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2006 Software War Map between FOSS and Microsoft
Ant writes "Neatorama mentions Steven Hilton's Software War Map that depicts "the epic struggle of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) against the Empire of Microsoft. It was updated in 2006."
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Just wait till Vista enters the picture! Then there'll be total chaos!
I love that this is presented as a serious piece of news!
This belongs on webcomic or something.
"I'm not religious, but at the same time I don't get why science always has to have something to prove."
Isn't it a bit early to feature this on Slashdot?
It seems to be missing some things. Surely some of the Companies shown fighting MS are also fighting each other? And who says it's a war anyway? Some things are just good ideas, and lots of folks are going to come up with variations. Does that always mean a battle? It seems silly to me, rather than informative.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
...from the lower left corner what with filing Chapter 11 and all. Such a pity...
The Army reading list
Where's Kamchatka?
Is this supposed to be news? Funny? Interesting? Engaging? If I create one and put a picture of Stallman in saint drag humping a penguin will Slashdot publish it for me?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
but what's the point? On a side note, this map is illegal due to copyright infringement of the Mozilla logos, since they're trademarked. I'm sure the GNWater GNBuffalo logo isn't trademarked. I don't know about the others, but I would imagine the SuSe and RedHat are officially owned.
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't Mono on the wrong side of the fence? I thought that it should be pictured alongside .Net trying to move into the Free Software camp (or circling around the back to take Free Softare from behind). I mean, isn't Mono just an implementation of a MS technology that's already encumbered by many patents?
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
What happened to the in-fighting between KDE and GNOME? It was included in the old version.
Completely surrounded will Microsoft discover another _dark_ way of winning everything or is the giant starting to feel the weight of time as some current moves in its staff shown ....
It's not your fault that you're always wrong The weak ones are there to justify the strong
...against Microsoft. Look at the names: Apple, Novell, HP, Sun, SGI, IBM -- various combinations of these guys have bumped heads a few times also. And, not all of those names are exaclty pro-FOSS either, maybe they are just anti-M$.
I love how the /. crowd needs a Wikipedia link to remind us what Free and Open Source Software is. We'd all be in the dark without that!
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
I'm having trouble understanding what all the little explosians are... some make sense as software market clashes (IE v. Firefox) but others are scattered around for no apparent reason.
It also seems top be very LOTR where it's the alliance of MAC, JAVA, and GNU against Microsoft. I dont think thats the way its actually happening.
Shots: A Populist Parable
I see a little explosion. The thing needs bigger flames. And tanks. And blackjack. And hookers. In fact forget the ...
since when are companies like apple and google considered FOSS?
Just read that over at Groklaw yesterday in Pamela's lesson on statutory defenses.
So why are they on that map?
...with pitting Windows XP against all of the UNIces and other Network Operating Systems. I mean, HPUX really isn't tailored to end users, and Windows XP isn't a server-grade OS. Windows Server 2003 is at least marketted to servers...
I was expecting something more like the Eric Levenez's UNIX Timeline.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
One thing that this map conveys, is that Microsoft, as a company, has its products and markets all over the place, it is just not focused on doing one thing well. It is competing against dozens of other companies that are working on only the piece of the business that they want and are ultimately making their products better than Microsoft.
If you throw in some other stuff, like the entertainment division with the XBOX-360, you can add another 2 big competitors in Nintendo and Sony.
Also notice that some of Microsoft's competitors may compete against each other, but their focus is entirely on Microsoft, they cannot get a break anywhere. Though this really their own fault for not focusing only a few markets.
Looking at the older maps, it is curious how much space that was occupied by proprietary software got replaced with GNU based offerings.
Is simple, ignore Microsoft's press releases like they were the blatherings of a incoherent street preacher...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... smells like victory."
(apologies to Robert Duvall & Francis Ford Coppela)
Java is encumbered by patents. The Linux kernel is violating patents. Openoffice and Mozilla is violating patents. Microsoft Windows XP is violating patents. OpenBSD is violating patents.
WTF do you think free software people are freaked out about it? BECAUSE YOU CAN NOT NOT AVOID PATENTS.
Mono is actually using patents legally, at least as far as known patent issues are involved.
Mono is definately on the side of Free software. It's Free software through and through.
It's a hell of a lot better then Java, which is patent encumbered AND is propriatory (well of course Sun has it's shitastic see-but-don't-use licensing BS).
I love that this is presented as a serious piece of news!
No... actually it was posted on Slashdot
SFU on one side and Cygwin, MSYS and Wine on the other...I think we are winning there.
I, for one, will welcome our hairy new penguin-gnu crossbreed overlords.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
What a crappy little explosion. It deserves at least two explosions in this post-13/12 world (that page nearly crashes my browser, it's that long).
Linux seems neat. Conventions like Penguincon support it. Those in the "Know" know it's better. Still, other OS's dominate. Until someone finally argues their point with the undeniable logic of guns and explosives (because guns and explosives trum everything. Duh). Now it's an OS battle in the street and Linux has a penguin's chance in Hell of surviving.
Until YOU arrive on the scene. Sure, you'd rather have the OS wars conducted peacefully via Blogs, one user at a time. But someone just took a shot at you from the iPod-controlled building across the street. And that nice bald guy in suspenders just handed you a loaded missile launcher. Screw logic. This thang is ON!
Taken from the Sluggy Freelance Grand Auto Theft Shirt
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Where's the crack squad of chair-throwers?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
So lets see how long before the MS boys and Linux boys deface and re-store the site (and repeat)
Cheap UK and US VPS
It seems to be missing some things.
