentance: "Do a google search on Daniel Wallace and GPL". This underlines one side of the problem of linking to the Google: it spams the search results. The other problem is that the Google rates pages based on the links to them. If this habbit of linking to the Google queries grows to de facto standard of linking, Google will die, because it will be unable to compare qualities of pages.
So, please, at least at such a popular pages like slashdot front page, quit linking to google queries.
No, give banana!
isn't it called hydrogen?
http://www.intelligent-energy.com/index_article.as p?secID=15&secondlevel=796&artID=3709
(first saw this on slashdot)
UK company has demonstrated a hydrogen bike running at 50mph producing only 'water clean enough to drink', sooner this is adapted for cars and we stop screwing the atmosphere, and burning up our oil supplies the better.
http://www.h2cars.biz/artman/publish/article_279.s html
Already happing in Iceland (where they have cheep enough electricity to make vast amounts of hydrogen). We could do it here in Britain too - if we'd build a few more nuclear power-plants.
James P. Barrett
Possibly, or it may be better to say that Marxism is *a* form of communism, and that soviet communism is a (misread) revolutionary form of Marxism, since the term was used prior to Marx by some of the groups in Revolutionary france. It all gets rather murky when you try to determine what words realy mean.
James P. Barrett
Since the RIAA needed real money equivalents to turn filesharing into a criminal act, the US courts and justice (snigger) system have equated the expectation of reciprocal sharing equivalent to monetary payment.
Ergo, the GPL *does* cost "real money" to use in the US and therefore is not being dumped.
Hm. That must be a hellish amount of news to *BSD, Apache, Perl, Sendmail, Postgres...
I think it's on-topic, just a thinly-veiled warning about RMS!
You know, all thouse clocks in squares are destroying the time-information industry.
Since the GPL is the cause he can't make profit with the programs he wrote,
I wonder which powerfull applications we missed.
Hello World??
Could somebody point me into the right direction?
charities are a racketeering scheme
eminent domain is perfectly acceptal real estate acqusition tactic
church hall bingo is holding back the lottery from making us all richhe
Seriously thought, all this really means is that Indianna does not have a significant software industry (try that *shit* in California and see what happens to your happy lawyer ass).
And all of this begs the question: Why protect something that you don't yet have (a software industry) with a tool that will insure that it never succeeds.
What's the motivation here to compete?
...there are people out there who don't look for monetary compensation. There *are* other forms of compensation. For example, the author of a GPL'd program may derive a great deal of satisfaction, just by seeing it used everywhere he goes, and being able to say, "I wrote that".
You can certainly give the software away, and I see nothing wrong with saying "use it how you like, but don't take my work and try to profit from it".
To address your other examples - writing, music, art, movies - lots of people make these with no expectation of actually getting paid for them.
Of course, it's always nice to be paid, but many times, the reward is in the creation and in the appreciation of others for your work.
> Yet 90%+ of the OSS software out there is
...and if you believed in the word of god (rms), you would already know this as the truth. OSS is about quality, not about price... some people would argue that OSS is about quality rather than *FREEDOM* (but those of us who have matured know that they are one in the same).
> nothing more than a duplication of other OSS
> software
Yes, but the difference is that the OSS equivalent is usually 90% better than the duplicated non-OSS contender.
A lot companies make money by providing value added services to OSS. Apple adds value to their product by bundling OSS and they benefit from it. They also contribute back to the OSS community in a limited way.
This lawsuit is just nonsense.
While I can understand 'America's' fear of 'communism' because of the cold war, I think I should point out that there has never been a proper communist government. We've only had socio facists, who used the attractive philosophy, gain power, and then screw everyone (basically...).
Marx himself said that communism is unlikely to work because of humanity, unfortunately. The best example I've seen for a *true* communist, or marxist environment has been rather strange: Star Treck (TNG).
At any rate, to a non-american (I'm British), saying that the GPL is communistic - as an insult - just seems ever so slightly, ah, how do I say this without being modded troll....it seems rather idiotic.
