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Thai IT Minister Slams Open Source
patiwat writes "Thailand's newly appointed Information and Communications Technology Minister has slammed open source software as useless and full of bugs: 'With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated... As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good source code without open source.' This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government."
If nobody can make money from it ...
Maybe he would be so kind as to provide links where Netcraft confirms that IBM, Sun and Google are dead or dying?
Spoken like someone without a clue. Sheesh.
He sounds eminently qualified for politics.
in a public ceremony today, the thai government thanked microsoft for their generous assistance in lining government coffers, i mean, developing thailand's it infrastructure.
"OMGZ! Microsoft has set us up the BRIBEZ!"
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Thailand is such a *massive* creator of open-source software, it shall surely die without their support.
How much did Microsoft pay the Thai IT minister? Or is this the case of a government official knowing nothing about what he/she/it is regulating?
His statement, "As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good source code without open source," shows that he does not know the true hacker ethic. A true hacker writes code to be proud of, not because he/she is being paid but because of pride in code.
Fight Spammers!
Steve Ballmer must go to Thailand for a regular rub'n'tug by the sounds of it.
Task Mangler
that thai woman at the thai restaurant would never give me one of the recipes. at first I thought only the hispanic cooks in the back new, but now I know the real truth. *rolls up in sock drawer and cries to sleep*
Netcraft confirms: IBM, Sun, and Google make boatloads of money off of the countless unnamed and unpaid developers who write the code that they use. Does the amount they contribute back exceed the amount they gain by benefiting from the work of others?
You know what? You and the Thai IT Minister are right. I don't know how I missed it for all these years.
OK. Everyone, let's pack it up and go home. Some one be sure and shutdown the web servers on the way out. I hear that Best Buy is hiring, maybe I'll try there.
"...he claimed that most open source software is often abandoned and not developed, and leads to a lot of low-quality software with lots of bugs." It might be true that most projects are abandoned, but I like the fact that all of the decent (or better) OSS is ignored. Except Linux. The professor couldn't handle a geek coup.
Politician blabs on about a subject he knows nothing about. News story at 11.
At first I was going to bid the minister a hearty, "Good luck starting from scratch!" Then I realized that he's choosing a path guaranteed to furnish him with a huge government budget and staff to control. I figured this out when I noticed he never used the word 'cheaper' when comparing open to closed source options.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
"With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain."
I am hoping something was lost in translation, because if it wasn't this guy is not only not getting the idea but totally missing the point. Then one must ask, what kind of country has an "IT Minister"? I bet he gets razzed for that... in fact that my explain this. If the guy can't install anything open source without causing errors, I really don't think he belongs in that job.
Great Intellect...
Hmmmm... By what means was his message delivered? What kind of server?
HTTP/1.1 200 OKDate: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:15:11 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) PHP/4.2.2
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.2.2
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
This only shows how bad the minister really is. It is beyound his mind that someone does something for free to make the world better. Besides that there also is a viable business model behind giving code away for free and that is support for people willing to pay for on time support.
Let's not forget that Thailand's legitimate government was toppled by the army a short while ago. I'm sure this clown is the least of Thailand's troubles right now.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated...
He's so right! Open source stuff is teh suck!
Check out Windows XP - it's not open source, it has no bugs, and it has totally progressed for the past five years!
Erm... or not.
Wait a second... no progress, tons of bugs, outdated products... this all sounds very familiar. Are we sure this guy isn't bashing Microsoft products instead of open source?
I can't say I'm in a position to properly evaluate this, but I wouldn't exactly consider the Thai government very trustworthy right now.
A country that doesn't like open government, doesn't like open sourced software.
They did have democracy, but the military 'closed' that.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
We are all sorry for Firefox 2.
The one OSS that actually became popular among Win users, and it actually made people get back to IE .
Almost all of the money made by open source has been made by exploiting open source. Yes most of the internet runs on OSS. But how many of the billions if not trillions of dollars has made it back to the pockets of the developers of the big parts like Apache? I would guess not much since even Apache has a 'donations' link on their site.
And you, mister politician, why should you serve your community? How about telling your people that you are looking for money, fame, and power? Fortunately, there are still people in this world who are not in it for the money.
As far as I can see he is a professor at an engineering university. His publication list suggests that he does inded know how to code. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=+Sitthichai+Po okaiyaudom
I think he is going to make a bot of money before Thailand returns to democracy.
The ICT Ministry will soon put forward draft Acts to the National Legislative Assembly on cybercrime and on web sites that are pornographic or considered lese majeste, allowing officials to arrest, fine and imprison offenders.
lese majesty also lèse majesté (lz mj-st)
n. pl. lese majesties or lèse majestés
1. An offense or crime committed against the ruler or supreme power of a state.
2. An affront to another's dignity.
>> The new ICT Minister expressed his belief in censorship and said that even the most avid freedom of speech advocate
>> would change his mind if he sees doctored pictures of his daughter's head on a naked body posted on the Internet.
The man had bad experiences before -- who can blame him.
This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government."
Well, considering how the government turnover was handled, is that actually a surprise?
When the mortgage and car payments bills grow into a huge pile next to your computer and you have a wife with six kids, writing software for free is just plain stupid. I guess most open source authors think somebody might be interested in hiring, but little do they realize its much easier to copy the whole software tree and hire some vietnam programmers for 13 cents an hour to takeover.... "Silly Programmer, Tricks are for kids."
Maybe, just maybe, people are not in it for the money. Maybe they love to code for "the pure fun of it". After all, millions of people do crosswords, solve sudoku, climb mountains, ride bicycles, and blast apart aliens, for the sheer joy of it. They don't get paid a red cent (or ) for doing it. Maybe they like the recognition of being the one that wrote $widgit$. Maybe they want to put "Accomplishments: Developed $wigit$ software" on their resume. Maybe they're already so filthy stinking rich that a few measly $100K a year isn't worth the hassle of cowtowing to a pointy haired boss with no more imagination than week old oatmeal, who couldn't code his way out of a paper bag if all he had to do is double click on the "Escape from paper bag" icon.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
However, it is interesting to note that it was running Linux about a month ago.
Well, everyone should stick to what they know and not shame themselves by useless proud ignorance. I think the proper reaction to this speech should be total dismissal and disregard. Otherwise he might think his opinion counts.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
... is this news?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
this guy is not only not getting the idea but totally missing the point.
He is a smart politician.
That means: what he says has little or nothing to do with what he thinks. A politician says something for one of two reasons:
Once you understand this, the world will start making more sense to you.
-1 Flamebait
to what the man has to say. After all, they have found a very efficient solution to all their election problems, maybe he knows something we dont.
What is interesting is his motivation - could this be paid for by Microsoft bribe money? A few dollars buys a lot of FUD in Thailand, and they do seem to have redoubled efforts to screw up opensource lately.
I've often wondered this myself. What is the reward for developing open source software? If companies can come in and use open source components in their own creation in a way that they make money without violating licenses, but at the same time aren't obligated to give anything back to the community, where's the motivation for new developers to go open source? Not everybody operates with an altruistic "I'm giving back to the community" motivation.
Personally, I don't develop software just so that I can be an anonymous contributor to future technology. I do it to pay the rent, buy cars, etc.
What am I missing here? (And I'm not being sarcastic with that, I genuinely don't understand why anyone would want to share the fundamentals of their creation in a way that would compromise any potential future earnings.)
the man has a point.
just look at 99% of projects on freshmeat.
opensource usually means a very short lifecycle.
that's offcourse excluding popular projects that manage to find founding or their coders don't have money problems.
and there a too few of them.
and yes...he's right about the bugs as well.sure they get fixed eventually(in the projects that don't die).
but the simple reality is opensource coders usually lack skills.If you have a problem with this comment download ANY RANDOM project and look at the source.
The only good thing about this sort of coding is that it's free.Because most of them would be in court if they actually sold such a project to a client.
Write once, exploit everywhere.
os trabalhos e os dias: http://zmoreira.net
"Thai software slammed as useless and full of bugs. OSS community says 'keep your code, we don't want to see the source'."
What was the last piece of software I ever saw coming out from Thailand?
Is there any?
-jl
OK, so he's an idiot politician.
The good thing is, he's an idiot politician who knows the terms "open source" and "source code" and can use them more or less coherently in a sentence. This shows that these concepts are becoming more mainstream.
Better, if a politician makes a comment like this, it starts a debate. People who didn't know what "open source" means might start to want to find out.
Even better, his arguments are ridiculously confused and easy to dismiss. "Public domain"? He may have power in Thailand, but governments in other countries looking seriously at open source software are not likely to be swayed by anything he's said. If Microsoft really were bribing him, you'd think they could have fed him some more convincing lines.