Yes, the war includes all kinds of media and it's creators. Programmers have been joined by all kinds of artists and creators. There's a free media revolution going on. The incumbents have shown their hand and it stinks.
And who says it's a war anyway?
Microsoft and big publishers say it's a war. The goal is TV and Radio broadcast style control of all media. They will sue you in your home (RIAA), at your business (SCO), and at your kid's school (BSA). They don't really care what you do, but they will try their best to have you do as they say.
The goal is to take your money without your consent for any information exchange. You will pay for a M$ license each time you buy a computer. You will pay per minute or byte of conversation on any electronic device, per play of your music, movies novels and textbooks. Your taxes will pay to encoded your information into secret formats and pay again to retrieve it. The new media, paradoxally, will be more expensive and restricted than it's analog and physical predecessors. All of these intentions have been openly declared and loudly demanded by all of the bad actors.
If that's not a declaration of war, I'm not sure what is. The less you know and care, the easier it will be for them to make the world as they wish.
The world does not have to be that way. People do not mind sharing if it cost them nothing and brings greater returns. Excellence thrives in competition and everyone prospers. Success stories are the whole free software movement, which has obliterated the need for non free, and free media: archive.org and creative commons instead of the big three music publishers; YouTube instead of TV; VOIP instead of Telco; Wikipedia instead of expensive paper publications. The economics of electronic data exchange doom the monopoly publishers unless they pass truly unAmerican laws. Fight the bastards by not giving your money to those who would enslave you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The good pragmatic folk of the real world will continue to use the tools best suited for the task at hand.
The rest find themselves at the end of the unemployment line.
Why no highlights on the war against Apple, Sun or IBM? They weren't always OSS "good guys", and IMHO, still aren't. Just corporations with their own particular strategies.
So go fight your imaginary "war". Convince yourself that the next version of KDE will totally "kill micro$oft w00t we so rock" and then get all angsty and whiny when it doesn't.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I'm just hoping that it will end up like this: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~jrubarth/gslis/lis385t.1 6/Napoleon/
Any gains by the lunatic fringe are negated by the loss of net neutrality and also by the gains in the prevelance of DRM, "trusted computing" and Patent legislation.
FACT: OSS is doomed. For all practical intents and purposes, OSS is Dead.
So when was it that Mac, with its iPod and iSoftwares, was defined as part of FOSS ?
I need to wake up
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't Mono on the wrong side of the fence? ... I mean, isn't Mono just an implementation of a MS technology that's already encumbered by many patents?
It's more of a damaged weapon than anything else. Use it if you can and fight to keep it. It might be loose, but you can't just surrender everything that's challenged. The whole point of free software is to be able to use your computer as you see fit. That includes running whatever code you want for whatever purpose you have. I don't have any use for Mono, but others might and I'm glad someone is working on interoperability.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You have a really bizarre view of the other users of this forum. You also seem to think that you fit in here.
Don't get me wrong: you are, of course, welcome. Slashdot has many people much nuttier than you. I was just pointing out an oddity in your perspective which you might like to correct.
They should base arrow boldness on adoption... oh wait, that would show that IE 6 still has a majority market share. It looks like from the diagram that it is puny compared to the double defended bold line "POW" of Firefox. Dont get me wrong, I love firefox... but... To take the war analogy a bit further. If you don't have accurate intelligence then you cannot grasp the battle, cannot fight the battle, and cannot win the battle.
In the real world the war is now just down to: Microsoft >> | Ubuntu + All MS haters
I thought Microsoft wasn't releasing anything this year... :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
From: Kilgore Trout
.........
RE: War Between Democracy and
The news about FOSS and Microsoft is repetitive and detracts from serious political action.
Please cover the war between democracy and the world's most dangerous "leader".
Thanks again,
Kilgore Trout, C.I.O.
The software war is real. Just because you choose not to see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Enslave me? You paint a pretty grime world. But last time I checked, I wasn't enslaved.
oogly boogly!
What about the HURD?
If you want to look at this way, it shows that no one competitor has the ability to provide a complete solution the way Microsoft can. Which is why Microsoft can fight on all fronts while everyone else can only fight on one front.
.NET over Java... hmm.. a double agent perhaps??
Besides, as already noted there are alot of things missing on this map... for me, as a developer is definately Visual Studio. That should probably be portrayed as calvary or something.
And as for Mono, well... its FOSS, but its also encouraging use of
Where's Gentoo?! This map is false, inaccurate, misleading, and false! And inaccurate to boot.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Is it bad that that map reminds me of the last mission of Starcraft: Brood War? I mean, you play as the Zerg and start in the middle completely surrounded, and have to wipe out all of your opponents. Does that make Microsoft the Zerg? Bill Gates would be Kerrigan?!!?!
Well....the Zerg infest, assimilate, overpower, and outnumber their opponents, and are led by a single all-powerful Overmind bent on galactic domination. That sounds like Microsoft to me.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
"Only an idiot would fight a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts."- Londo Mollari
I'm not absolutely sure the above quote applies here. Microsoft tries lots of things that don't work but the things that do work are really profitable. I think it depends on the management structure. If Bill has to pay attention to all the things that beset Microsoft then he won't be able to attend to the main part of the business. Many of the battles it shows Microsoft fighting are its own choice, hence the quote.