My UID is prime. Is yours?
hes right
I've worked in your stinkey little fly ridden country (for longer than 6 months, BTW), and I've found that paying +50% of my income (for anyone who makes more than ~US$35k/year) to the government SUCKS (and I *STILL* had to buy my own fscking health care insurance)!. Oh, and you have a goods and service tax of ~12%; so, make than ~65% of your income!!!!
.us is so bad and .au is so good. All said and done, I'd rather go back to .nz and pay a flat 33% income tax and have the best of .us and .au.
.au -- don't believe the propaganda. ...that is unless you *enjoy* being ass-raped by the ATO while being treated like a second class citizen.
I know why *YOUR'RE* working in the US (you do know that you will have to pay the ATO their due when you finally return... and don't try to hide your gains in a trust either). So, don't lecture me about why
Anyone considering working in
So if a country invades other countries and brings them democracy because it is better for them... they are communists? :-)
No. That would be "I know you know what's right better than your government."
Which would you rather??
That 90% might as well BE proprietary software. The source code may be available, but how many people actually contribute to each project?
The reason that 90% is dupes is mostly because there is only one guy working on it.
What's the motivation here to compete?
You kind of hit it there. There's no motivation to actually build a "better" mousetrap as opposed to building your own mousetrap, as long as you're building said mousetrap in your freetime anyway. Is that a good thing? I dunno. It's not good for users if it goes too far, but it's kind of hard to knock it when you get it free as in beer.
The one problem that I think everyone will admit is "ego-forking," where a team splits because you have a bunch of prima donnas who can't work together and no employer to make them. But then thank $DEITY that it's possible, or we'd still be dealing with XFree86. So you win some, you lose some.
IAN From USA.
A funny remark but it isn't correct.
When USA invades other countries under a false pretence to bring them democracy it is not to make it better for other countries.
You can't handle the truth.
Firstly of course they are directly competing for volanteer time and resources. Secondly the inherent desire to "be the best", and to prove that their solution is the best one.
And since when do people need a good reason for being competive?
Did something specific happen to Groklaw to cause this change, or is it just the consistent barrage? Either way, I hope Grok backs off a bit. I used to read it specifically because it was free from this sort of bile.
Man, this lady is insane. Price fixing the price down? hahah. Isn't price fixing when major competiors agree to keep the price high by not competing on price?
No, it's volunteerism. It would be communism if you forced others to use GPL'd code. But they don't have to.
Actually, the GPL does count as a form of communism: "a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed".
The problem here involves the typical American perception of communism - It does not mean "bad" or "evil" or "Stalinist". It just means that no one "owns" the product of that work, and no one can monopolize its use.
In some cases, communism works very, very well. For material goods, it tends to fail due to greed. As a system of government, it fails quite spectacularly (again, mostly due to human greed). But for intangibles, in which category falls software, music, movies, thoughts, algorithms, and all the topics we so often argue about here on Slashdot under the broad category of "IP" - communism works amazingly well. Everyone can contribute, and everyone can share the results equally. In fact, it takes quite extreme laws and enforcement effort to avoid IP naturally falling into a more-or-less communistic state of existence.
As an aside, I find it almost scary that people would defend against an accusation of communism by calling something volunteerism. In a perfect world, with no one going hungry or unsheltered or lacking basic medical treatment, volunteerism seems like a good, noble philosophy. In the real world, operating under a basically capitalistic economy, volunteerism actively does no less evil than put people out of a job. For every hour someone works for no pay, they have deprived someone of the possibility of working that same hour for the purpose of feeding, clothing, and sheltering themselves. In a very real way, someone who don't need that hour's pay (or they wouldn't have worked it for free) has managed to take it away from someone who does.
As the one exception to this, court-ordered community service seems reasonable, in that it allows a person to "pay" the community back for their crimes by spending time rather than dollars. For someone without extensive financial resources, this means a fine that doesn't unduely burden them. For someone with money to burn, it causes them to spend something more valuable to them than a mere monetary fine. A win/win situation both ways.
I calculate on and off topicness based on the post I reply to. So long as it is nominally on topic and I am addressing valid subjects it raised it is still in the topic of that thread. (Or at least that is my opinion, and that is how I mod.)
The GPL is not communism. You recieve code and in return you contribute any changes you make.
Quid pro quo. Something for something.