The only thing left is to look forward to the results of his policy. If for any reason things don't go as well as planned... perhaps it will be time for a different approach.
If you all Google Slashdot, will it Slashdot Google?
He forget the worst part of open source - how badly it clogs up the series of tubes that is teh interweb. With closed source, all the code is in nice packages, with labels and monetary value and everything. That's why Windows, IE, SQL Server all zip through the tubes like a greased up lemming through out car exhaust. Try stuffing some of the Linux in there, and whooboy, you're gonna clog them tubes.
Gee, Slashdot is at it again.
Post an idiotic flamebait article to draw in comments. Haven't I seen it here before?
Obviously he missed the point that Open Source softwares are still copyrighted, with even restritive terms to guard itself in free forms.
- Compl Yue Still (http://www.ableverse.org - Programming By Nature)
a town with money's a little like a mule with a spinning wheel. no-one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it
An authentic thai told me:
"open source" has almost no meaning in thailand because 99% of software you can buy is pirated
it's true though you can buy "Microsoft" Windows for like $5
at what seems like a real computer store
Necessity, not profit, is the mother of invention.
If it's needed, it'll get done.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
...and the next party coming to power will have to face the proprietary, thailand-exclusive, bug ridden, weak security office software that the previous government ordered to be developed.
Do not trust this signature.
I wonder how much M$ paid him. And how much pie-charts and presentation they have fed to him. Because you know, the only company which makes money out of OS and development software - is Microsoft. Everybody else are just trying to survive, barely.
No big software houses have emerged in last decade - because investors afraid to put money anywhere close to Microsoft.
Of course, previous sentence make sense only if you excluded F/LOSS from the modern industry image.
Well, that's why F/LOSS isn't yet completely "gratis". For all kind of medium/bigger projects you better have a couple of seniors on board.
But again, that's the same for adoption of any new technology to build your IT infrastructure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
This guy is just another idiot.
Why does slashdot make it so hard to ignore these idiots by continuing to post stories about them?
He is seeing it from the perspective of a software company that wants to sell software.
FLOSS is from the perspective of the user that wants to actually use the software.
Businesses love FLOSS because it saves huge amounts of money by not making their developers recreate the wheel.
If I am a programmer and I can write good code then I'll get a good job writing good code. Who cares if I give it away for free, I still have a stable job that pays well.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
..that the Minister seems so keen to promote, such as the "First Thai animation movie 'Khan Kluay'".... there's no open source software being used there.... right?
... must all be on proprietary software that doesn't touch BSD, Linux, anything GNU, etc... Amazing!
Render farms, graphics workstations,
coding is life
James Clark, the noted XML expert and open source programmer was until very recently working for SIPA in charge of their open source strategy -- so there is presumably some specific political axe being ground here.
It is even more moronic. Our country's very own Software Industry Association is opposing a gov't bill mandating educational institutions to offer open source training to prepare a possible shift to open source software in government, stating "Government has no business or expertise mandating the use of one technology platform over the other. Government's role is to partner with the private sector in providing the environment and business framework in which innovation, creativity and freedom of informed choice can thrive, especially in the area of technology which is characterized by dynamism and disruptive change."
_ article.php?article_id=32834
If they bothered to read what they just said, it clearly shows a total lack of understanding of FOSS (which isn't even a platform in itself) and its principles.
While our third-world country seeks freedom in FOSS, our very own defenders of the faith, the very same people in the position to effect such change strongly oppose it. As with the case of Thailand, I smell Microsoft here, but that's another story.
TFA:
http://technology.inq7.net/infotech/infotech/view
I hope that James Clark will be able to help correct the situation.
In case you haven't heard of James Clark, he wrote groff (for displaying man pages amongst other things), XSLT, the expat XML Parser and the Relax NG schema language. I'd be very surprised if anybody here hasn't used his stuff... Take a look at his bio.
-Dom
You know what? You and the Thai IT Minister are right. I don't know how I missed it for all these years.
IBM and Sun both use OpenSSH and IBM has even gone so far as to say that they WON'T SUPPORT OpenSSH for their customers, but that they should go to the OpenSSH/OpenBSD mailing lists for support.
And to date, IBM and Sun have donated this much to the OpenBSD project, for the ongoing support and development of OpenSSH...
-$0.00-ZERO DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS ONLY-
It is TRUE to say that IBM and Sun are exploiting OSS for all they can. And why the hell would they not? They are money focused corporations after all.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
PS. Yes, that Thai minister is a 100% A grade fuckwit. There is plenty of IP in OSS and if he had the faintest clue, he would look at the BSD's and BSD licenced code. Privately hiring key developers would be beneficial to both too. As does happen with BSD developers.
"If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated"
Funnily enough I thought that was the closed source model - IE6 being the perfect example.
i guess that tsunami hasn't humbled them enough yet.
I don't know if any of you are aware - but a Congressman from the Philippines made a bill (not yet a law) that mandates the use of Open Source in all government offices here in the Philippines. FOSS BILL: www.chinwong.com/Documents/FOSS_bill_draft_.pdf Now with this Thailand (our neighbor) news and opposition from the Philippine Software Industry Association here: http://technology.inq7.net/infotech/infotech/view_ article.php?article_id=32834
It could mean the end of it all for the Open Source Revolution in our country.
**Sigh** If only there was Neo to battle those black shirts.
It's quite simple. Most software developers don't get paid per copy. In terms of lines of code, or developer time, or most metrics you might use, something like 80% of software is custom code for a single customer.
Open source software allows developers to provide this for less. The result is that more, and better software is created. I beleive this is what they call "creation of wealth". This doesn't apply so mush to operating systems and desktop software, but there are other reasons for people to develop these. The developers often still get paid. You can even sell the software.
The crime of lèse majesté is likely aimed at anyone who could possibly criticise the Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej. This guy has built a heck of a cult of personality around him that Stalin would be envious of. He managed to install and uninstall dictators and (a sort of) democracy at a whim, and it would appear no one dares to confront him. In fact, no government seems to be able to claim legitimacy if not from the king.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Gee, I guess when you get appointed to government by some generals that pulled off a military coup, you do not really need to know what the hell you are talking about.
Its not like he needs to impress the voters or anything.
1976 called. It wants Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists back.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
/Library/Documentation/Acknowledgements.rtf (OS X 10.4)
"Thai Open Source Software Center Ltd, Clark Cooper et al. ( expat )
Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000 Thai Open Source Software Center Ltd and Clark Cooper. Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003 Expat maintainers"
When you check Answers.com ( http://www.answers.com/topic/expat-xml )
"Expat is a stream-oriented XML 1.0 parser library, written in C. Expat was one of the first open source XML parsers and has been incorporated into many open source projects, including the Apache HTTP Server, Mozilla, Perl, Python and PHP."
I think it is time to move new home for that project with coup govt. like that.
True in a way, But. how many trillions of dollars, made the way back to iis programers?, no they got a month sallery like for any other job. and the other http deamons, well... if you want to earn 'trillions of dollars' it's not what you produce it's how you hype it, and then exploit the market afterwards.
I would hardly call it exploiting. It would be exploiting if people were forced to do their programming in a sort of sweatshop. As it is, it is a deliberate choice to share your code.
As it is there are some very compelling reasons for a coder to make open-source software:
I for one am rather positive that most companies give back to the community one way or another, by employing OSS developers, giving back code, and by paying money. As far as I have heard Apache is quite healthy; and has big deals with large corporations, and I suppose this will be the case for many of the 'core' projects.
If you are concerned that your code will be abused by the big corporations, don't open-source it. The license is clear.
Wow, I have been wondering (along with many others I'm sure) about the secret technique which makes Thailand such a domineering player in the global IT industry. What secret knowledge has enabled them to sweep all before them as they stride unchallenged through the cut-throat global IT ecosystem? What hidden gem of truth has turbocharged their unbroken string of victories as they tirelessly cut down one megacorporation after another?
Well, it turns out, the secret to their success all along has simply been, "Open Source Sucks!" Wow, who woulda thunk it.
Oh wait, what's that you say? You can't name a single Thailand software company? They make no contribution at all to the world of IT? They're just spouting crap about OSS while running Microsoft? They couldn't develop their own web server software to save their lives, closed, open or whatever?
Ah, ok, forget about it then.
.. coming from someone in a country where the average monthly salary wouldn't buy a legit copy of Windows without depriving the family of basic needs. I wonder if this is simply someone trying to get into bed with software vendors. And don't get me started on 'buggy'.