I'd say Slashdot has to fight your trolling as well.
enslave you
I'm sorry you feel 'enslaved'. Please don't make the mistake of assuming everyone lives in the same desperate alternate reality as you seem to.
Oh, and "M$"? Hilarious.
Been a while since checking then eh? ;-)
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
The good pragmatic folk of the real world will continue to use the tools best suited for the task at hand.
It would be nice if that could be the case. Unfortunately it is not possible as long as a company wields as much monopoly and market leveraging power as Microsoft does in the software space. At the moment, otherwise pragmatic people find themselves in situations where due to the various systems of lock-ins and anticompetitive actions Microsoft has assembled, they absolutely must use Microsoft products whether they are the tool best suited for the task at hand or not.
The rest find themselves at the end of the unemployment line.
Another good way to find yourself in such a position is to work for a company which competes against Microsoft.
Don't work for a company that competes against Microsoft?
You mean you don't yet. Microsoft enters every market eventually, so long as it has something (anything) to do with ones and zeroes. It's only a matter of time...
I'd say the troll that needs to be fought is you, not him. Go back to wherever Micro$oft fanboys go, leave Slashdot forever.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Time to see the doctor. Something is wrong with your sense of perspective. It's turning into hyperbole.
-h-
Not only does MS have that capability, they fully endorse it from what I understand. Didn't they help get the initiative off in the first place, like they did with SOAP? For that matter, where is SOAP on that diagram?
Since when is Google Open Source? Last I checked, the source code to the Search Engine, GMail, and Google Earth are all unavailable.
That's why they are called invisible shackles.
...and so he reveals himself, with terrible irony.
I'm a little disappointed. What I was hoping to see was an actual look at some of the roadmaps of various F/OSS projects, and to compare that with the timelines for various Microsoft projects. Perhaps as a point of interest it could also include the roadmaps from other companies.
I actually think it would be pretty interesting if someone did this - maybe once every 6 months or so- and kept track of it over a several year period. I think it would give a lot of insight into the complicated dynamics of the relationship between open and proprietary software, between Microsoft and some of the big Linux distributions, and between Microsoft and Everyone Else.
It would at least help to settle the question of who rips the most off of whom.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
why is it called the software war map of 2006? there is nothing in there, that hasn't existed in 2005 (at least in an earlier release) it even contains windows XP and IE6!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
In what way is Doc Ruby nutty?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Here in America, we have been gradually increasing the slavery quotient from a few percent at the turn of the century, to about 50% today. (Estimate based on middle class wage slave paying 50% taxes. Add 'em up - 15% SS [employee+employer], 15% federal, 5% state, 5% state sales tax, 5% real estate tax, 5% utilities+gasoline+medicare+whatever else they can get away with.)
Once you are used to someone making decisions for you, it is scary to go back to making your own decisions. For example, we just switched from HMO to HSA health insurance. Before, the HMO told us when we could and couldn't go to the doctor (and have them pay for it). We could do the same thing with HSA by maxing out the deductible, but now we have the option of saving the money instead. Seems like a no brainer, but is scary nonetheless.
There are few others missings fronts.
... sooner o later they will need to give up some fronts...
For example encarta vs wikipedia.
Linux on Xbox vs Xbox.
Linux on Playstation vs Xbox.
Compiere vs I don't remember the name of the "Ms-ERP"...
What other fronts, O yes!
Linux+Opie vs Windows CE
Surely even with that all money, MS cannot stand so many fronts
Â_Â
No, he's pretty squarely in our reality, only it's our information that's in the process of being enslaved. If you were to take a good, hard look at the caliber of the people that run the media companies and their proxy organizations, you'd realize that what he is saying is precisely what they are trying to achieve. That they've not fully succeeded yet doesn't make their intentions any less of a concern. Actually, it makes them unenlightened capitalists, in my book, because they have absolutely no concern whatsoever for anyone or anything outside of the revenue stream. And, towards the end of maintaining that flow, they will do anything to anyone, buy any Congressperson they can lay bills on, pass any law that suits them, cause any degree of economic dislocation, as long as they own the distribution channels. Like all successful coups, it will happen because the majority are simply unaware of what is happening: all they'll notice is that "gee, it sure seems like I can't do as much with my computer and entertainment equipment as I used to, even though it's shiny and looks really high-tech and all" and will long for the good old days. Then, after some period of time, even that dim memory will fade and nobody will care because, so far as they can remember, it has always been that way. That's what these people want, total control over our media and usage habits, and total acceptance of that control. It'll take some time, but today's technology permits a level of remote authority that did not exist twenty-odd years ago when Sony was fighting the MPAA to keep the VCR legal.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Given that you've spent large amounts of your life posting over one thousand comments to Slashdot (!) I'd say take your advice. Seriously.
twitter is a known troll and a hyperbolic shill that thinks humanity is locked in a desperate struggle with Microsoft (or, as he calls them, "M$") and only his regurgitated Stallmanistic credo will save us from total destruction. Go look through his posting history. As a member of the free softweare community I am ashamed that there are people on Slashdot who will mod him up to make his pointless "opinion" part of the default page view indexed by Google.
Almost. The correct way it was said is as the following quote:
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in courts, we shall fight on the Web and Usenet, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in cyberspace, we shall defend our Imperium, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the portable, we shall fight on the games boxes, we shall fight on the desktops and on the handhelds, we shall fight in the media; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Imperium or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our bought senators, armed and guarded by the BSA would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World Order, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
He completely forgot to include IBM's secret stealth weapon against MS Exchange/Outlook: Lotus Domino/Notes!!!