If you did not have to recontribute or you had no choice in the matter it would be closer to communism.
So what you are saying is that a acorn never becomes a tree because once it is a tree it is no longer an acorn?
The SCO case is by jury.
Yes, providing the recipe with every cake sold would destroy the restaurant and food service industries, if it enabled you to make and have cake whenever you wanted, for free, without having to go outside. Who would go to the market if you could just get it for free from home? - trust me, no amount of recipes will ever force me to bake my own cakes. I will always buy them no matter how many recipes are given away.
Besides, there are recipes for every single cake or other dishes available for free on the web or for a nominal price in cookbooks. I still go out to eat cake or buy cakes in the store and never ever in almost 29 years of life have baked anything or tried bakin anything.
You can't handle the truth.
.. just like the argument for international trade.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I think of GPL and Open Source software as the baseline.. Like those signs near the line for a roller coaster that say "You must be this tall to ride". The GPL software says "Your software must be better than this" in order to sell it.
IMHO, the GPL is good for capitalism. Capitalism is all about competition forcing companies to constantly improve their products, and competition from GPL software will force advancement at a much greater speed than it would be at otherwise.
Those who don't like it, are the lowest tier. They'll be the first driven out of business. Not because of the GPL per se, but because of their own incompetence and inability to adjust to new business reality. Incompetent companies going out of business is, and has always been, good for capitalism and good for consumers.
An intelligent company would look at the OSS movement and see what they can do to adjust to it. Fighting it won't help, the tighter they squeeze their grip, the more star systems will slip between their fingers..
All movements for social change begin as missions, evolve into businesses, and end up as rackets.
My post stated exactly the opposite, that a trial by jury does not establish legal precedence. But go ahead, be a blathering idiot. That is what AC postings are often for.
I think what the parent was trying to say was roughly "Assuming that you know what is best for others and forcing that view onto them is evil. Communism assumes it knows what is best for its people and forces them to agree. Therefore communism is evil."
Now, if a democratic country assumes they know what is best for others and forces that view on others then by the above assumptions it might follow that they are evil, but it wouldn't necessarily follow that they are communist. The logical relation is in the other direction.
In order to argue with me, you would have to take the opposite position, that somehow jury opinions do establish precedent. You and several after you decided to assume my own clearly-stated position to argue with me. Whatever.
The best reply to this is here
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Spelling errors aside, I think they meant price dumping, not price fixing. Price-fixing is collaboration between different parties in an industry to artificially inflate the prices. Giving away products for free is called dumping, sort of what Microsoft did with Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer.
However, software is a very gray area of the law in this respect: What is really the worth of it anyways? Microsoft gets tax deductions for donating copies of Windows and Office to schools, without any real additional cost to themselves. Besides having awful restrictive terms on these agreements, it shows we are approaching an abundant society.
The question is who will make the rules and why listen to morons?
There doesn't seem to be a consensus on the definition of Capitalism, although it is "An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state", according to the compact oxford english dictionary. In practice this usually means that people have more freedom to do what they want, but only in the case that capital is distributed more widely than the power in a political party. Don't get me wrong, i think that capitalism as it is practiced in most western countries does give people more choice, however it is not always part of the definition of Capitalism.
I realise though that even if I am correct, I am still probably being overly pedantic. :o)
That 90% might as well BE proprietary software. The source code may be available, but how many people actually contribute to each project?
I fail to see the point. Of course most software is irrelevant. If it turns out not to be, it's to everyone's benefit if the code is available.
That certainly seemed to be the consequence. Once Microsoft bundled IE with Windows, no one in the software industry could expect to be able to charge for a web browser.
Communism is mainly a problem when it fails to reward hard work. If it doesn't matter if you slack off, then why not slack off?
The extreme of this is when you get situations like you had in the USSR where they had ball bearing plants that shipped their excess product to be melted down into ingots, which were shipped to the ball bearing plant. Doesn't take long for the workers to figure out that it doesn't matter how badly they do their job.
OSS is a bit different, because people only work on it if they want to, the work only needs doing once, and the people working on it take pride in their work.
It's not like they have any intrinsic value, after all.