AFAIK, Thailands' universities have quite a decent track record in Open Source, with various school projects targeting low cost IT for schools (a bit like what happened later in Spain in the Extremadura region) and I think they have decent code for OpenOffice as well, with algorithms to support spell checking for a language where spaces between words appear more or less optional.
In summary, I think some people shouldn't be allowed near the press for their own good..
Insert
In other news:6 0%25_"less_funny"
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Thailand_now_
Thailand is now 60% less funny than it was the day before yesterday, according to the Swedish Institute for Rating Amusing Countries.
The Netcraft link you posted does claim that it was running Linux in September, but it also claims that the web server was still IIS. Perhaps this is me mis-interpreting the way that Netcraft presents its data, but how does one run IIS on a Linux platform? Unless it was something like Apache temporarily configured to report that it was Microsoft-IIS, but I can't see the point in doing that.
The IP address is also radically different, so my guess is that the domain was temporarily redirected to another hosting service in September that had a server configured quite differently, and possibly wasn't reporting its state as accurately.
However, it is interesting to note that it was running Linux about a month ago [netcraft.com].
Just a minute. It says it's running Microsoft IIS on Linux. AFAIK, that's not possible.
Wonder if this will affect the order...
After seeing MS in action, I guess I've become cynical because this has "Microsoft" written all over it.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
Six kids?!?!? Some would argue that anybody who is so financially inept he can't hardly handle his mortgage and car loan payments and still decides it is a good idea to father *six* kids is 'stupid', a few would even go so far as to suggest that anybody who takes out a loan to buy a car stupid. Personally I agree with neither them nor you since making such broad condemnations of people is asinine, kind of like your previous post.
I look forward to Thailand withdrawing from the world academic community. Goddamn all those university researchers publishing their work in academic journals ! If they aren't monetarizing it, their efforts are worthless.
Who Cares what the Thai IT Minister Says? Its not Japan, China, or South Korea, so get over it.
To be honest while I dislike these guys views on Open Source which are just plain wrong. What really gets me is his views on censorship
The new ICT Minister expressed his belief in censorship and said that even the most avid freedom of speech advocate would change his mind if he sees doctored pictures of his daughter's head on a naked body posted on the Internet.
anyway I'm off to see if I can't doctor images pictures of his daughter with Gimp and then post it an apache server
This is the guy who rose to power due to a military coup. Who's saying he's not more corrupt that the ones they booted out? His comments seem to suggest someone ... maybe a corporation or two ... have been whispering in his ear. Or does he actually claim to be a programmer and know WTF he's talking about?
:)
Thailand is sliding downhill. Pretty soon Thais will look over the border at Cambodia and long for their transparent government
...coming from the country with the largest per capta of "Donkey Shows"....I wouldn't give his comments too much weight.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Netcraft never claims anything!
If the OSS community had a lobby (and ideology) similar to that of the record industry, I imagine we would have "computer taxes" being collected by some organisation like FSF and distributed to open source developers, much like many contries today have taxes on empty storage media collected by copyright organisations.
Where a Military Junta suspended the constitution and democracy ?
l and#The_2006_Interim_Constitution
Or am I dreaming ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Thai
I for one.... welcome the day our military overlords drown in a sea of zero-day exploits.
That day should be sometime around about patch Tuesday.
not really difficult to see where is the true for this one ;-))
I really like this point too:
"All our problems start with a lack of transparency. If people are not corrupt, procurement will be faster and better."
pathetic...
Open source programs do not install/run/modify themselves.
Small businesses, estores using open source programs employ much more developers around the world to modify and twist the open source programs than microsoft does for its own work in total. Hence open source programs provide immeasurable variety and adaptability to the degree that they can fit a canadian kilt sales store's needs and japanese bansai tree distributor's needs at the same time. Can start such examples now and we wont be finished by 2 days from now.
Your much touted closed source produced stuff cant provide this flexibility. they are hard and stiff. they force the users to play by their rules, whereas open source plays by the users' rules.
Read radical news here
Perhaps also he should think of abandoning TCP/IP also for all Thai computer infrastructure - of course, Thailand would no longer be able to connect to the Internet but at least it wouldn't be using "buggy, open source software" based around TCP/IP.
NetBEUI anyone?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Almost all of the money made by open source has been made by exploiting open source. Yes most of the internet runs on OSS. But how many of the billions if not trillions of dollars has made it back to the pockets of the developers of the big parts like Apache? I would guess not much since even Apache has a 'donations' link on their site.
Apache Software Foundation (apache.org) has a donation link on their site because they are a non-profit corporation. So by definition they don't make money. That does not mean they don't get money and resources; it just means that they use it all on improving the product.
That said, the companies listed (and many others) have indeed contributed to as well as profited from open source software. IBM spends billions every year on Linux alone. And where do you think all that code comes from? the magic code monkeys? People that work for these companies are either paid directly to work on open source software or allowed to do so because of permissive policies that derive directly from the fact that those companies are making money from the profit of their labour.
Meanwhile all of this work is shared and the wheel does not have to be reinvented. IBM benefits from the code contributed by Sun as well as Chucky down the street. And it works the other way too. And all of them are making money ... I mean even Chucky gets a job or can do consulting work because he's been working on this stuff all that time. Like when AOL hired all the Mozilla people. Or RMS's consulting, which probably has not made him particularly rich, though he is not exactly starving to death.
There are a lot of ways to make money from open source. Some of the easiest ways involve working with or for companies, but there are others. Still, to focus too much on the aspect of direct monetary gain is to miss the greatest benefits of free software / open source. The best thing about the software is when you actually get to USE the software. Sure, you can contribute code if you want to, and you can customize it for your needs, but ultimately you derive gain from the fact that you can use the software freely, unencumbered by onerous licenses and likely free as in beer as well. That means that whether you need software for your business or for personal use you have easy access to it and you don;t really have to do anything to get it other than go get it.
Maybe your business is making money from free software (lots of people and companies do). Maybe you are doing something else but you use free software to accomplish those ends (way more companies are doing that). Maybe you just use it to learn, or because you feel like it. But no matter what you end up saving time, money, and other resources because you are benefitting from the community, and thus you profit from the use of Open Source / Free Software.
Almost all of the money made by open source has been made by exploiting open source
...
Which is the goal of open source, which shows you can make money with open source,
Yes most of the internet runs on OSS. But how many of the billions if not trillions of dollars has made it back to the pockets of the developers of the big parts like Apache?
Why this money should make it back to their pockets ? Did they ask for it ?
They can make a company like any other one out there, that makes money exploiting their server.
But Apache is a foundation.
So your question doesn't make sense.
FOSS is not sth you can talk about like it is an individual. M. Shuttleworth is an example that show another picture.
Why do you even expect a few individuals to rake in the profits like they were several companies ? Because the billions/trillions you talk about were not made by some individuals, but by all the market selling Apache related services.
I would guess not much since even Apache has a 'donations' link on their site
Apache is not a public company that makes money, but a software foundation. Can't you make a difference ?
Load balancer
The Thai information minister is right in that the motivation in closed source software to write good code (read code that sells better) is generally higher than that of open source software (even though there are very many exceptions of course). And, in general, companies like closed source for the simple fact that they have known support and someone they can blame in the case of a disaster. But he is also awfully wrong as to why this is.
If companies providing support and training for Open Source were to better advertise themselves, they would capture far more of the market. As it is, neither Red Hat nor SuSE nor Mandriva advertise much in public. The joke is that Ubuntu gets far more mainstream media attentions than any of the others, and that without Microsoft type of FUDvertising (word coined by me).
As for Thai companies providing good code, they may do so in Thailand for the Thai market, since localization to Thai is probably not high on many companies' priorities (it's ironic that Open Source support Thai better than most closed source software packages do), but they certainly don't have much say in the market outside Thailand.
.... that Thai ministers are for sale. he is reguritating the same fud MS has peddled for years, and it's all been proven to be bullshit. next please.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Benjamin Franklin never patented any of his ideas, and look at how society benefited from it.
It's possible that was a factor, it's certainly a quick way to change policy. But Thailand was about due for another coup around now anyway, so it's hard to guess what factors are really involved. The "free" trade "negotiations" with Thailand were also going poorly in the eyes of the MPAA/RIAA/Disney/MS crowd.
There has been a history of one country *cough*USA*cough or another nudging along uprisings here and there to advance specific corporate interests or agendas. Many governments toppled that way have been toppled for less.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The funny thing is that Microsoft, the biggest entity in closed source, wouldn't have invested so much with the Novell deal if they thought of OSS the way this bafoon thinks of it. (I can't believe I just used MS as a pro-oss example, we are living in strange times folks).