Please stop laughing.... I was being serious.
I agree with you, this is stupid. But it was Microsoft who declared this a war. So if you're going to blame someone for being stupid, at least blame the right party.
I would love to continue to use the "tools best suited for the task at hand". Unfortunately, in many cases, Microsoft has, or is trying to, drive the "tools best suited" out of the market. No FLOSS developer has ever tried to prevent me from using MS tools (in fact, many bend over backwards to provide compatibility with MS), but MS is trying to deny me the option of using any other tools, FLOSS or not.
The real war is between Microsoft and the free market, and in that war, I am solidly on the side of the free market.
I was going to post this on del.icio.us. However, it appears down.
Huh? iPod, iTunes, iMac and MacOS X are listed in the "Free and Open Source"? That doesn't make sense to me. Also, AdSense versus MSN, and Search Engine wars are not part of the FOSS world either IMHO. Lastly, Java is certainly not Open Source or Free. Visual Studio Express and .NET Framework are the same price as Eclipse/Java. And putting Opera (NOT A FREE Browser) in the Mozilla camp is just silly. This guy has a beef.
Sounds like he really wanted Microsoft versus Everybody.
I am not much of a MS apologist, but Google, Sun and most of the rest of the companies on this list want a competitive advantage...whether that is against Microsoft, AskJeeves or Sony...it doesn't matter.
twitter is a known troll and a hyperbolic shill
Shill for who, Asstroturfer? Yes, I do mean the two "s" version.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well done, dipshit, at least you were right about something. Thing is, this "war" happens to be a competition to build the best tools.
You know perfectly well that FOSS is competing to build better tools than Microsoft, and that the "fronts" vary greatly depending on whether you look at servers or desktops.
Please try not to post anything this stupid again.
To continue the whole "battlefront" analogy, Microsoft has basically captured AJAX tech and is forcing it to work for them, while I would say open source (and Google and Yahoo) are far more on the cutting edge of expanding the AJAX boundaries.
In another very real way Ajax is working against Microsoft because it is enabling the creation of apps that are truly OS independant in a way that was not as true or as easy before. So even if Visual Studio ads a lot more AJAX support (which they are, I know they also support it today) the applications built from that may cause Microsoft desktop share to erode.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Anyone who says "FOSS" is a tool. Free software hates Open Source because Open Source is the little sell out movement that doesn't give a fuck about the ideals. It's like True vs. Nu metal. Stop associating Free Software even remotely with Open Source because those of us in the Free Software movement probably hate you.
How clueless is everyone here! MS had access to AJAX (httpXMLRequest object) since IE4, well before other browsers...
In typical MS style - they had the tools, but never really had a good use for them - so AJAX was not AJAX until Google make it popular... - They should have written a kick-ass OWA in AJAX for the masses...
Don't know, but I friended him just in case.
Also, I've just noticed that someone has taken the time to draw a swastika in usernames on his fans page, an honor usually reserved for people like CmdrTaco
Arguments about wether referring to the competitions for market share in this multitude of software based industries aside, this image is an interesting (and mildly funny) way of showing the sheer number of software 'pies' Microsoft has its numerous fingers in. The image highlights very effectively the way in which Microsoft's 'Empire' like status (and yes, its business practices) has placed it in direct and indirect competition with so much of the technological marketplace.
It does not include any indication of the convoluted Sony/Nintendo/DirectX/XBox 360/Bluray/HD-DVD/Windows Media Center conflict; the DirectX vs OpenGL battle is listed as a "front" but OpenGL is depicted as coming from SGI, an irrelivant company who is literally currently in the process of filing for bankruptcy
The SGI thing should be corrected (perhaps replaced by Apple?). On the 360/PS3 front I would say that since the title is "software wars" it could be left off though I agree a map in larger scope would be interesting. On a similar note I would say the iPod should be removed from this map...
In general lacks any sign of WMA/WMP, or the European legal issues currently related to them
Not entirely so, it includes this as "PlaysForSure" which is the WMA wrapper. The EU probably should be on there.
"Trusted Computing" references fail to note that Apple, who is listed as Microsoft's enemy on this chart, is now using Trusted Platform Module chips
Use of TCPM chips is not the same thing as "trusted computing" - Microsoft is talking about using TCPM for things like only running signed software/drivers on a computer. TCPM on a Mac is only only looked for as OSX boots to see if it should run, then after that what you do is up to you. Furthermore it's not used in a manner to prevent any OS from loading by the hardware, which is another possible use of TCPM for Microsoft (stopping you from loading Linux on a box you might buy, for example). I don't think we'd ever see that come to pass though unless Microsoft starts making computers themselves.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So allow me to be the first to say:flamebait+=5
viz., MS SQL Server. wtf?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Mod Parent up Insightful
If things continue as they have, our economy (and government) will be at the beck and call of the CEO's of a small group of corporations. This group will almost certainly include Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Disney (RIAA/MPAA). We keep getting distracted by global conflicts at least partially our fault, as well as bickering over social issues like Abortion and Gay Marriage.
In a generation or two, the United States will be like Mexico is now (and not because of immigration). There will be a few who will get rich like Bill Gates who will simply take the money and run.
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/fascism.html
Maybe it's just my imagination or psyche doing this:
All the OS software has those friendly icons. Tux smiles, the GNU gnu smiles, the mozilla dragon smiles, heck even the SuSE animal smiles.