Wait, you can't eliminate the humans! The mice would be furious!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Wasn't it Marx who said "Time flies like an arrow, :-)
fruit flies like a banana?" Ok, so it's the wrong Marx for this discussion...
Communism isn't actually evil, it's bad tempered, beaurocratic, officious, and callous.
But the FSF is not a "charitable" institution. It might not be covered.
You know, of course, that not all not-for-profits are charitable institutions, and to apply the law as you claim would create one hell of a loophole to be abused by other people. Do you want to know the names of some other not-for-profits? RIAA, MPAA, BSA.
It's more like public-spiritedness, charity and opting into a community. I work at beer festivals occassionally in the UK, and we don't do it for the money. We do it for the love of it. We give something of ourselves in time and effort to promote the cause of real ale (OK, we get a few free pints too).
Better example - a friend of mine works on a soup kitchen. No doubt, giving away soup means that someone may not go to the store to buy some, but that's not communism, that's charity. That's been going on forever. It's also a foundation of strong libertarians - that charities funded by people's goodness can do a better job than government in acting as a safety net.
What was meant as an off-hand joke to counter the notion of stupid moderators marked flamebait by a clueless moderator. Irony meltdown in process....
Is it good for the programmer job market? No. Tough titties, it's good for everybody else. Yours isn't the first industry to be decimated by progress.
But it is good for the programmer job market. In fact, it's great for the programmer market. It's just not good for the boxed software market.
Most programmers don't work for proprietary software companies--they work for banks, manufacturers, governments, all kinds of non-software companies, companies that need software that you can't buy off the shelf.
With the rise of open source software and a plethora of projects to start with, all it does is bring custom software into the financial reach of the millions of small businesses that otherwise are stuck with boxed software.
Do you smell the opportunity?
Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems
Freelock Computing
Actually, the GPL does count as a form of communism: "a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed".
Except that it's not.
Software that is licensed still has an owner: the licensor. For example, the licensor is the only party who can redistribute the software under a _different_ license (a la MySQL and Qt).
You are just confused man. The GPL GIVES additional rights beyond copyright. The Patriot act REMOVES rights. There is no comparison. There would have to be an act disallowing copyright holders to GIVE away rights! And corperate interests would not be interested in a bill that disallowed them from selling or otherwise transferring rights for copyrighted works.
That is the subversive genius of the GPL. It intertwines with the framework of copyright in a way that makes it impossible to legally thwart without fixing the problem it addresses in the first place. All you are doing is moping for no good reason and probably shortening your lifespan by ten years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My double barrel freedom is bigger then yourin freedom. Catch my drift yankee.
...
Oz
The genius of GPL is that in order to defeat the GPL you have invalidate all software licenses.
In order to actually get to use the GPLed code without paying the GPL price you have to invalidate copyright.
Stallman was a frekin genious. He hacked the law and placed an annoying thorn in the side all proprietary software companies and the only way to remove it is to not make proprietary software possible at all.
evil is as evil does
Still, 99% of the duplication of other OSS software shares code from one aplication to another.
The wheel itself is not reinvented.
Hydrogen still costs more than oil.
Considering that we're still using oil to produce it, that's going to be true for quite a while. Unless someone figures out how to change the laws of physics, or communities all over the world suddenly decide they don't mind local nuclear power plants after all.
no, when a country threatens another country based off of desired action/inaction of that country, it's terrorism.
imposing democracy afterwards is patriotic.
-1, Disagree is not a valid option. Troll, Flamebait and Offtopic are not a substitute.
I'm engaging my critical thinking skills, by actually showing you why IT CANNOT BE OVERTURNED.
You are just expressing an enfounded general sesne of worry. If you could please give ANY kind of rational example where a court ruled against the GPL without affecting copyright, then perhaps the worry would even be slightly justified. But as it is you are just ignoring what courts do, what the laws say, and in short making no sense whatsoever.
You need to read the laws and then stop worrying!! If the GPL is overturned that just means that all code folds back to existing owners, but again it cannot happen because it's a contract GRANTING RIGHTS. That is so key and yet you are ignoring that whole aspect, which makes it altogther unlike whatever other forms of capriciousness you see courts engage in otherwise.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
By saying the courts can overturn the GPL, you are also saying the courts can make it illegal for anyone to write a contract. Now do you realize how silly you sound?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
what would you do to have the GPL confirmed at court?