[alk]
The single largest most prominent web browser from the biggest software producer (or is that IBM?) in the world does not properly support the single most useful advance in web page standards for years, and yeah, that's style sheets, not ajax
Deleted
I wonder if it was cheaper then bribing Novell...
........3..........2........1....
How do you mean "slams"? He says, and I quote:
``Anyone can use it''
That's a compliment if ever there was one. Finally, the year of Linux on the desktop has come! The Thai Minister of Information confirms it!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I've been using open source software for quite some time. Some are OK. But overall they are bad and next to useless.
For an example, can LINUX take in automatically your USB drive or external USB HDD or at least a floppy disk ? How about stability... are they so stable? you even need to manually refresh to see the new folder you just made. How about support structure... stupidly useless... when you need to do something no where to get information.
What I realize after using open source things is, it is made for people to who really like wasting their valuable time just for nothing and reduce their productivity. So I bravely slam on all open source fans... you suck big time.
I do respect all the software companies like microsoft, apple, adobe etc. for the effort they are putting to make things better. Also I do find it is quite logical to pay a price for a software because developing is quite tough and it need to be paid off.
Fact of the matter is, in asia people are poor and everyone don't earn that enough to afford high prices software. So I suggest major software companies to come up with stripped down versions of their softwares for asian market. That's the best way to fight all these pirated stuff.
What a moron...
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I think this is kinda weird but this is how I see it. You know that show on cable, Junkyard Wars, where they take two teams and they have to accomplish something? That whole idea reminds me of the Open Source argument. You have two teams, they use their skill and knowledge and available resources to meet a goal. And sometimes they need to make a dune buggy or scuba suit, and maybe team A's device is better than team B only because they were more clever or had a better selection of resources.
This is where the analogy gets a bit strange. Let's say the two teams were still competing against each other but take the motivation away. Not just a contest, but let's say the goal was extremely important. Now the teams are stranded on a Junkyard Island and *need* to make a device to survive, to remove themselves from the Island.
Do you think they would do a better job individually or working together?
Intellectual Property at this point becomes "my team is better than yours no matter what resources we have, and we're gonna leave you here to rot".
FLR
For some reason, public rhetoric about open source's downfall seems to center around a false belief that "open source" means that any developer can submit a change to a controlled source, i.e. to Sun's JVM. Obviously that would make it crappy software, but that isn't what is happening. Anyone can SEE the source, which is helpful for learning, but not anyone can just modify i.e. Sun's "master" copy of the JVM...
stuff |
A comment like this coming from the government of such a dynamic and well-known technological powerhouse of a country like THAILAND (grin) will certainly be the death-knell for open source.
Yup, this guy is either a shill for some commercial software company, or a buffoon (IMHO). So what if THAILAND government policy is anti-open source....sheesh, who gives a flying *!#$*!
If they want to drag their own economy into the weeds let 'em go, who cares? (ooops, they are already there!)
...from the code that OTHER open source guys share with you. You get to jump into the business world with a free toolbox worth billions, some huge number. That is what is called a "good deal" most places. Are you paying for that? No, but you get to *use it*. That is the main "currency" of the open source world, the "bank" is the repositories all over that you get to withdraw from what you need to go to work with. Now, take that "currency" and invest it in your employer's or your own business building and selling and servicing other things. That is the main way to keep "making money" with open source. Use the HUGE free toolbox you can aquire in some other, regular business, and keep donating to the open pool of tools.
So now we know who paid for the recent military coup in Thailand, eh Bill?
Sun's first big open source project was releasing OpenOffice under GPL. OpenOffice has had a very large effect on the adoption of open source on the desktop, especially Linux.
I notice most of the posts are about freeloaders and opensource, not addressing the points of the Thai minister. We should be addressing them, possibly directly to the new Gvt. of Thailand.
1. Stability of open source, esp. Linux
2. Scalability of open source (embedded to super computers)
3. Support by US NSA for SeLinux to harden it
4. Adopted for use in most of the top 500 supercomputers
5. Billions contributed by IBM, Google, etc. -- all paid
6. Very low barrier to entry (up front costs, free development licenses, etc.)
Also, is he attacking the OLPC?
"Thailand's newly appointed Iced Tea Minister has slammed open leaf tea as useless and full of bugs: "With homegrown tea, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your drinks become public domain, tasty, tasty, public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no steeping and the tea leaves quickly becomes tasteless... As a drinker, if I can buy Lipton, why should I give it away? Thailand can do good tea without homegrown." This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government."
-- Thai Ice Tea Minister
Originally developed by James Clark an expatriot Brit living in (of all places) Thailand! http://www.jclark.com/xml/expat.html.
A prime example of great open source code.
"If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated..."
How much money did you make, i.e. were you given, to say such a thing...
Yeah, call me bitter.
Yes. And many others are able to use it and make even more money from it.
I am amazed that folks even try to argue what you are arguing. I would guess that no less than 3/4 of the code being written in the Linux kernel today is by fully paid coders. Likewise, consider the code in Apache, KDE, and GNOME. Apache probably has about 60-70% by paid coders. And GNOME is probably 80-90% paid coders (sun supports them for Solaris use).
IBM, Sun, Google; Here is a suggestion. Please create a study to go though the code and find out how much code is contributed by paid vs. unpaid coders. If you do it, also find out how many are paid in the industry (i.e. they are working professionals) i.e. they are working on something else, but contribute in their off-time. These folks are basically telling management that they do not have a clue. It is time to end these spurious arguments.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
can I mark this story as a Troll?
"open source" as a business model isn't a new concept.
Basically you are giving away a product and making money selling support for that product.
Gillette made a lot of money (and probably still does) off of "giving away" the razor (or selling it at a loss) and then making a healthy profit off of selling the replacement razor blades.
The video game "console" industry has also used this approach - they are willing to sell the "console" portion of the system at "cost" or at a small loss so they can make big bucks selling games...
other examples exist, but you get the idea...
Finally, someone who is not afraid to tell the truth about open source.
I've always felt that "open source" was a philosophy that came out of Berkley in the 1960s.
I have a vision of hundreds of unpaid open source programmers chained together and to their desks, sitting in front of computers, producing free software.
Excuse me, did I say free? The distributors of that "free" software, of course, get paid. They know that "free" software will get nowhere unless there is some barter arrangement.
But, then, I'm probably just a fud, idiot, moron, clueless.
Fata viam invenient.
Having used both, and only careing about what works (both well and has a low learn cuver but also offerse good productivity at any endof the curve), not closed vs. open source, I have to say that the average quality I find in closed-source commercial products is better than the average quality I find in open source products - the necessity in the closed source is to get money, and to do that they have to have decently reliable and user friendly software. That being the case, you can still find many open source applications that are just as good, and sometimes even better in most fields, it just takes a lot of sifting through many steaming piles before you find something.
Some people just don't like sifting through crap.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
"A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time cretain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. Who, then, will invest the funds to renovate and nourish its future life, when on one owns it? How does the consumer benefit from that scenario? The answer is, there is no benefit."
-Jack Valenti, quoted in "Digital Copyright" by Jessica Litman
Thank god Hollywood has stepped up to save Shakespeare et al.
So what? Firefox is ONE - just ONE - project. And one of the biggest and well-known OS ones, with funding, corporate support etc. As is said in my previous posting, big opensource projects usually develop some sort of quality assurance. New code is reviewed, only core developers can actually commit to the repository etc. IE development pretty much stopped because of MS' ignorance. Firefox proves my point about availability, but does not prove that OS code is automatically better than CS one.
A good example is FMOD vs. Audiere/OpenAL/etc. There is absolutely no other sound library capable of what FMOD 4 does. Audiere is nice, but does not have 3D positional audio at all. OpenAL requires some vendor-specific (read: Creative Labs-specific) extensions for EAX. Other than that, no 3D audio. FMOD 4 can calculate 3D audio in *software* (although it does not sound as good as EAX hardware) and supports geometry obstruction (= close the door, and the TV running in the room is not as loud). Where can I find THIS in an opensource solution?
The solution to this is: the FMOD developer is VERY good, comes from the demo scene of the early 90s, and has tons of experience with software mixers, with actual optimizing, sound in general, and writing this library (it exists for several years now). As I said, good devs are NOT expendable. Which leads us to one keen insight our friend Ballmer had long ago: developers, developers, developers. They are everything. The question of code quality is not answered with OS/CS, its answered with the skills of the developer. Good devs produce good results, no matter if its CS or OS. The same goes for average/bad developers.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
This is just more proof that the Thai, US, EU, and most others globally have identical political/government socioeconomic problems that oppress the best and screw-up the rest! USA politicians definitely prove the point with their corporatist fixation.