The Closed source software, doesn't want to have anything to do with animals. The Windows "flag" looks kinda like a torn battleflag, the SCO tree looks like you have been drinking for a while and then looked at the tree, passport looks like it wants to invade your wallet. That's just what I noticed...
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Don't know. If you weren't a troll (a claim you did not challenge, obviously) then it would be fair to assume you were for real. But since a large number of your posts (here and elsewhere) are nothing but insulting FUD-laden hysterical rants then the 'shill' label is all that's left to explain your obsessive compulsive behavior (to the tune of 3,500 posts plus more than a thousand with your 'Erris' sockpuppet account).
I mean, I hope you're shilling for someone. Otherwise this whole thing is even sadder than it looks.
I'm convinced that the twitter character is the invention of some witty Microsoft employee, designed to spread new forms of ridiculous "M$" paranoia among the Linux/Free Software community and overall just to make them look like comicbook parodies of themselves. I mean, who would name themselves "twitter"? And who runs "mepis"? Its gotta be a joke.
FOSS could defeat MS hands down, if the they wouldn't be so divided in there opinions about how an operating system should be composed. There are 350+ Linux distro's out there, with ALOT of FOSS programmers behind them. If only they would unite ...
No, I'm saying that having 63,564 people working on an OS is better than only 2000.
Why reply to such an obvious troll? Because tonight I'm trying to kill some stress by being a pompous egomaniac and grabbing at every opportunity to be right. Which is still a few rungs above you, no matter which one out of troll and moron you happen to be.
Never mind the implications of believing Microsoft actually has developed an interest on what you specifically have to say (!!), but do you think that Microsoft (again I guess that's who you refer to when you use that term) is somehow "astroturfing" Slashdot by replying to you?
See, I agree with about half of that, because pretty much the same arguments have been going on for centuries; I was going to say back to the birth of the printing press, until I remembered the Gnostic gospels, and even earlier Bible fragments. That tradition of the underground press has carried on through the centuries, but there have always been many reasons - sometimes things are uncommercial, sometimes things are actually bad but vanity rules, and sometimes they are suppressed by society.
Where I depart with you, however, is in your statement that the free software and free media have obliterated the need for the non-free. In the most basic sense this is true. There is no 'need' seeing as functionally equivalent software is available. However, many proprietary packages are still years ahead of the FOSS equivalents (compare OpenOffice presentation features with Keynote) - our society is not really built on 'need' but on desire and whim, waste and surplus. There is a lot wrong with that, and it is certainly a trap (work harder to buy things you don't need), but it is hardly news. I don't have a problem paying for Keynote or Delicious Library because I like them.
When you move onto art, you are into more dangerous territory. I buy a lot of small label music, and I've been involved with the underground music scene back to the 80s. I don't mean Underground as in 'MTV's alternative show' but as in bands distributing home-recorded cassettes and self-run record labels. A lot of these people are politically anti-major label. Most of them don't actually make any money out of what they are doing, but very few of them are into the idea of 'free culture', which is kind of odd. Even the cassette label people would charge about 4 times the value of a blank cassette for their music (quarter of the price of a CD or record). There was still an unspoken buy in to the capitalist idea that recorded music was something you traded.
(This may be because a lot of them are involved in home recording - if you are one-person and a home-studio there is no live performance to advertise. And T-Shirt sales were the sort of thing corporate bands do to get even more money out of their fans).
There is a lot of space between the major labels and free media. It's the space occupied by independent labels, download sites like emusic, small publishing houses, independent art galleries - the people who believe that the existing system of copyright that saw us through the C20th is actually OK - that MP3 is simply another way to sell music, not an opportunity to enforce anarchism on artists, or an opportunity to use that threat as a reason to introduce control.
The 'Economics of Electronic Data Exchange' only apply if you insist that because you CAN distribute something at zero cost, and share it with strangers, you must be allowed to. This has always struck me as a fallacy. There are many areas where we are fighting the exact same battle against technological abuse - where governments insist that because they CAN do something with technology, they must be allowed to (snooping, cluster bombs, chemical weapons, data mining). There is also the economics of production - even free culture has costs (the cost of your free time) - and for most artists, musicians and authors, those costs are eventually too high.
Finally - the idea that well-written books will be supplanted by Wikipedia is my idea of hell. I use Wikipedia regularly, and the web is my first port of call for searching for information on coding problems, but I have absolutely zero problem whatsoever with paying for a well written reference or teaching book. When I had no money, I used to use the library (cheaper than a PC and broadband).
Let's not even start on literature - Shakespeare and Dickens were hacks who wrote for pay, but I shudder to think about some of the voluntary contributions I read while doing DTP for a creative writing magazine.
Sometimes I think people get so caught up in the political and technological arguments they become far more important than the art. I can imagine some people reading this will be going - 'yes, exactly, the politics are more important than the art. Humanity must be truly free, even if all non-free art must be destroyed in the process'.
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh
[The General stands before a large electronic wall display talking to the rebel fighers]
General: "The battle station is heavily shielded and carries a firepower greater than half the fleet. It's defenses are designed around a direct large-scale assault. A small one-man coder should be able to penetrate the outer defense."
Code Leader: [stands up to ask question] "Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are programmers going to be against that?"
General: "Well, the Empire doesn't consider small one-man coders to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Steven Hilton has demonstrated a weakness in the station."