You'd file a suit against it.
If you loose, the GPL is confirmed.
In maths this is called proof by contradiction.
Juergen
Americans want to be self-reliant and hope everyone else does too. Communism, socialism, altruism will always pull down the successful but will never eliminate poverty. It's the capitalist USA that has the fattest poor people in the world.
We all want to have the freedom to succeed, but freedom is a double edged sword. You must also be free to fail.
If we want people to be vibrant, healthy, ambitious, hard-working, and well compensated for their efforts it's easy. Give them freedom and responsibility for their own outcomes. And then don't take it away to dole out to slackers.
And we do have balance. The GPL is not about taking anything from anybody it is about building a scientific community. Cooperation, contribution, collaboration, and sharing knowledge are all voluntary and benefit us all. Free software doesn't pull anyone down. Sure if you try to steal copyrighted code you can make trouble for yourself, and if your talents are modest you will not go far in proprietary software. But any honest man that applies himself can do useful, profitable things with Free software.
When you use FOSS Baby Jesus Weeps.
What a whiner! He's up to no good, that kid! He's the type that will meet with some sticky end, stabbed with a spear, or nailed to a cross! He'll die a troublemaker's death! Mark my words!
--
AC
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
You've caught the point where it may indeed be possible to use open source to violate antitrust law.
*If* a company has a monopoly, or even significant market power, and that company releases or backs an open source product to distribute for zero price, and there is a competing "complete solution" for which part of the price is in software that gets replaced by the OSS, then the OSS could indeed be an antitrust violation.
Note, though, that the key here is that the OSS project is being used as a weapon to support or advance monopoly power in another product.
There's nothing really shocking there--it would take some sort of special exemption in antitrust law to allow the fact that something is OSS to be a defense to otherwise legal behavior.
A free-standing OSS project would be another issue--it's just another competitor in the market.
The grey case that will take lots of litigation is a monopolist supporting an existing project, yet not becoming dominant, in order to damage a competitor to its own product. My initial guess (though it's quite possible I could be convinced otherwise) is that there could be liability for the company, but not for the project (unless it actively conspired with the monopolist to hurt the competitor).
hawk
This is definitely one of the better posts on this subject that I've read. Thanks!
People DO tend to get all these "isms" mixed up, don't they?
In "The German Ideology", Marx states that working for somebody else but oneself is the process of active alienation of the worker from the product of his labour. Therefore, in that respect, GPL is Marxist, since no alienation is involved, quite the opposite. Also, since in the Marxian utopia everybody does only the work that they feel like doing, and no-one's exactly forcing anybody to code and release it under GPL, it's again quite Marxist.
So, all those great theories and ideologies are intertwined.
BUZZZZ! Sorry that answer was incorrect!!
From the Gnu project web site ;
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity, like the Red Cross. Like most charities, we ask for donations of money, which we use to pay staff to promote the cause of free software.
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
My impression from watching US tv is that anything that is no a certain brand of neo-liberal ideology (which is not recognized by the media as very much ideological ) is socialist communist or finally facist.
I suppose it's worth repeating what everyone keeps saying. Frequently what is even esposed as free-market (etc. etc. etc.) isn't always following the 'rules'.
On a side note: the US ensured its rise to becoming a world power at the turn of the 20th century through protectionist policies. The same policies that is says won't help third world counties to develop (sometimes questionable itself but, I'll use it for now). Which some how brings us back to third world governments interest in GPL software.
Interesting that I to that point in this post, I'm sure that point isn't related to this article but, i'm sure it has some CEO's sweating thinking of some of the countries that may slip beyond their grasps.
Mike
Communism has to be seen in the context it was born in to be understood correctly. Communism was born during the industrial revolution, when workers were, in essence, slaves to the factory owners (capitalists, whose who owned the capital). If they disobeyed or complained, they would be kicked out and replaced by someone else, and then they would starve - there was a huge surplus of workforce, so the employer and the employee were as non-equal negotiating partners as could be. They couldn't set up their own factories, because they lacked the capital (money) required, and working by hand (even if they could get training) simply couldn't compete against factory production.