...), and totally unqualified and inexperienced at everything they do in political office, and they get good pay and benefits for incompetence, corruption, and failure. For everything they earn, including citizens animosity, they just cannot be certified losers, unless they can create a winning terrorist paramilitary.
... we must be thankful for god's will or human failings.
A Thai and other nations' POLITICIANS have a human right to speak and slam OSS.
A Thai and other nations' POLITICIANS have a human right to be right or wrong on anything (mostly everything).
Globally most (66%+, at least) gucken politicians are highly certified (degrees in law, medicine, religion, engineering, science, acting
However, we forgive them, because they know not what they do, and in a year (more or less) we typically forget what they have done. God must love all politicians more than idiots or poor folks, because there are so gucken many likeable, forgivable, well-paid, educated, incompetent and healthy politicians. God does bless POLITICIANS, one and all: for wars and citizens' semi-literacy, suffering, and faith-filled hopeless donations and prayers
We must embrace our fait and faith, because only god (or the delusion of one) can make a POLITICIAN that can send saints and sinners to hell in our Faustian (Spengler/Berman) comedy of life.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
OSS would not be so widely deployed if it were not OSS. This seems common sense, but understanding why takes a bit more gray matter. First, as a developer you have a huge testing group when you put your software out there. The best part is all the testing is free. Second, a small but important subset of those users will modify the code to make it better and return the source back to the project. These two forces combined allow the more popular projects to achieve a development group larger and more powerful than any commercial company can achieve due to the lack of economic pressures such as stock holders and the bottom line.
You use the term "exploited" and I find that interesting because when commercial companies use OSS (at least GPLed OSS), the exploitation is fairly mutual. For companies such as Google, they have a vested interest in seeing those OSS projects succeed. So not only do they make donations that the projects otherwise never would have had, but they also donate code back from some of the brightest developers on the planet.
Overall, I think it is fairly difficult to make an argument that paints OSS developers as exploited. They chose to develop OSS software.
Yeah, Thai will never get ahead if all they do is follow in others footprints. Sad that they either hired an idiot or that MS bought them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away?" He seems to forget there are people who think, the code was never yours in the first place. Ideas are free whether you acknowledge it or not or try to shackle them by copyright.
It seems like a lot of people comparing open source and closed source do it entirely inside the IT world. Surely the major benefit from IT is not in the IT companies themselves, but in the fact that they (supposedly:) make other industries more productive. Getting cheap and good systems out to all manner of businesses is what drives an economy up, not having rich IT companies. By moving away from the few-large-companies model where IPR is important towards a much flatter IT environment where getting code to work is important, we are allowing many more businesses to reap the benefit from IT -- and *that* is good for a country.
-Lars
Actually most scientists publish in journals that everyone can read. Most of the top scientific journals (in the biological sciences anyway) allow for anyone to read the articles one year after they've been published. If you want to read the latest research, you have to pay. If you want to read anything that's been published between (typically) ~1998 and one year ago, you're usually able to do so. Secondly, most university libraries have subscriptions to the top journals. I've never heard of a university library that turned away the public.
FYI, all journals (that I've published in) require us to pay to publish our articles. The last article we published (in the Journal of Immunology) cost us ~$2000.
.. using open source, word just in, the THAI IT MINISTER has said it is ". . . low-quality software with lots of bugs."
Who TF is this guy?
If the average monthly salary is so low, why do you suggest that everybody works for free in the IT sector?
It's like, guys... I figured out the answer to all our problems. We all have to work for free! This will guarantee that goods will be cheap so that we can not afford to buy even more than we could not afford to buy before.
I hate this phrase of political lingo that journalists seem to love so much! Formulating a national policy isn't driving a car, they don't make "u-turns", they make "dramatic changes in policy" or something to that effect.
FFS, not everyone who listens to politics has the brain of a snail
If the Thai minister cannot squeeze any graft money out of open source, too bad.
Thai's are like that. Corrupt douchebags.
King Bhumibol should cut all the minister's heads off
in a public execution.
Just wait for that big Microsoft roll-out as a reward for reading the Microsoft brochure as personal attention. No doubt Thai will get a discount on Microsoft software for these blanket and obviously self-serving statements. How much do you wanna bet that a Microsoft puppeteer had his hand up this guys ass putting words in his mouth?
In this article ICT Minister Professor Sitthichai Pokai-udom mentions all their problems start with a lack of transparency. Any coherent strategy towards an "Open and Accountable Government" should include support for Open-Source Software policies.
Always keep in mind government software is built for the government through the revenue it receives from all Tax-Payers. It only makes sense that tax payers should have access to every product in the software development cycle since all Tax-Payers own it from start to finish because it is government tax-payer money paying for all government projects. Giving all tax-payers the source code enables future generations of potential coders from Thailand and around the world to learn from it and improve it. There is potential coder skill in everyone.
ICT Minister Professor Sitthichai Pokai-udom does not have the tax-payer's interest in mind by choosing closed-source software policies.
Possibly he doesn't want Bill Gates to remotely backup his car software..
"Did Microsoft software trap Thailand 's finance minister ?"
What a totally clueless ICT Minister.
davecb5620@gmail.com
... and you throw away your intellectual property!
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
It's disturbing to think there are people out there who think these are bad things. It's even more disturbing that someone with this kind of sociopathic outlook is in a position of power.
It's clear that using closed source software has led to a lot of ID-10T problems...at least in this Thai Minister's case.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
that somebody who clearly knows nothing about software can get to be the minister of it?
My guess is that Microsoft got to him.
So it seems that the new minister has a project to work on! The web site for his ministry serves up PHP, and according to Netcraft, their web server is running Apache on Linux.
<tongue-in-cheek>The ministry's site seems to be serving up content pretty well, though... Maybe it can limp along with open source.</tongue-in-cheek>
"useless and full of bugs"
Useless? OSS provides extensive infrastructure on the Internet and private networks. It is used to provide DNS, move email, host web contenet, manage relational databases, and more. Full of bugs. It sure seems to be very reliable and highly-available. Would this expert programmer care to elaborate?
"With open source, there is no intellectual property."
This is blatantly false. Under the GPL, the "IP" belongs to the programmer who has knowingly chosen to share his work with others as long as they share their modifications.
"Anyone can use it"
So? Is this supposed to be criticism?
"and all your ideas become public domain."
False, unless you use a public domain license or no license. GPL does not equal public domain.
"If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated..."
The old "If nobody can make money from it, it's no good." argument. Setting aside the fact there are motives other than profit motives, individuals and companies do make money from OSS. Some programmers get paid to do the development. Companies sell support services. Companies use OSS to provide services. Besides, if he is correct, why is he worried? People wil stop developing OSS, and it will become outdated and fail. Then commercial developers of closed source will step in. Besides OSS is "useless" so no one uses it now, right? Of course, OSS has been around for decades, and it shows no signs of development ending or the products becoming outdated.
"As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away?"
Then don't. No one is holding a gun to your head. Well at least not about software. Considering your recent history, someone may do so in an attempt to overthrow the fiasco you call a government.
"Thailand can do good source code without open source."
Knock yourself out.
Personally, I don't develop software just so that I can be an anonymous contributor to future technology. I do it to pay the rent, buy cars, etc.
;-)
Some do it for the recognition. For example, Linus Torvalds wrote a kernel, and he's hounded almost everywhere he goes at the Linux booth at Defcon. har har!
But really, I'm a service provider (IT guy), and it costs me nothing to give any code I write back to the community. In fact, creating a project allows me and other service providers in the same boat as I to have a collaborative work that we have complete control over that accomplishes what we need. Now, the only problem with this model is I'm not a programmer. I made something in python once. However, the example still stands, and I'm sure some people do that.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
OT, but I have to find out...
Where did that start?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Part of what I see in the open source movement is to get some of this technology that get re-sold again and again out in the open so we can actually move on to bigger and better things.
Yes, Microsoft is happy with selling us an OS every three years along with a complete office suite to go with it, again, and again, and again. But many of us are kind of getting tired of this "you have to pay for it all over again and again" scheme, and are taking the common bits of teachnology making them openly available with the hopes that these "innovators" of industry start doing some real innovating instead of re-packaging.
Also related is the acceccibility of tools (development, design, professional) has been becomming a have/have not situation where those who had the money could afford the tools, and those who were trying to make a start couldln't. Again it is a form af leveling the field for everyone. (there are many far-better tools out there for sale but the basics are now more widely available.)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I don't think this guy knows what he's talking about. OSS isn't about making money. It's about creating a community and giving that community the freedom to use and change its software as it pleases. And OSS, Free, and GPL code is not "Public Domain". It has a copyright, but the terms of that copyright allow it to be redistributed, changed, and copied for free provided all the terms are met and any code added to it or derived from it also remains free.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
Oh, wait... they're all already using pirated windows... nevermind.