General: [Tux makes penguin sounds. The computer display starts as the General keeps talking] "The approach will not be easy. You are required to maneuver your packets straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point. The target area is only two kilobytes wide. It's a UDP port, right below the TCP port. The shaft leads directly to the RPC. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station."
General: [a murmer of disbelief runs through the room] "Only a precise hit will set up a chain reaction. The shaft is Firewalled, so you'll have to be l33t."
So, if you lived in 1930s Germany, and had political aspirations, would you choose a certain political party that was on its way up, just because they seemed the "best tool for the job"?
Godwin lives...
...REAL ULTIMATE POWER?
I think PHP ->- ASP .NET should be there especially with Symfony, it's a pretty solid development framework
Love the PNG, but it's 2006. Can't we use 24-bit color now?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
shouldn't iTunes be a fortress by now?
and One BSD to rule them all ... and in the darkness bind them.
Please explain how you managed to miss the fact that this map is intended as a joke...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
I can't wait to see Vista's Aero engine and XGL collide on the next revision of the map. It was amazing to see how smoothly the Kororaa XGL Live cd worked on a pentium 3 with a gforce 4 card, while nobody ever would expect Aero to be anywhere near usable on my best computer, an athlon xp 2100+ with a radeon 9700 pro and 512 mb of ram.
The GP commenter didn't say 'seemed.' There were plenty of people in the 1930's, in Germany, who knew that a certain nut's vision wasn't viable over the long term. They got out, if they could, or resisted and were killed.
The 'good pragmatic folk of the real world' will behave similarly today.
One has to believe that the hysterical 'Microsoft is coming to get us' mantra is used to build something, certainly something more reasonable than it seems on the surface. But it's difficult at times. The FOSS seems to NEED this sort of rant spell ever so often.
Just don't get too wound up in it.
Duck Rubby isn't necessarily nutty. He's just someone who has trolled himself thoroughly, so thoroughly that he probably takes himself seriously.
Apple's Darwin code in OS X is no longer open source
as that diagram shows. Too bad.
Reality:
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I don't see why AJAX is fighting against hotmail while Gmail is.... what is Gmail doing anyways?
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
if you switch back and forth between the two quickly (to create the illusion of animation) it looks like MS has gained ground since the old version. It would be neat if it was updated often enough to make a movie out of it.
Are IBM et.al. actually stimied by SCO? I thought that crap died a year ago when no real evidence was produced by the plaintiff. Or as the illustration suggests are they just stalling them until SCO runs out of cash given their business model is litigative. Doesn't really matter with Redmond funneling cash in sideways they'll always be able to pay the lawyers/lobbyists.
.Net, MFC, VB runtime, ASP/VBscript, Active Directory -> user/group ACL file system + messaging schema and encrypted authentication, Exchange/Outlook while I'm at it, Access/Excel crap with VBA written by those goddamned consultants, proprietary systems galore, drivers for hardware and APIs for said drivers. Sure quite a bit of this is IP/patent related but there are quite a few ways to skin a cat and all the FOSS things I've seen are using a dull knife.
On another note, that fat chair throwing fucktard's "developers developers developers" shit is ringing true about now. Why can't I use linux for everything? because half the damn programs I need are either written by Microsoft or written FOR a microsoft platform, because the tools are cheap, proliferated, and easy to use. DirectX, ODBC,
The problem with the FOSS revolution is the lack of EASY. I mean drag and drop retard-proofed easy tools to get the job done and quick.
Maybe it's all possible with FOSS tools, but is it easy? Who markets them? Do you have to go around your ass to get to your elbow and use some CVS branch of a haxored copy-cat utility to pretend to be as much of a RAD as VStudio?
Many a mind greater than mine has pondered these things and either came up with nada or saw a need and capitalized on it. It's just the american way, sucky though it may be, somebody has to pay for all those yachts.
I can't believe no one has commented on the similarity of the map to the beginning of Dad's Army....
"Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Gates?"
Why the heck is HP-UX doing battle with Windows XP? Server 2003/Vista Server I could believe, but Windows XP?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Let's see... iTunes? Netware? iPod? MacOS X? Google Maps/Earth? HP UX? IRIX? J2EE?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK these aren't part of the "FOSS" camp. Most of them aren't open-source, some of them aren't free, and one of them isn't even a program (iPod).
The drawing is OK (with the open-source software to the right of the map), but not the description. How about "FOSS and its allies in the war against the empire"?
Microsoft seems to be lacking a warm water port.
If they could just launch a Blitzkreig in the South East corner and break through......
Well I never thought I would see the day. Slashdot condoning and infinging on intellectual property rights! How dare you support and post about a guy who so obviously sneaked into Redmond (insert mission impossible music), tip toe past a sleeping Bill gates and stole his autobiography and published as an original work... I mean what a nerve...
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
See thats the kind of attitude shareholders love... lets go get 'em!!!
Users... the only thing keeping 1st level support from being the bottom feeders.
Vista Baby.
Software Wars?
Why not just Softwars
They aren't FLOSS or MS but they are still part of the battle.
Funny thing is that most of our troops can go farther than front-line into the foe side but almost none of the Microsoft troops can invade us at the home. Many of Free soft-wares can move into their OS line. ;)
:D
Are we equipped with special weapons the opponent don't have like air-crafts and missiles and they are using just big tanks
Be like shadow in the light or darkness.KMZ
your kid's school (BSA) Please provide proof of this. Thanks.