In this situation, it seemed perfectly reasonable to assume that the problem would be solved if the people owned the factory they worked in. That, in short, is the idea of communism - have the means of production be owned by the workers, so that everyone can use them to make a living.
This basic idea of communism isn't actually incompatible with the idea of free market. There's no reason that the workers couldn't sell their products in free markets and compete against each other. In reality communist countries adopted the "Big Brother" additude, but that has nothing to do with the basic idea of communism and lots to do with the hunger for power of their leaders.
Communism was a counterreaction to an extreme situation. As such, it went straight to the other extreme (and lead to a situation just as bad as it was supposed to solve), but in a moderated form, in european social democracies, it works just fine.
Also, it should be noted that free software does, in fact, achieve the goal of communism - it makes the means of production (source code and compilers) available to all, allowing everyone to produce programs if they so desire.
So, as weird as it sounds, communism was actually intended to allow people to work independently for their livelihood and free them from economical tyranny. And it managed to achieve the exact opposite. What a crazy world...
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'd suggest that if RMS has his way he would embolish software copyrights as he really believes proprietary software is immoral, and software, once created, could be reproduced easily.
FSF is exempt and if this guy is complaining about their purchases then they are fine. If this guy is complaining about their "sales" remember that they are *NOT* in commerce as the act states.
:)
If you go to a community health center or stay at a homeless shelter is a private doctor or Best Western going to say that's unfair competition?? But they're giving it away for free!
Also, this guy has never shown that he has a business. As such, he has no standing to sue. Personal employment and hampering one's career might be a point, but it's not a business. Ask the IRS. Can you as a regular employee take business deductions? The answer is no
You need to change it to "...public good that once created is ...".
You still need to pay for someone to create the software first, unless you have force labour like communist government.
Jimmy Carter has nothing to do with Habitat for Humanity. It was started by Millard Fuller.
Hey, man, this is Slashdot! Don't try to confuse me with facts, OK?
I think you are still misquoting from memory. Please find where he said that, because it's EXACTLY the opposite of what the GPL says which would seem to be odd.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You don't get it, do you?
Government is power: the "right" to initiate force as a means to an end. The mode of interaction between government and citizen is pure force.
Force is the source of everything evil that has ever happened in the history of human civilization. Every single war, every theft, murder, rape -- it's all derived from one individual or group assuming the "right" to initiate force over another. Can you not see this, or are you so blinded by the "good" government does that you choose to ignore the evil?
Trade is voluntary. This requires freedom. The mode of interaction between traders is voluntary association.
If you can't see the difference between the two modes of human interaction -- force and voluntary association -- then government has been more successful at brainwashing than I thought.
You took his stuff. You pound him.
The valid sociological observations of Marx are entirely separate from the utopian fantasy he wrongfully inflicted upon the world. Read the second half of Karl Popper's The Open Society and It's Enemies vol. II for a fair and thourough examination of Marx's contributions and mistakes.
The Big Brother attitude is impossible to avoid and is central to Communism since Communism believes it is herding in a new unavoidable destiny for humanity. One of the central features of Soviet Law was the parental component. None of the certitude or moral absolutes of Communism are needed for collectivist actions like worker owned businesses. However, without those features, it's not Communism. The problems Communism attempts to solve can be done so through Liberalism, without turning the state into your parent.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
But that article is noting that software, in terms of the software you run, should not have an "owner". It does not mean the master CODE cannot or should not have an owner. That is a crucial distinction, Stalman is talking about instances of software and you are talkimg abou the general concept of the program.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not lack of understanding. It's a differnce of moral value.
The thing is, when you say "Stalman thinks X" if he's not really saying X, then there is a lack of understanding. If you say "I think the open source means X" then it's a difference of moral values. It seems pedantic but it's just not fair to ascribe motives to others when they do not exist, just because of a misinterpretation.
It's really, really different to say that no-one can ever own code (which is where the whole communism thing comes from) vs. everyone being able to control the code they get with the caveat they have to return public changes to the master (which is what the GPL is trying to enfornce).