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
So, while the mouthpiece is attacking open source, the people at the Ministry that acutally have to address secuirty are choosing Linux. This undercuts his 'buggy' attack on open source. Any time you hear an attack about 'buggy' open source, point out the fact that Coverity runs scans on both Open Source and Commercial software. To my knowledge, very few commercial companies will share the number of 'Coverity bugs' that were discovered, nor will they dislose the rate at which they are being fixed. So basically the closed source projects lack the balls to share their defect rates. This strongly suggests to me that they have numbers which are quite inferior to those of open source projects listed at http://scan.coverty.com/
In summary, let the mouthpiece talk. But pay more attention to the results of people who do more than the empty wind of the mouthpieces who pretend to lead.
Think global, act loco
Why would anyone take a country's leader seriously when he allows/promotes child prostitution?
I've seen what goes on in Thailand.
It was best put by some device driver contributor to the Linux kernel. He said in paraphrase. "I give a little bit of time and contribute code for the driver and in return I get an OS that I can use and tweak to my liking."
Sure, Google is not opening it's coffers to all open source developers, but you can't deny we have all benefited from Google's success in search, and even it's less known other products (Picasa, Analytics, Gmail, Calendar, etc).
Are you in IT for the money or because you enjoy it? If you are in it for the former, please do us and yourself a favor and leave.
This space available for rent.
Free software is not a zero-sum game, everybody are supposed to get more from free software than what they put into it. But anyway:
Sun: Java and OpenOffice.org are their most visible contributions, but they contribute to lots of other stuff too. Firefox, Gnome, XEmacs, low level network protocols springs to mind.
IBM: They do most of their work on the "behind-the-door" projects, but they are big contributors too infrastructure project in for example GCC and the Linux kernel. Not to mention that they actually did marketing for the Linux brand.
Google: Apart front releasing plenty of their own software, they also sponsor "Summer of Code", which is a great way for students to become involved in free software and get paid at the same time.
You other big mistake is to assume the free software developers are unpaid. This is true for the majority of projects on sourceforge, which are merely a way for hobbyist to share with each other. It is not true for the major commercially significant free software projects, which are use by many people and by big companies. If you log at the changelogs for the big projects such as GCC or the Linux kernel, you will see that most of the commits are from people who are paid full time developers. There is a small number of commits from people who are paid part time to work on the software (because they use it as a part of their primary job), and a small number of commits from students, but very few from pure hobbyists.
If effect, the great economic impact of free software is not as a medium for hobbyist to distribute their products, but as a medium for different companies to share the development burden with each other without giving away control to a single proprietary vendor. And the great impact of the GPL is to discourage some companies from going proprietary with their extensions, instead of sharing them.
I dont know about you, but this sounds like Senator Ted Stevens. Perhaps HE needs to "get the facts" also.
Programmer: "Sir, we've developed software that permits time travel. We'd like you to take a look."
IT Minister: "Time Travel?"
Programmer: "Yes, you see, what we have done is devised a new way to..."
IT Minister: "No animation?!? IT minister want animation! You get animation! Give to me now!"
Programmer: "But sir, this code will allow you to use your computer and go back and fix all of the..."
IT Minister: "Good good, we send to India and have them make animation. Does it play DVD?"
Programmer: falls over dead
IT Minister: "oOOooo, that what I call open sores programming!"
blah blah blah
I hear that Best Buy is hiring...
I don't know. That did not seem to work out very well for that guy in the 'Dawn of the Dead' movie. Of course that is just a movie, so there is a chance that the zombies will only sell you an extended warranty instead of eating your brains.
"if I can write good code, why should I give it away?"
Because no matter how code the code from your one set of eyes is, it won't be anywhere near as good as the code that's been reviewed by 100,000 sets of eyes?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
And Electronic Arts pays their programmers so very well.
You seem to be under the illusion that ANY person working for ANY company is being well compensated. Unless you are the CEO, you are not. Most people are under paid. Most people do not profit from the fuits of their labor or share in the sucess of their company.
And, this is the kicker, NOT ONE PROGRAMMER owns the code that they write! The company owns that code and you cannot take it with you if you should work for another company.
So, please spare me your idealistic notions.
And, in general, companies like closed source for the simple fact that they have known support and someone they can blame in the case of a disaster.
I can understand that people don't realize there is ample support for free software. But to think that you can blame a software company for failure of said software is wrong-headed. It just doesn't work. There has never been a case in which Microsoft, Oracle, or SAP has taken responsibility for their failed software. "Oh, that massive Active Directory rollout didn't work? Sorry about that. Here's your tens of thousands of dollars back." Riiiiggght.
There has *never* been a software company that has taken the blame for a "disaster." Near as I can tell, even the Therac-25 disasters, which resulted in several deaths of medical patients over the course of two years, didn't result in any serious troubles for the manufacturer.
Using "vendor responsibility" or "someone to blame" when discussing software is ridiculous, and I think everyone knows it. If they don't, they shouldn't be in the position to make buying decisions.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
That's what you get from you IT minister when he's appointed by a military coup directed by the military dictator ("king") against your too-popular Prime Minister.
Then again, when your PM uses his family's telco to steal over a $BILLION from the country, it's no surprise his IT director will be fired, and the old IT policies discarded.
--
make install -not war
The leader of the coup was General Sonthi Boonyaratglin. This is Professor Sitthichai Pokai-udom, who was appointed to be IT minister.
As far as Thaksin Shinawatra, the old PM, goes: there is evidence he was not exactly transparent. He kept delaying the elections he had promised. He kept stalling investigations into abuse of his power.
The new PM has promised elections. Let's hope we see them soon.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
How does this fit in with the fact that China is going for FOSS in a big way?
And WTF! Thailand just ordered a million of Negroponte's low-cost laptops, which, of course, run Linux. As I said 'weird'.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
How much of the money taken in by your local grocery store goes to the farmers who grew the food?
Fortunately, many Open Source programmers have a job, even a job programming; and many have jobs that include developing their open source code. IBM for example has at least a few people with that sort of job description.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
The minister shows a fundamental misunderstanding about what the legal term "public domain" means.
The copyright text of a scientific journal, magazine, software source code, or other document specifies what rights are granted, if any. Documents have to be specifically assigned to the public domain to qualify as such, otherwise they remain under the copyright of the publisher or creator, as specified in the copyright text.
It is a mistake to presume that you are free and clear to use code fragments from a textbook without authorization. You need to check the rights granted to the public by the copyright text, and may be required to contact the copyright owner for permission or a license.
"Public Domain" has very specific legal meaning. Publicly Visible != Public Domain.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
First of all, you're not anonymous. Just look at Linus. But regardless:
I am currently employed by a local company, a small business who runs a Drupal site.
Drupal currently covers most, but not all of their needs. Thus, I am paid to fill that gap. Any changes I make, I am free to release back to the community, but I make my paycheck either way.
The same is true of any other project I do for them, and I do have one that is almost ready to release (although it'll be ugly as sin when I do).
What you're missing is the true value of software as a service, beyond just the slogan. I am paid for the service of developing software for this company. The company has no plans whatsoever to sell this software, it just fills a need. I use open source, not just for the warm fuzzies, but because I can more easily mess with the internals, and because it's better to start with software that mostly does what you want than to start from scratch. I give back to the community, not just for the warm fuzzies, but because that way, I don't have to maintain my own independent branch -- if my patches are merged into mainline, I don't have to be on a constant treadmill of keeping them up-to-date -- someone else can maintain them.
And since everyone does this, I gain the benefit of other people in the same situation at other companies. Drupal is pretty generic software, too, and we're a pretty niche company, so the argument of "we're helping our competitors" doesn't hold much water. Besides, even if we were, they'd have to be helping us just as much.
Well, consider two possibilities:
1) Michaelangelo is commissioned to paint a wealthy person's bedroom.
2) Michaelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel. (Am I spelling that right?)
Which Michaelangelo would you rather be?
At first glance, #1 seems like the better idea. You make more money, because every wealthy person wants your paintings in their bedroom, so they each have to pay you for the same painting. But even if it's just about money, don't you think Michaelangelo #2 is better off? Even if he isn't paid for the Sistene Chapel, a hell of a lot more wealthy people know about him. Even if they can all visit the Chapel and see his painting for free, they might commission him to paint some things of theirs anyway.
But consider that sometimes money is not an issue. Suppose that both Michaelangelos are wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, and they don't have to work at all. If you were going to paint at all, which would you rather paint? Or suppose they're both equally impoverished, and have to work a day job anyway -- which Michaelangelo would you rather be?
Some unknown bedroom painter? Or someone world-famous for amazing artwork, that everyone else can analyze in the smallest detail and appreciate your genius?
That's part of why people would contribute, even if we weren't paid to do so, even if we didn't have a personal itch. (That is still valid, by the way -- I can mess with my own kernel, and I do, without having to write a new one from scratch, never mind that I can't possibly sell my changes. I couldn't sell a new kernel, either.)
People contribute because, if you're good, open source means people know you're good. You can become a legend that way. Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, Linus Torvalds, Matz, even lesser gods like Andrew Morton, Andrea Archangeli... Can you name a single developer at Microsoft? Because I sure as hell can't. The only person I can think of who is famous for developing commercial software is John Carmack, and he's releasing all his old code anyway.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I know at my workplace, we use 99% open source and make assloads of money. Or at least management has. We've contributed jack shit, except bug reports. Despite having at least 1/3 of us with solid unix coding experience, company policy is that we're not allowed to alter any code. Why, because someone else will inevitably do it for us, for free. That was the point where I stopped writing OS software at home for anything other than instances of legal necessity to comply with existing licenses. I'm glad there's people who continue to write it, but for any popular program with business application, you're being played. Yes, it might look good one your resume. But look at it this way, would you rather be your own boss doing business in your PJs at noon, or a wage-slave with a good resume? I've got the former, and I'm doing it off of your work.
Why don't they worry about making Bangkok NOT synonymous with sin and vice before they worry about "bug-filled software" they clearly don't understand?
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Copyrights and Trademarks fall under that bastard term Intellectual Property and you get to keep them.
Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain.
Wrong. Open Source != Public Domain. Anyone you distribute it to can use, modify/improve and distribute it, if they give the same rights to whom they distribute it. Even Playing field.
If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated...
Wrong.
a.If the code is not useful it is not used/maintained and becomes outdated.
b. If you do make money from useful OpenSource code (as many do, IBM/Apple/Nokia/Sun/RedHat/Novell ), you should use it to maintain your codebase.
c. Ever hear of Dual-Liscencing?
As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away?
1. If you want to horde your superior code away go ahead.
2. Aren't you a government employee? shouldn't you contibute to the common good of your people?
In summary, You appear to be misinformed, ignorant or waiting for an MS Handout. (BTW, if the latter were the case, you get handouts faster from MS for using open source rather than by bashing it.)
Glad the new Thai government is already advertising its idiots, I was afraid they'd be hard to spot.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Bangkok Bob - The Thai Information [Tech] Minister ...
You know, statements like these are so obviously out of line that it becomes apparent that the new IT minister is getting paid by someone to make those statements. It's really hard to write it off as "he's a complete wanking idiot" (though he may well be). He's literally begging for a payoff for standing against the "evils of open source"..........
I happen to like writing software. In fact, the coding job I have right now (that pays money -- you know, the stuff that you give to people in payment?) is kind of a pain, so I write my own stuff on the side to clear my head.
It's like being an artist -- you have your day job, and then you have what you like to do. If you're really lucky, you do what you like as your day job. Where's Bad Analogy Guy when you need him?
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
So, basically, this guy denies the existence of programmers and organizations willing to participate in the FLOSS movement, because he doesn't understand the mechanism by which it operates?
Where have I heard that sort of thing before?
http://outcampaign.org/
However, where in here do you get boatloads of cash for you or your country? That is the point of TFA.
Just because OSS is "right" (or "just" or "moral") does not mean it is the best course for a country to follow.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Almost all of the money made by open source has been made by exploiting open source.
How does this stuff get modded up? Using open source software is not exploiting it. Selling open source software is not exploiting it.
Yes most of the internet runs on OSS. But how many of the billions if not trillions of dollars has made it back to the pockets of the developers of the big parts like Apache?
What billion/trillion of dollars are you talking about? Do you think a shoe manufacturer should get a cut of every industry that profits from people in footware?
I would guess not much since even Apache has a 'donations' link on their site.
Most of the people who work on Apache get paid a salary to do so. Others work on contract. We use Apache here and even sell servers with it pre-installed. We've contributed back a handful of fixes and improvements that were things we needed to work. The developers who did so did it during their normal work day and got paid quite well. Thousands of other companies are in the same boat. It's collaboration, but it isn't exploitation. I just don't think you understand the open source model. Sure, it makes it hard to gouge users for huge profits, but the developers usually are the users or are paid directly by them. It's not like the people who do the work aren't getting a good salary for what they do.
Because you were paid to? Every single line of proprietary code that I wrote for 18 years, I "gave away" to my employer. Does this mean I didn't write good code?
If the Thai government needs software, and recognizes that Free Software gives the very best guarantee of the availability of both long-term maintenance, then there's no reason they can't hire programmers to write Free Software. There's nothing about Free Software that even suggests you can't pay programmers to perform labor. And if someone does want to provide you with free labor, that's their problem, not yours.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"With open source, there is no intellectual property."
The same is true with commercial software. Creative works are not property.
"Anyone can use it"
Wrong! That depends on the license.
"and all your ideas become public domain."
Wrong! 99% of open source software these days is copyrighted, just like 100% of commercial software is. In the old days there used to be "public domain software" but that is almost never done anymore. And just because I release one piece of software under one license doesn't affect "all" my other ideas.
"If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated..."
Here he's saying there's no business case for it. Well, Novell and RedHat have huge market caps and their investors and employees make (collectively) many millions of dollars. Oh, and MySQL corp and all the others. Open source software moves fast, too fast sometimes.
"As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away?"
It's up to the programmer. If they see a business reason to give it away, great. If not, great.
"Thailand can do good source code without open source."
Absolutely. Open source, closed source, public domain, etc, all have their place and their opportunities.
Or both. As someone who works with open source software (server) at a company that develops software (mostly closed) I'd say he has no clue what he's talking about. When we need software quickly and redistribution isn't a primary concern we've happily re-tooled open software, both GPL and (in business, somewhat preferably) BSD.
As far as quality goes its about as uneven as closed source and I think its ridiculous to claim otherwise. I'm sure this little politician hasn't met a lot of Red Hat, Novell or Sun engineers. But he should and he should be thanking them for putting so much hard work into good software even poor people from countries like his can use, but I suppose that wouldn't be nearly as profitable.
Quack, quack.
It's a good thing that not everyone in this world shares your values, otherwise we would be quite the worse for it as a species.
ME ME ME ME!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Put identity in the browser.
There's a lot of reasons people release code as OSS. Sometimes there's just no reasonable way to make money with it. Sometimes being OSS is a substantial part of the value of the software, so keeping it closed would kill it -- pretty much the boat Linux and Apache are in, IMHO.
So, while the original developers of some of these projects aren't the ones to make the most money, that does NOT mean that keeping the source closed would have allowed them to benefit from their own work either.
Since someone mentioned Apache... There's a billion goddamn http servers already. The value in Apache is entirely in the openness and ubiquity, 'cause it's just not that great a piece of software. It's good enough, free, and has a lot of contributors so it's got a lot of features. That is all possible only because it is OSS. Were it not, it'd be a drop in a bucket of http servers.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
the thais have just told us so, "useless and full of bugs." sounds like any M$ product you care to name.
either that, or the thai minister in question lives in a cave and skins small animals for clothing, and is working on the creation of the concept of "blue."
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
...that quote as the most concentrated example of misinformation and stupidity thus far in this century.
1) Bridges, roads, etc are public and shared because it makes sense to build infrastructure together and not privately. Most of the most successful open source projects are similar shared infrastructure.
2) People that build bridges, roads, etc, even though they are owned publically afterwards, tend to get paid. They work for pay and build open/shared things because that's what (usually) makes the most sense.
3) Sky scrapers, mines, etc are usually private because that's what makes sense. Similarly, some software is not open but proprietary.
This is not rocket science and hardly something to get all religious about. I wish people would just get over this open source vs. non open source thing already.
Minister essentially says "the writer of free software gives it away, so I don't want to promote this as a business model in Thailand."
Slashdotters say "Minister's using free software. Oooh..."
This is a completely non-responsive to his point. Of course he's going to consider using apache because it's free. He just doesn't want to expend Thailand's resources writing free things for other people.
If it's so surprising that someone wants to get something in return for his work, there's something wrong with you.
This is not an open source phenomenon;
Walmart exploits the building and property where they hock their wares and not one red cent of the revenue makes it back to the laborers who constructed the building, parking lot, or surface roads that make the opeartion feasible.
The local copper mine makes millions in profit from the ore they strip and process from their mine with the equipment they purchased from manufacturers such as Caterpillar, Case, etc., and not one red cent of their profits makes it back to the laborers who designed and manufactured the machines.
And you may find this shocking but the huge monetary gains that upper management at Microsoft make from the exploitation of Microsoft closed source products is not payment for their labor in developing the software because they didn't develop it. The laborers who actually made the code which Microsoft exploits do not receive the profits from the 80%+ margins on the code.
Resources are exploited at many levels in economic endeavors and there is no difference between open source exploitation or any other model. To suggest that the lack of a direct revenue stream between the developers of a tool and the profits derived from endeavors of the tool users is some how an inherent function of open source is incorrect and far from insightful.
Now understanding how the developers of open source applications are compensated for their labor may not be as obvious or transparent as other economic models but at the same time it should be obvious that there is some type of compensation considering that in contrast to the Thai ICT Minister's conclusions that "With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated" open source retains copyright protection for the developer, people and companies are making money from it, and there is by far more development occuring in open source than all closed source developers combined, sourceforge.net alone has almost 1.5 million registered developers. The Thai minister is clearly an ignorant buffoon.
A control freak has been put in chargen of Thilands national phone/wireless network. He doesn't like what he doesn't own. End of story. OSS hatred is only part of what the article identified as his 'radical' change plan. Wait a couple of years and see how it changes. Part of what he wants if for all the private carriers to be 'partners' with the national system. (as in give me all your value and then shut up!).
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
'nough said
If the apple ipod was easy to hack and put a new OS onto there would have been people doing it and making a better ipod without any DRM. (They did it with other mp3 players, for some reason the ipod is either harder to work on or has some kind of locking on it..
;-)
They did it with the iPod as well:
http://www.rockbox.org/
Btw, even an unmodified iPod does play non-DRMed files (unfortunately, not ogg vorbis).
And so you hope the Zune player might be saved by third-party alternate firmware? I don't think so.
Thailand literally means 'land of the free'
Where's the 0xBEEF
Can someone please think up a way to prevent people who make claims about the uselessness of open-source from using the internet. Clearly they don't need to use the internet anyway, this http thing is clearly useless & out of date.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
if (nobody_can_make_money_from_it)
{
printf("there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated.\n");
}
... yields a code unreachable warning from the compiler. Clearly, this moron has never heard of Red Hat. He also ignores the plain and obvious fact that many FOSS projects have code that is far superior to proprietary software.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
What _we_ want to know is: How did you authenticate the thai?
He might as well have been a pirate for all you knew!
Defining Statistics and Social Research
I'd better take back all of my patches then. I sure hope no one else who's ever written free software that I've used directly or indirectly reads your post!
how to invest, a novice's guide
I see the problem. You have assumed that IT meant Information Technology. The reality is he's the Iced Tea minister.
There was a time when movies had plots. So you knew who's ass it was, and why it was farting.
-Not Sure
Thank you. That was one of the most reasonable and insightful responses I've received and actually posed an answer to my question instead of villifying any desire for profitability. I will be looking for that book.
The vast majority of open source developers are of course in full-time paid employment. My modest contributions to open source programs have been because I used the product and wanted additional features / bug-fixes to problems I encountered - it's been for my own benefit as much as anyone else's. Although stating this seems a bit redundant on Slashdot, I'm a geek at heart and quite enjoy solving these little problems - it's just a hobby. I earn plenty of money in my day job and don't need to be compensated for my work on OSS. I certainly don't consider it exploitation for other people to make money out of it, as at work I'll also make use of OSS & free software. The way I see it is that OSS advances the field of computer software, improving the productivity of all in the field, and therefore indirectly boosting profitability and my own salary. Once plenty of people want something, the best way of developing in my opinion is the open source route. Open source gradually takes nibbles at the boxed software market, improving what can be done for 'free', while commercial IT must stay ahead providing solutions tailored more specifically to what customers want.
What an ignorant capitalist snot. All of his points are COMPLETELY untrue.
Some ethnographers say OSS is the closest mankind ever has gotten to solving the problem with this minor fact - that one mans bread is another mans problem..
; relates to The Cornucopia of the Commons (if i spelled it correctly).
If everyone is motivated by selfish ambitions like pure capitalists' ideal world then no one would bother doing volunteer and altruistic work and it would be a much harsher place than it is now.
Do you think our society can exist without volunteer work? Many third world countries like Thailand would plunge into famine, disease and war if not for the work of the Red Cross and other individuals selflessly sacrificing their time and money without receiving anything in return to make this world a better place.
Similarly open source software is invaluable to ensure that the Internet do not plunge into proprietary vendor locked chaos that will inhibit the people from communicating with each other thus promoting understanding and knowledge that will elevate (hopefully) everyone to the next level of enlightenment.
Regardless of the rhetoric surrounding the ability of companies to make money off open source software, it still remains that at some point some developer somewhere, sacrificed their time and abilities without receiving anything back in return to give something back to the community.
To these people I say thank you. Please keep up the good work.
Where do I download the Google source code again? I want to setup my own search engine free from ads. Also is there somewhere I can get a copy of the google office products or gmail? I like their interface, but don't care to have them nosing around my email.
Isn't closed source software equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala where the 'source' is not disclosed?
Slashdot = Sarcasm
I think even an idiot wont make such statement. If its a closed source then how do you know it is a good one? It is closed, noone can see it, except you. You just assume it is good oooo mighty closed source progremmer - a recipe for failure. It is just the opposite - if it is an open source then it is a good one, if it is not then who knows how many bugs, spyware, countless layers of DRM it contains. I personaly am scared to use closed source systems.
Some people's comments were 'so what has Thailand contributed to FLOSS anyway' which admittedly is not massive. I do submit however that merely USING open source software advances its cause. Heck, closed source software development in general isn't massive in Thailand.. (My company does it though.. :)
As for using open source software in Thai, look at what the new IT minister is rubishing away... And that for a country where the SOFTWARE cost of one PC with Windows XP + Open Office is around US$ 540, which is easily 2-3 FULL monthly salaries for an average middle class office worker. Yes that's SOFTWARE cost alone for XP & Office, never mind buying the computer itself.
Now, if you throw that away, with people having to save months and months to buy just Windows & Office (never mind the computer itself) then how can the logical conclusion be ANYTHING but 'piracy'. ? Mind, this is a country that is trying to shed its image of a safe-haven for piracy. OF COURSE past governments seriously looked into and promoted open-source: It's a viable road away from piracy, and lowering costs WITHOUT sacrificing business productivity.
So how feasible is it to run Open Source software in Thailand. Just for laughs I checked what would happen if I try to 'go Thai' on my Ubuntu laptop, and checking on OpenOffice in Thai. GUESS WHAT: A fully localized system, including translations, Thai fonts, thai hyphenation & word break AND Thai spell-checker takes about 4 mouse clicks. Don't believe it? Well I took screen shots:
http://nachang.com/ubuntu
The final screen shot shows a fully localized OpenOffice 2.0, showing the spell-check function.
Honestly, with software this brilliant, WHAT is this IT minister thinking, and why is he minister of IT anyway if he doesn't appreciate obvious quality, and an obvious road to combat piracy & the resulting higher international business stature, and SAVING MONEY for the people?
What will get done? A tall FROSTY PISS?
(+1, Secret Agent)
http://iteau.wordpress.com/2006/11/15/noopensource ebookReply with quote
Actually all ICT ministers in the past are very bad persons. But this one is the worst of all.
I am very SAS that Sondhi allow this bad person to be ICT minister.
His WRONG and BAD vision on OLPC and Linux cannot be forgiven.
huh,
zxc555
http://supat.eu.org/php/
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
um.. I've had alternative software on my nano for over a year now.
except for minor things like, well, you know, sed, awk, ls, grep...
and about 10,000 other *ahem* pissant things that make Linux and unix in general useable and competitive against Micro$oft.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Well duh, he was appointed by a Junta who just overthrew the legitimate Thai government, he has no more concern for computers, IT, users, etc, than the Generals care about their people or freedom.
If this guy said this 20 years ago, I would say, "I disagree, but he might be right. Let's wait and see what happens."
But this is now. Linux is run on most servers. Linux, in my opinion, is better than Windows for everyday desktop use. Is hindsight not 20/20 in Thailand?
I'm so compassionate to Thailanders, who first got very bad politician as a PM, and because of this, they got the incompetent junta in power now.
I'm afraid that many important progressive steps of the previous government will be reversed and Thailand falls into deeper poverty