That's funny because I love to point out how the non free software way is anti-social by pointing to just that. Yes, the BSA has sued public schools for copying text editors. The dumb ass administration handed worker bees M$ Word Docs without purchasing Word for them. The BSA set up exam time ambushes, which cost everyone tons of money and heartache. The same threat is still held over every public school, just like any other place people use non free software. The suits are public record and articles like this one are easy to find.
Your Welcome
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
of reasons why visual studios is a better IDE than eclipse.
.NET languages, embedded development for pocket pc and windows CE. You can even use it to debug the javascripts running in freaking internet explorer. There's also a ton of other development tools that can plug into it.
>That said, I find two big advantages to VS2005: its learning curve is a lot less steep
>(remember the first time you actually tried to run your program in Eclipse?), and its GUI (WinForms)
>editor is very simple+powerful (as long as you don't want to dig too much inside the
>code it generates).
but here's the main reason visual studios outclasses eclipse. Visual studios provides uniformly good support for whatever programming needs you have over an entire operating system. Visual studios supports C++, all the
Visual Studios is an IDE in the sense that it integrates *all* of your development environments. Eclipse has excelent java support, and plugins for other languages that *may* *someday* evolve to the point where people will jump ship. However, right now they just aren't in the same class as visual studios.
In short, Eclipse is a wellcrafted program for you java development needs, but VS is a titanic beast of an IDE for everything else.
Mono is a fifth column which is why it's shown in grey and lagging behind the real front line.
Though MS Outlook is marketed as a mail client, it has too many hooks into the desktop operating system and into MS Exchange for it to be mapped as only going head to head with Thunderbird. MS Outlook has people locked out of most IMAP servers due to the ties into MS Exchange. It also has many people and business locked out of non-MS operating systems.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I was reading this and wondering how important MS is to the economy and what if this was a real war like the War on Terrorism, or maybe realer than that one. What if the next commandeered plane or North Korean missile hits Redmond and none of the other expected(?) targets. Is there a backup plan? Will we enter a great depression? Will linux people be blamed? Will it be turned lose and opened up so every one who can help maintain it does? etc. About that map by the way, it stars out cool with the failed FUD/SCO assaults but after a while it kinda sucks. More like there are many planes that are separate battlefields which intersect or coexist for a time. Might be better rendered as a little animated movie?
Accoring the software map, .Net and Mono is in a war. The truth is Microsoft is supporting the Mono project as can be read in the Mono Project FAQ.
The biggest problem for FOSS is that it still has to shed a serious maturity image.
Penguins as mascots and now this?
What exactly is the point of this map?
That a 13 year old kid can use gimp or paint (lol)?!
It would have been more practical to have side by side comparisons of the
programs and protocols themselves.
At least this would seem a bit more legitimate. As it is presented, it appears nothing more than silliness.
Its more like:
Professional Standards Microsoft Standards
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
iTunes, iPod and MacOSX are FOSS? Where do I download the source? I also missed HPUX being FOSS. I didn't like Opera was GLPed either...
6. You don't have any dead bodies lying around. Numerous and pale spreadsheet apps, for instance.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
To be more correct, you would have to place IBM within the same battle area as FOSS (as is Novell). There is no way they belong off by themselves like HP or SGI.
IBM has been a major contributor to FOSS (think Cloudscape, Eclipse, Linux on big iron, Accessibilty for Firefox, etc...)
I'd also like to see OS/2 protrayed as a Trojan Horse tendered by MSFT.
Oh, he posted political opinions that you don't like. Now I understand.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Who is revealing himself here? I, and every other thinking member of Slashdot, could already tell that you are a troll with a botnet and twitter is not. I'm beginning to think that you're a GNAA member, since that's the only way you could be so stupid.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
They overlooked computer games, and games are the MAIN reason to buy Microsoft OS.
Linux / Apple / Solaris, etc don't have much vs windows in the games department, and, even if they did, there's still a 15 year legacy of windows/dos game supremacy, and alot of those games still WORK with newer MS OS.
The funny/sad thing is that microsoft operating system "game supremacy" (in terms of overall game availability) has been evident for a very long time, yet none of the other operating system developers have done anything (with their knowledge of that fact) to boost their own OS sales. (unless i'm mistaken?) They could have opened game houses of their own, for instance.
Anyhow, it's silly to look at Microsoft as the enemy even if you don't like their prices or their policies. Like em or not, microsoft made a good, reliable operating system, and they maintained it, (unlike amiga, or next or be-os or any of the dead os's), and grew it over the years. You might complain about bloat, or pricing, or historical policies / unfair competition, but they've done alot of good things, and I believe that the fact MS is still around is GOOD for us, even if we don't use their OS. (which I DO use)
At least I can play Half Life 2 and WarCraft3 on Windows. Those are nice games, and there's no linux equivalent. Kill MS? Can you linux zealots spell "Don't shoot yourself in the foot"? Kill MS and you can't play half life.
Microsoft is large, it contains multitudes. =)
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Maybe it will be updated in time for the dupe.
The 'Economics of Electronic Data Exchange' only apply if you insist that because you CAN distribute something at zero cost, and share it with strangers, you must be allowed to.
First off, your entire phrasing is biased - when you say "allowed to" it completely avoids the fact that sharing information is the natural order of things - you make it sound like we, as humans, naturally have some higher authority dictating what is and what is not allowed. While the State is constantly trying to assume that role, that does not make such authority natural law.