If in fact code had no owners then there would be no point in the GPL, which is a set of special permissions handed out by the owner to others.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My friends the debate between Capitalism and Communism is moot. The battle is long dead. I won't debate theory when in practice communism in conjunction with totalitarian dictatorship (the only way it could exist) was clearly the greater evil of two. Although Socialism is the kinder, gentler face of Communism and may even in practice as well as theory seem kinder than Capitalism; is along on the way to a similar fate. The trend seems to be moving away from the socialist Atlantic to a more capitalist Pacific(won't debate here.) While Communism required all to participate to be successful; Capitalism requires competition. By providing the much needed competition to the software industry, the GPL has probably done more to preserve Capitalism in the industry than just about thing else out there. Without the GPL, Microsoft would have needed government control to reign in its ever increasing market abuses that its monopolistic position allowed it make. That my friends would have been socialism. As a true blue believer in capitalism, I love the GPL. Also, Linux is just cool and who doesn't want to use cool stuff.
Yes, he is saying anyone can do what they like with thier copies - but that does not mean you cannot own it. Only the original owner has the right to re-licence the work under other terms (and many have done so).
In the end any question you have about what Stalman really thinks is answered quite simply by seeing what the GPL actually does, since it's as close a declration of his beliefs as anything is ever going to be.
And the last part about people getting paid only once to write software - absolutley false. You can charge whatever you like for GPL software. Do you honesty think Red Hat is being paid "only once" for the work that they do?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your misconceptions are sadly probably the majority. But what Stalman realizes is that people who can develop software are special, and will always have work - however the quality of that work is improved by having a good base to work from, thus open source.
And you can't dismiss Redhat quite that lightly, as they are making money while developing GPL software. There is no contradiction to think that many other companies can do the same and that too is what Stalman realizes.
Again if you read writigs from the FSF it's all about freedom of the user to modify software, and control by the owners of a codebase to get further modifications out in the open. It really is a fundamental level of control on both sides that balances out. It's not at all about having "no owner", it's all about deliniating ownership of software whenever work is done to it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think we couldn't convince each other :)
:-)
Well, there's something I can agree with!
Oh well, the debate is interesting anyway. Thanks for keeping it civil. I get a bit worked up at times during debates so I hope I've not said anything too offensive.
I still think though he does think of developers as somewhat special, or at least realizes not everyone can just easily learn the ability...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In simplified terms using Gnome logic:
Step 1: Have a revolution (this is the easy part)
Step 2: Install a temporary authoritarian communist government
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Everyone lives in a blissful Marxist utopia
So far nobody has gotten past step 2. This primarily stems from the fact that you need ideal humans incapable of greed, corruptability, and other vices. These have yet to be evolved/created.
For every hour someone works for no pay, they have deprived someone of the possibility of working that same hour for the purpose of feeding, clothing, and sheltering themselves. In a very real way, someone who don't need that hour's pay (or they wouldn't have worked it for free) has managed to take it away from someone who does.
Then it follows that we should all do a half-assed job at everything, so that extra people can be hired. An argument that comes to this conclusion is invalid.
The money that would have gone to paying somebody ends up going to something else -- it enters the economy, and people's incomes, somewhere. The result is the same amount of money going into people's incomes, with the total amount of value produced for the economy ending up higher.
Then it follows that we should all do a half-assed job at everything, so that extra people can be hired.
Depriving someone of a job by doing the work for free does not equate to deliberately underperforming at one's own job, for the simple reason that if I underperform at my own job, I will not have that job for long. A volunteer, OTOH, practically cannot underperform to a job-losing degree, short of deliberate sabotage.
it enters the economy, and people's incomes, somewhere.
Puh-lease! No, it doesn't - It enters a CRO's annual bonus, and, having more than he can realistically spend in the first place, ends up as nothing more than another number in an account.
Reaganomics failed. Trickle-down, doesn't. The rich collect money, and the poor get poorer, until they revolt. It has happened, it happens as we speak, and it will keep happening, unavoidably.
Try here...OK, OK, I tried. Don't kill me ov
*clicked to death by an anonymous Kill Everyone player*
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.