What educated people (vs the warez d00ds) are arguing regarding distribution is that the inherent scalability problems of physical distribution mean that, as a society, giving up the natural right to copy in exchange for increased incentives to artists was a good bargain for society. But the inherent ease of electronic distribution make that contract much less of a bargain for society today. The social contract must be renegotiated and that negotiation must take into account the costs to society as well as the benefits to society.
Many people argue that the costs of any sort of distribution restrictions are far too high -- in particular that enforcement is close to impossible, making it extremely expensive and that it leads to inefficient utilization of resources, or more plainly, it causes lots of wasted effort and lost opportunities which hurt society as a whole and serve only to enrich a few.
There are many areas where we are fighting the exact same battle against technological abuse - where governments insist that because they CAN do something with technology, they must be allowed to (snooping, cluster bombs, chemical weapons, data mining).
The difference between the two concepts here is huge. The governments in question exist solely by the will of the people. They are a social construct that has no inherent rights, not even an existence, without the people they are meant to serve and certainly no natural freedoms. It is entirely right and normal that the people should define what is and is not permissible for their government to do. Just because the people nominally in charge of governing have begun to think of themselves as an independent, self-sustaining entity does not change things - it just indicates that we've got problems that need to be fixed.
There is also the economics of production - even free culture has costs (the cost of your free time) - and for most artists, musicians and authors, those costs are eventually too high.
You are spot on with this, though perhaps you don't realize it. Digital networks have reduced distribution costs to near zero. But they have not, and can not, have a similar effect on production costs. Production as become more efficient as a result of digital networking, but it is unlikely to ever approach zero the way distribution costs have.
So, what should logically follow from that fact alone is that we should stop using distribution rights as a way to encourage creation. If distribution has zero marginal cost, then any market that is even close to competitive will cause pricing to approach zero too - thus making distribution rights completely valueless.
Instead, we should be looking at ways in which the production rights can be made valuable enough to encourage creation of new works.
My favorite example of such a system is commission-based production. Today, the studios act as a kind of venture capitalist - they fund a bunch of productions, fully expecting to take losses on a majority of them. But they also expect that out of the bunch, they will find one or two start performers that will earn back the losses of all the other failures and then some. In either case, the studios have no interest in the actual content produced, only whether or not it will sell.
With a commission system, the role of venture capitalist is spread out across the entire paying audience. The creator would set a price for the production and release
Jherek - Firstly, congratulations on picking a pseudonym from my all time favourite book, and an author who is quite pertinent to the debate, given his anarchist inclinations, and his experiments (in the 70s) with 'open source' literature (thinking specifically of the Cornelius stories written by other authors in NW).
I've meant to ask him his views on this for ages, so today I did - new thread under the Q&A at Multiverse if you wish to join in.
>>The 'Economics of Electronic Data Exchange' only apply if you insist
>> that because you CAN distribute something at zero cost, and share it with >>strangers, you must be allowed to.
>First off, your entire phrasing is biased - when you say "allowed to"
>it completely avoids the fact that sharing information is the natural order
>of things - you make it sound like we, as humans, naturally
>have some higher authority dictating what is and what is not allowed.
Dare I say that citing natural law and that sharing information is the natural order, also implies there is a higher authority dictating what is permitted.
I guess the debate here is whether recordings, books, etc, are 'information' or 'property'. My view is that they are actually closer to the latter than the former. If you want to go with what's natural - yes, you can't stop an idea, you can't stop me hearing a song and then going away and playing my own version, or writing my own version of Don Quixote.
An idea, a story, a song all exist independently of a particular instance.
A recording, on the other hand, is quite 'unnatural'.
>While the State is constantly trying to assume that role, that does not
> make such authority natural law.
I didn't say that it did. What I do believe is that many books, records, films, etc, only exist due to the existence of a legal framework based around copyright and royalties - and their relationship with technology.
We have long accepted the argument that the owner of a printing press is not permitted to just print copies of an authors work, despite that being a technological feasability.
>What educated people (vs the warez d00ds) are arguing regarding
> distribution is that the inherent scalability problems of physical distribution
> mean that, as a society, giving up the natural right to copy in exchange for >increased incentives to artists was a good bargain for society.
>But the inherent ease of electronic distribution make that contract much less >of a bargain for society today. The social contract must be renegotiated and >that negotiation must take into account the costs to society as well as the >benefits to society.
I would agree wholly. It just happens that I still think there is still some value for society in giving up our right to do as we please in order to encourage artists. The fact that we can all act as duplicators doesn't substantially change the bargain. What are the actual benefits for society?
>Many people argue that the costs of any sort of distribution restrictions are >far too high -- in particular that enforcement is close to impossible, making it >extremely expensive and that it leads to inefficient utilization of resources, or >more plainly, it causes lots of wasted effort and lost opportunities which hurt >society as a whole and serve only to enrich a few.
I certainly think technological restrictions are pointless, and must be resisted, for most of the above reasons. I just think the best approach remains civil, rather than criminal law, and a royalty based system.
In my mind, it is something like speeding; almost all cars can exceed legal limits, yet we do not want artificial restrictions on our cars. We all speed, but only to an extent - very few people do 100 in a 30 area. It is less a law than a formalisation of the social contract.
>>There is also the economics of production - even free culture has costs (the >>cost of your free time) - and for most artist
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh
There's a whole new set of troll FUD you go need to defend and take a karma hit with. So get on it bitch. BTW, does he at least extend you the courtesy of a reach around once in a while?
Jherek - Michael Moorcock's reply is up on the Multiverse forum - http://www.multiverse.org/fora/showthread.php?t=35 28
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh