Slashdot Mirror
Has Open Source Lost Its Halo?
PetManimal writes "Open-source software development once had a reputation as a grassroots movement, but it is increasingly a mainstream IT profit center, and according to Computerworld, some in the industry are asking whether 'open source' has become a cloak used by IT vendors large and small to disguise ruthless and self-serving behavior. Citing an online opinion piece by Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc., the article notes that HP and IBM have not only profited from open-source at the expense of competitors, but have also boosted their images in the open-source community. The Computerworld article also mentions the efforts by the Microsoft/Windows camp to promote open-source credentials: '[InfoWorld columnist Dave] Rosenberg is more disturbed by the bandwagon jumpers: the companies, mostly startups, belatedly going open-source in order to ride a trend, while paying only lip service to the community and its values. Take Aras Corp., a provider of Windows-based product lifecycle management (PLM) software that in January decided to go open-source. Rosenberg depicted the firm in his blog as an opportunistic Johnny-Come-Lately. "I'm not impressed when a company whose software is totally built on Microsoft technologies goes open-source," said Rosenberg, who even suspects that the company is being promoted by Microsoft as a shill to burnish Redmond's image in open-source circles."'"
I wish I had know about that.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Right?
The first thing that crossed my mind upon reading the headline was that some previosly open-source game to rival Halo had gone closed source or the development team walked away..
Silly context, always breaking things.
Can and Will an article that started off with chewing out Open Source vendors who ignore its values and end up bashing Microsoft.
Didnt mean it as a flame..it was just funny reading it.
Rapid Nirvana
I know Tivo pisses some people off, while at the same time they are sort of a poster child for "what linux can do".
I mean, they follow the letter of the GPL - I can get the source - but since the kernel must be cryptographically signed to execute on the device, this source is useless.
But the GPL never said anything about me being able to hack my device. Tivo is just like any other corporation in that respect, they don't want me adding functionality, they want me to pay for it.
They've taken from the community, made a good deal of money, and really have given nothing back, and really don't have to.
The GPL, and OSS in general, really isn't about giving back. It's about taking advantage of the altruism of others. I don't mean that in a negative way either. When I set up linux on old hardware as a router, I was doing the same thing. I've never released the firewall scripts I tweaked up, or even told anybody upstream of a couple of bugs I've fixed for myself. Tivo, and for that matter, IBM, HP or Novell all have the same rights that I do.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
are forced to reinvent it. The corollary to this is that those who do not understand economics, are eventually forced to "reinvent" it.
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
At least open source has its Killzone. That's a Halo killer I hear.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Everybody has been in such a rush to get OSS adopted by the world at large that we're losing sight of what made it so great to begin with... A community effort, for fun, to hack, to be free. Not so we could be taken advantage of. This is what I have feared for years and it looks like the "movement" is getting hijacked.
OK, help me out here. A few years ago weren't the open source folks crying that no one was taking their clearly-superior products seriously? Now a few large companies are utilizing it and promoting it and taking it seriously, and we're still crying? Hmmmmmm.
It's not that it's lost its halo, it's just that it has realized its usefulness. The fact that companies make money off open-source technologies doesn't mean that open-source is bad. Anyone who thinks that is doing the entire open-source community a great disservice.
We don't live in a utopian communist state. Progress is driven by self-interest, and I am happy that companies make money using open-source technologies, because it not only affirms the essential role of OSS in the marketplace, but also provides incentive for support and adoption of OSS by those who were previously skeptical.
Recent developments with Novell aside, if software companies open their software (under a real Free license), their reasons for doing so and their relations with the community aren't really that important. That's the whole reason we have Free Software licenses -- so that users and independent developers don't have to worry about the behavior of the companies that put out the software. You can trust the GPL, even if you don't trust SoftwareVendorReleasingGPL'dSoftware.
I think its a case of "bad apples" spoiling the good ones.
Whether fair or not, a lot of open source projects come across as being incomplete, UI nightmares, geek-tool-only, and large organization unfriendly because of support issues.
Not every open-source project is that way, but when I worked at HP that was the case. You mentioned open-source and managers would run to update your file as a trouble maker. When you got a manager to approve a demo, you'd have to work twice as hard to explain why this was a good alternative, why the weird UI wasn't an issue, and how the tool was self supporting or support could be done easily "in house". However, if you hadn't told the manager that it was "open source" and that it was "off the shelf", you could get by without the massive sales job.
Why?
Because too many open source projects are:
It's a perception problem. No matter the platform, OSS has an image problem that may be rightly deserved.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
...I could care less if the company cares about the community or its values, and that's the point.
The only good argument from a business perspective for open source is that if you use open source software you are not going to be held hostage by a licensor that alters the deal when your business is wedded to the IT infrastructure they provide. As long as the open source license these "bad" open source companies release it under is really an open license that allows you to modify and redistribute the code, that's all that matters. I don't have to care why the released the source. It just doesn't matter.
Half of his arguments are BS.
For example, Eclipse had killed JBuilder and Symantec Cafe (?) not because it was free but because it was so much better. GOOD commercial Java IDEs are still alive and kicking - see IDEA (http://www.jetbrains.com/) for example.
Apache Derby is hardly ever used outside of small embedded databases. Everyone uses Oracle/Postgres/MySQL/...
A lot of GOOD commercial products exists and successfully compete with their OpenSource counterparts. For example, Tangasol Coherence (http://www.tangosol.com/) beats JGroups and JBoss Cache.
Heaven forbid people make money on building products around a free piece of software while working within the guidelines of use and distribution of that software.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Well, tomorrow if IBM decides to change the fee structure and demand an arm and a leg or it thinks it should change the file formats to keep the competition out or decide to drop support for some API to maintain an advantage... Guess what? There is nothing to stop the customers/competitors to take the ball run circles around IBM. That is why Open source is not all that predatory.
Sometimes some people get a profound insight and that produces a view point that is strikingly different from the crowd. This article mimics the symptom, "being radically different from the rest" but without a cogent underlying argument that is the hallmark of a "profound insight".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Who cares why they open their source? As long as they release the source code, without restrictions that prevent the public from changing, revising, executing and redistributing it, people in the public can do whatever we want with it.
If selfserving companies (what other kind is there?) find it in their interest to open their source, then I welcome them joining the open source "movement". More source needs to be opened in the selfinterest of its originators. And more selfserving companies opening source will help convince others how its in their interest, too. Which will release more source.
What needs to die is the idea that open source is some kind of ideal. It's an engineering collaboration technique. It's like object oriented design. There are OOD ideologues, but they're harmless and lost in the roar of people using OOD to solve real problems. Some people are still arguing about the ideology of file vs project variable scoping. But practically no one lets that get in the way of writing code with well-defined interfaces for other code. Let's see open source outgrow the ideology, and just remain a stable way to produce and use software.
--
make install -not war
Don't worry about it, guys... Tux Racer is still as good a Halo-killer as any. :)
Exactly what part of "competitive marketplace" does the author not understand?
Ruthless and self-serving behavior is how businesses compete. No one is in business to help their competitors. No one who has to deal with the realities of the business world gives a rat's ass about the ideologies behind Free/open source software. The only thing anyone cares about is whether open source provides a better solution than the alternatives, or provides a similar solution at a lower price. IBM helps and promotes open source projects because these projects help IBM. This isn't altruism, but quid pro quo.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
the knowledge and wisdom that being self-serving can help the community but the main motivation is that you are helping yourself. (Not that this works 100% of the time, hence laws®ulation.)
But isn't this same philosophy driving Open Source essentially? People give to the whole because they know it is cheaper to maintain and they get more (features, reliability, freedom, what have you) out of it than going closed source?
I am not so much bothered by big companies jumping in for their own benefit than a company like SCO and Microsoft behind it, who aren't satisfied with a piece of the pie, but want the whole pie, even if it means destroying the existing community - and those are the players that really aren't involved in the first place.
IBM has a right to try to make money and if there business is good enough that they entice people to spend that cash, they deserve it. Otherwise, it makes no sense for IBM to be in Opensource in the first place. And they have contributed enough to be seen and acknowledged as a general benefactor.
So, the open sourcing of some products helped lead to the demise of some good commercial products. Big deal. The relevant question is, does open source produce better software, better products after factoring in price and support, a more robust ecosystem, better response to the community or marketplace, more opportunities for innovation?
I think when you look at projects like Linux, Apache, and Perl, the answer is obvious. Probably Firefox as well (let's give it a few more years and see if they keep up). If you look at desktop Linux or video game software, the answer is not so clear (or maybe you get the other answer). So the overall answer is probably "it depends".
The gist of this article from what I could stomach seems to be financial analysts whining that some companies are releasing their general purpose software as open source, causing their competitors to drop prices on competing products, lose market share, or have to move onto other products. There may also be a whine in there about vendors not being able to sell their application server for a million dollars and then professional services to actually make it, you know, work because the competition is using open source software and only charging for the professional services.
To that I have to say, tough luck. General purpose software has the same problems as music and movies in that anything that can you can duplicate for essentially zero cost, someone else can, too. Obviously there is upfront R&D cost, but in general that cost is recouped after the first few sales (if an enterprise app) or first few shipments (if a retail app). What this amounts to is financial analysts whining that they cannot find software business models that print money at no additional marginal cost. Well, welcome to reality, where all generalized software is crap, it all has to be customized anyway, and people don't want to pay for generalized crap they can get for free in addition to customization.
There could be a point about possible antitrust violations where a large company makes something free by subsidizing it with retained capital or other products to drive a small software developer out of business (though this usually by classical definition requires that the large company then raise the cost beyond what it would have been once the smaller company is bankrupt), but otherwise, see whining.
Come gather 'round people
...
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Bob Dylan (1963?)
More enlightening news at eleven.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Competition is good. Self interest is good. Altruism is not all that good. I am not talking tounge in cheek or being sarcastic. I cant condense all the wisdom that the humankind has accumulated starting from the "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith all the way down to "Climbing the Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins in this reply which I have to finish before my build finishes in the next window. So mod me down as troll or idiotic if it is too cryptic.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Has the luster of true heros, who will run into a burning building to save a stranger or volunteer to be the mother/father/brother/sister of someone in need, been tarnished because millionair ball player lay claim to the title?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Companies are using products and ideas for profit and to increase image? Wow, I never would have imagined that could have happened.
Come on, anything that has influence will be used by the business world to increase reputation and income. It's just common sense.
I love OSS and what it stands for but we need to realize that a business's job is to make a profit, if OSS does that, then they will exploit it. It's just a fact of life.
Tux racer......
Tux is racing for you bitch dog....
SING IT!!!
Abuse of the term Open Source was predicted a decade ago and the knowledge that this would happen drove a movement to have the term trademarked. Since that failed, about the only recourse against abuse of the term is for the government to prosecute abusers for fraud. That raises valid concern about the government restricting free speech and editing the dictionary depending on how the government decides to define "free speech". Remember that according to the government a kilobyte is 1,000 bytes, not 1024. However, if the government doesn't defend the term against abuse, then whoever has more money and advertising power gets to define the term, and that will probably be the abusers.
The actual Open Source movement is fine. The purists are still there.
- Perpetual Newbie
Not to sound like Stallman here, but there have always been two camps - those who think software should be Free as in "we should be able to do what we want with the code for moral/ethical reasons" and those who see practical benefits as in "when people can do what they want with the code everyone benefits."
I would expect most businesses are part of the open source camp, not the free software camp, and open source was always pragmatic. That's WHY it appeals to people where Free doesn't - because there's a definite concrete benefit.
Businesses as they exist in the US are by and large about making money, not upholding principles. Some businesses do both, but look at Google ("do no evil") and how they delt with China. Capitalism has its limits, and one of them is being socially aware - awareness of community responsibility and discharging that responsibility is always a short term loss for a long term gain (i.e. pay more to properly dispose of waste, lose the profit you could have gotten by keeping the $$ and dumping it in the river, but long term preserve the environment and the health of the people around you, avoid litigation and community ill will). Capitalism sucks at long term anything, which is why government needs to be different from and independent of corporations. That's why framing the free/open proposal as "you get a benefit/save $$ from doing this" rather than "you're morally obligated to do this - it's the ethical thing" is effective. It just so happens that releasing free software has immediate benefits AND benefits society, so PR can say the company is doing both. Sure, the ACTUAL reasons they did it might not deserve a halo, but getting outraged over them not being "genuinely committed to the ideals of Free Software" is as pointless as it is futile, in the business world as it exists today.
If people do the right thing, it's not very helpful to wonder if they did it for the wrong reasons. How can we know for sure, and what could we do about it even if we did know for sure and don't like their reasons? Insist they do the wrong thing?
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
You know how people usually think when they see a company is "non-profit" that instantly makes them somehow better?
The same thing holds true for open source.
Note that I fully support open source (and would contribute if I could program anything more complicated than "hello world") and encourage others to use it...regardless, that still does not mean that open source is all green pastures and trippy skies.
The motivation to do something merely for the sake of doing it is fantastic...on the other hand, the potential of making millions and millions of dollars (or losing it, for that matter) is one hell of a motivater too. Granted, certain software companies are motivated in better ways than others, but there is something people often forget:
Just because a programmer works for a major software company does not mean they don't take pride in their work the same way an open source programmer does.
A corporate programmer is a whore. An open source programmer is a slut.
One does it for money, one does it for pleasure. The one doing it for money gets pleasure out of it, just in a different way than the one that is not motivated by money.
(To quote the great George Carlin on the subject of prostitution: "Selling is legal...fucking is legal...why isn't selling fucking legal?"...gotta love those multiple-meaning jokes:-))
Living With a Nerd
Open source software is a more efficient development model that provides added benefit to users. It is a feature. It is a big feature, but that is all it is.
These reporters seem to have bought into age old propaganda that open source is about a bunch of communist hippies getting together to sing songs and code selflessly for the good of the world. It is a load of horse hockey. People have written code as a hobby for a long time. They open source that code because it benefits them. Companies have written code in order to get things done for a long time. They open source that code because it benefits them. Anyone who expects companies to open source code when it does not benefit them is smoking crack. Most open source coders are paid and not because companies are trying to do charity work to get good PR. It is a lot more effective to donate money to a children's hospital, or buy toys for orphans. They pay people to write open source code because they are not just developers, but users and as users it benefits them for the code to be open.
These "reporters" should really go polish their critical thinking skills, or perhaps look into the lucrative food service industry, where such skills are less important.
It's great when Linus Torvalds releases Linux as open-source, even though it's systematically destroying the competitive market for mid-level Unix OS's, because he's a nice, altruistic guy.
It's not as good when Sun and IBM open-source their Java IDE's, because it destroys the market for Java IDE's, because they're laaaarge corporations, and are only doing this to weed out smaller competitors.
And it's eeevil when someone open-sources something on a Windows platform, because they obviously are only doing it for the publicity, regardless of whether they have competitors or not.
But then again, Sun and IBM are directly competing with Microsoft, the most evil of all. And open-sourcing on Windows might mean more software gets ported to Linux.
But wait, we should ignore this benefit, because, again, these are laaaarge corporations and aren't part of the community. Nor are they completely altruistic, because they make money.
But I really do like Eclipse and Java.
(Damn it, I'm confused! Who am I supposed to hate here?)
Oh yeah, Microsoft SUCKS!
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
OSS is not about people making money, or people not making money....its not about X doing Y with Z.....
Its about freedoms. Its something that can bring the community together. It is something people 1000 years from now will look back and say "that was the most important concept of the 21st Century"
Is it perhaps the same as:
"maximising shareholder value"
which is something that company directors are required to do by law??
(They are here. YMMV.)
I think people who are bashing the article because "hey, they're obeying GPL, what's the problem, companies are ruthless profit-making machines" are right in one sense, but I think are missing the point. The point is that GPL was originally intended to be a rather utopian project. Richard Stallman had ideological and moral goals in creating the GPL, and I think that people are correct in saying that the ruthlessness of the market has figured out ways to subvert that (see, e.g., the TiVo issue discussed above.)
I think it's an important lesson for programmers and activists in the years to come. Look, the basic point of GPL was a rather radical one: the intellectuals and programmers who held the skills necessary to build the software wanted to wrest some sort of control over their work from the bosses and use it to promote rather radical anti-capitalist ideas such as freedom-to-hack, etc. etc.. I think in many ways that goal has not been realized, and I think people who try such things in the future have to realize that you can't achieve such goals by clever licensing alone. The market will find a way.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
Here comes the religious war. The holy and pure Open Source against the godless and evil closed source corporations. God forbid that any line between the two should be obscured or moved. We must have an enemy!!! /. regularly pillories MS for being closed and proprietary and now they are just cynically using OS for their own ends. Of course they are going to use business strategies that will increase profits and marketshare and OS has a lot to offer. Why not use it? And IBM as well??? Perish the thought that they are not altruistic on this. IBM does not embrace Linux because it is right - they do it because it fits their business strategy.
Lets not divide everyone into haves and have nots. Very recently anyone who adopted open source was welcome to validate it in the marketplace. Now an increasing amount of waterheads are focusing on purity.
One of the big benefits of the GPL is that it helps businesses to protect themselves from bad vendor behavior.
No, it is not a panacea. Anyone who thinks so will get what they probably deserve. However, it is certainly an improvement over what vendors of, say, closed-source accounting and CRM packages are able to do to their customers.
Of course, there will still be slimy business behavior - that is what capitalism is all about.
How inevidable is it that corporations large and small will find ways to profit off of anything? Anything of "value"...someone will eventualy try to/will make money off of. ..this is...enevidable.
*not sure of anyone will catch my lucky charms pun*
-- Disclaimer: I can't really back up anything I post on
What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Can we really expect OSS to be completely altruistic. Even within the Linux community there is a great deal of use without the contribution to back it up. How many service companies use Asterisk? Do they all contribute heavily?
Hold on now. You're telling me that, all this time, HP and IBM participate in open source game for their own financial gain ? How can this be?
It appears that open source is good for business, so we'll see a lot more of it in future. Even if the source is for a visual basic app talking to SQL server, you can still fix bugs in it when the vendor is no longer around. I don't think GPL is good for business in consumer apps, where users can not afford support or even want someone to poke around their computers. But I do believe more fair licensing is good for business there, and we'll see companies advertising that as an advantage of their product.
Who ever said open source software was created and/or used by angels? Or is the question whether people who code under the GPL are angels and the people who code under the BSD license are daemons?
Chaos is Divine *
I want:
1) To have the source code to the application
2) If I can't, at least conform to open standards
I don't care if it isn't free as in beer, or promoted by a shill company, or coded in BF by the devil himself. If I can tweak it that is good. If it interoperates, that is good.
The software project has now left the garage, things are going to change. People, projects, etc.. may be left behind if they no longer fit in with the bigger picture. Furthermore the community itself will be altered and aspects of the community will seem to be abominations of the community we currently know. It sucks, but at the same time it is what everyone was working towards. Mainstream Open Source Software will be drastically different than it is now. What the Open Source Community needs to decide is what are the most important aspects that need to be preserved and what is it that can compromised on.
Then again all the software, developers, licenses, etc... are user driven, so I guess the big difference is that there will be mainstream OSS and fringe OSS. Of course we already have that, don't we. The hard part is going to be with individuals don't get paid for their work and don't have any satisfying type of regular employment/pay or when some large company finds a small project that mostly suits their needs and forks it defying the original developer for the sake of owning the development team.
Is open-source software being used by vendors to gain advantages? I assume that's what was meant by "ruthless and self-serving behavior." Although I don't agree that gaining an advantage by releasing code to the world under the GPL can realistically be classified as "ruthless" it is self-serving. There is not much that a large corporation does that isn't. They exist, after all, to make a profit for their stockholders.
But let's look at what may be driving big corporations to embrace open-source: Microsoft.
Really, what choice do they realistically have? Microsoft uses dirty and illegal tactics. They leverage their monopoly products to such a degree that even large corporations know that they can't compete. Microsoft doesn't realize it but they are their own worst enemy. They are like the unsuccessful parasite that kills its host and therefore dies also.
The only choice the IT industry outside of Microsoft has is to ban together in a common strategy to slay Goliath.
Given Microsoft's continued anti-competitive tactics I agree. We should all work together to make Microsoft irrelevant. Don't support them in anything that they do. Don't use technologies that they develop. Let the Mono project die. Don't support it, don't use it. Use free (as in speech) technologies to generate active web pages. Never use ASP.net.
The first link was Slash dotted but I have a few comments about the second. It states:
"Imagine, if you will, that it's the late Nineties. A certain software company based in Redmond, Washington has recently released Visual Studio 97--thereby bundling together many of its development tools for the first time. Now imagine that the company decided to release those tools for free."
Microsoft has released some tools for free (as in beer) and have even allowed companies to view their source code with strict "no compile, "no altering", non-disclosure restrictions but this is not the definition of open source.
Free software as defined by the Open Source community is not about money. How long will it take for people to "get it?" Free software is "free as in speech." Is that so hard to grasp? It is free of restrictions of any kind except that the user may not apply new restrictions upon it. At least that was the intent. Microsoft and Novell may have found a patent loophole in the GPL v2 license. (The slime balls) But this loophole will be closed in GPL v3.
Asking the question : What would the reaction be the author states:
"I think we all know the answer to that one. As James Robertson over at Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants notes: "...had Microsoft released Visual Studio as free software 10 years ago, that almost certainly would have been seen as predatory behavior."
Not if they had released the source code under the GPL. Again, keeping the source code proprietary and releasing only a free (as in beer) executable is a very different thing.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If someone wants to build a better box, then do it. As far as the GPL3, it is a voluntary license. The same argument that you made for a better Tivo can be made for the new GPL.
With Open Source they are trying the same tactic, but the situation differers. Sure Open Source companies can make money. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe they even get free development as a result of being Open Source. Great. Let them sell support packages. But what will happen in the long run with open source is the reverse of OpenGL. If Microsoft Embraces Open Source, business will eventually be able to support Microsoft Products with an Open Source infrastructure. I don't need M$ Word anymore because Open office runs on Windows. Or Linux. It reads older formatted Word documents better than Word does. (because the open source communities have incentive to provide this functionality, and Microsoft has dis-incentive.)
C# and .net didn't and won't ever roll Apache and Java. M$ can support that platform and provide the tools in .NET that open source is slow to develop; like accounting software. I don't believe that Microsoft being a single company that operates though the lens of a Monopoly can possibly compete with thousands of developers adding in features they need in the way they need them. Look at Apache, Eclipse and NetBeans. The success of these products has spawned hundreds of other products that aren't even in adolescence yet, but already compete feature for feature with their commercial counterparts.
M$ is going to have to come up with a few new tricks if they want to win this war.
-Todd
Put down the sig, and step away from the computer.
as in felonious softwar nazi gangster payper liesense hypenosys stock markup FraUD.
alternatively, many are joining the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. there's never any endless subscription scams or payper liesense fees.
from previous post: many demand corepirate nazi execrable stop abusing US
we the peepoles?
how is it allowed? just like corn passing through a bird's butt eye gas.
all they (the felonious nazi execrable) want is... everything. at what cost to US?
for many of US, the only way out is up.
don't forget, for each of the creators' innocents harmed (in any way) there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/US as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile will not be available after the big flash occurs.
'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.
some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.
it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....
as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.
concern about the course of events that will occur should the corepirate nazi life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.
'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
If Free and Open Source Software is getting so trendy that evil corporations are actually releasing code under bona fide licenses that grant broad user and developer freedoms, I'd tend to say that the opposite: open ideals are forcing corporate greed to lose some of its horns.
Microsoft Shared Source? No. Mysql? Sure. Tivo? Partially (it's essentially a GPL kernel and FOSS OS on top of a proprietary BIOS and hardware design).
Don't compromise the licenses, and don't let anyone get away with branding themselves "open" short of the licenses, and we will continue to see sociopathic business interests kept to a modicum of user accountability.
...somebody set the Evil Bit.
--Triv
Interesting tidbit here:
3 2798/.
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=
***
In an attempt to out-maneuver OSx86 kernel hackers, Apple has changed their APSL open-source license. Semthex, who has worked on a few of the more popular hacked kernels himself, found this passage in their new license: "This file contains Original Code and/or Modifications of Original Code as defined in and that are subject to the Apple Public Source License Version 2.0 (the 'License'). You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. The rights granted to you under the License may not be used to create, or enable the creation or redistribution of, unlawful or unlicensed copies of an Apple operating system, or to circumvent, violate, or enable the circumvention or violation of, any terms of an Apple operating system software license agreement." While the license only applies to source posted after this license modification, it will cover all sources beyond those associated with OS X 10.4.8. Another clever security change from Apple.
***
Makes me wonder why is it only Microsoft that ever gets mentioned negatively in this "impartial" Slushdolt world. Does Steve feed you all the Apple-Aid intravenously?
Slashdot is a waste of bits and bytes...
You have demonstrated at least a passing familiarity with the slashdot ethos. That's why it's so surprising that you don't recognize the simple truth. Individuals who use open source but do nothing to contribute except yelling loudly and incoherently about it's benefits are supporting open source. Because, you know, they're, uh, rebellious non-conformists sticking it to the man. Companies who invest time and money into open source projects are still evil because, um, they're doing it for mercenary reasons. And mercenaries kill people. Which is evil. QED.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Free software clearly had a halo at one point. Just see this picture.
There never was a "halo" on OSS except perhaps in the minds of some semi-literate types. OSS is merely a development model, it has nothing intrinsically to do with the FSF or GNU or RMS.
Caveat Utilitor
I've never used DotNetNuke, which is basically a Microsoft friendly rip off of PHP-Nuke, but the mere fact that it exists and that "Microsofties" are using that as free software to make their lives better just pisses me off.
And all of the "improvements" that Sun has made to OpenOffice.org? C'mon, we all know that it started as Star Office, and even though it's free and it does a great job, I just hate telling everyone about how it allows them to do everything that they need without buying Microsoft office. The stench of corporate influence makes me gag as I make great reports with awesome graphics. I wish that they'd just stop developing it.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
If a company release some useful free software, it is extremely useful if they also accept the leadership role for the further development that come naturally with being the initial developer. Without such a natural leader, the project development may splinter into competing projects, duplicating each others efforts, and maybe eventually wither away.
If the company accept the leadership role, their success will largely depend on adopting some of the values of the free software community.
No one ever said you had to switch to GPLv3. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you aren't distributing GPLv3 software, it won't even effect you.
A voluntary agreement can not in any conceivable way restrict freedom. It's voluntary, you are free to not enter the agreement. Funny how many people's definition of "freedom" really means freedom for them, not freedom for the other guy. Your position seems to advocate a kind of software socialism for corporations, where programmers are forced to cede control of their own creations in order to benefit another's bottom line.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Isn't this what we were all saying for years would happen, and that it would be a good thing? Once you filter out the commie-talk about how awful "self-serving behavior" is, you're left with "businesses are benefitting from open source at the same time as they're driving it. Some businesses are run by bastards, but what's new?"
Wouldn't a good alternative be to take the TIVO source code and run it on other hardware?
If they're going to take from the community, then we should spite them by taking back.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Gratis Open-source Killer-app Destroys Demand for Expensive Inferior Products
So according to the articles:
some companies are embracing open source and are profiting from it -> that's evil
open source is gaining mainstream acceptance -> that's evil (linux is still cool, right?)
microsoft shop decides to go open source -> that's even more evil than just being a MS shop
The Open Source Movement becomes less revolutionary and exclusive as its success increases. Reducing the rebellion factor perhaps? some people simply like having the source because of utilitarian concerns, rather than because it has been an anti-establishment movement. Stallman was a crusader because he had to be, he was a pioneer.
But hating big business because it profits from open source makes you a communist, not simply a believer in open source.
--- Do you believe in the day?
Imagine, if you will, that it's the late Nineties. A certain software company based in Redmond, Washington has recently released Visual Studio 97--thereby bundling together many of its development tools for the first time. Now imagine that the company decided to release those tools for free. What do you think the general reaction would have been? Applause for Microsoft's generosity? Or widespread condemnation for using its market power to make such a transparently anti-competitive attack on other makers of development tools--most of whom, like Borland, were already struggling anyway, and that were far more dependent on their development tools revenues than Microsoft was on its?
If you're talking about "free" as in Internet Explorer, then they would have been rightly seen as predatory. If you mean "free" as in GPL/BSD licensed the whole set, then they would have been hailed as heroes. This blogger doesn't know FOSS from his elbow.
Software can be "free" as in $0 and not be predatory or impact commercial competitors due to poor quality, poor implementation or just being unsuitable for the job. Eclipse didn't kill the commercial Java IDEs because it was free, it did it because it was free and GOOD. If it was shit, it wouldn't have impacted competitors one iota.
I can understand Richard Stallman's dislike for the term "Open Source". Aras will show you the code, but you have no sub-license rights, can't give the code to anyone else, and need a MAC-based license key to run it. "Look but don't touch" is more like it. Big, fat, hairy deal.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
How utterly pathetic, to assume that anything built on 'Microsoft technologies' can't have any merit. Is it any wonder that the open source movement is ridiculed and dismissed by some when you read nonsense like this? The above comment is so juvenile it sickens me.
You'd think that the availability of Eclipse and Netbeans would drive non-free Java IDEs out of the market. However at my company IntelliJ IDEA is the most popular IDE despite its non-zero cost. After using both I would be satisfied with Eclipse, but I'm glad my company got me a copy of IDEA. Apparently companies are willing to shell out cash for software that is only incrementally more useful than free alternatives. See Windows vs. Linux, MS Office vs. OpenOffice, etc.
For me, the fact that OSS is no longer considered a grassroots movement is a good thing. Now we can actually make the distinction between OSS and FOSS. OSS is an important concept, and it's been around since the beginning of Unix. OSS simply means that source code is included with the license. If you want to show integrity, OSS is the way to go. It allows your client to independently verify your work. Given the amount of spyware and rootkit stories we hear, you'd be silly to trust any ISV who *didn't* provide source code with their product. But you can still have your client sign an NDA, use a license that prevents redistribution, etc. OSS was and still is a workable business model.
FOSS is still a grassroots movement, and will continue to be. The reason is simple; FOSS builds on concepts of OSS to perform a public service. FOSS is about freedom, which requires integrity in addition to a whole bunch of other grassroots goodness.
So no, OSS hasn't lost it's halo (assuming it ever had one) because it's always been about openness and integrity. If it weren't, it wouldn't be OSS.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Even in my current job, working as consultant/engineer for a business telecoms company who has already migrated their core telephony platforms onto Linux and is phasing out commercial UNIXes for Linux on our telecoms-related application servers, I get the freedoms to experiment with Linux on our platforms at a level that would be impossible on Windows.
Away from work, I can use Linux to build low cost solutions for friends, family members and "friends of friends" with small businesses. I've built them web servers, file servers, firewalls and multimedia centres, secure in the knowledge that I am doing so entirely legally without owing any corporation one penny for a software license.
Even more, I can trundle along to any one of a number of evening Linux computer clubs within driving distance of my house. As someone who "grew his computer teeth" on the Amiga and the BBS scene of the late 80s/early 90s, I've definitely got a feeling of the hobbyist, grass roots movement that just wasn't there in the early days of Windows. And I know of absolutely no Windows computer clubs anywhere, let alone in my area.
And finally, Linux and Open Source has made my computing time fun again. I'm not in a position where I'm "forced" to use a piece of overpriced commercial software that doesn't do half of what it should do. I use MS Office for what I need it to do - hell, I even quite like XP now I've stripped it back to the classic Windows desktop view and stripped out all the stuff I don't need it to run. I can play all my favourite games on it, write a few documents I need to and then switch over to one of my Linux boxes when I've had enough of it.
So David Rosenberg perhaps need to remove those spectacles that only let him see the corporate view of the world and look a bit closer to home because the grass roots movement is still very much there.
And many thanks to Linus - he was right, I am "having fun"...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
OSS losing its Halo? Couldn't care less. Bunjie keeps coming up with new Halos. IRRC Halo 3 is allready in the works. ...
Puns aside. WTF is this about? If IBM and Co. are making huge amounts of cash on OSS I'd say good for them and all of us. If I get Sun and IBM sending Netbeans and Eclipse into battle over who can build the best all-free IDE and they're making money on it I'd say we have a win-win-win situation here. And if it's just that opinion leaders such as OSS geeks tell their bosses to buy stuff from Sun and IBM because they rock - all the better.
Shrinkwrap software only business is over. People yearn for paradise which is a standardized operating system free and flexible enough to deal with any useage scenario. Currently it looks as if this is going to be some unix variant. The situation described in TFA emphasises exactly that: OSS will take over. Get with the programm.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Coincidentally, I was just re-reading ESR's The Magic Cauldron. He analyzes several open source models as profitable business models and specifically discusses when open sourcing code makes more money that closed source.
As he points out (perhaps in one of this other essays) There are a lot of OSS types who just plain think it's better, not just (or not even) more morally correct.
From my perspective, that the "Johnnie-come-latelys" are all trying to "jump on the bandwagon" means someone has figured out not that open source is socially better or more altruistic or better in the long run, but that it's just better.
Dewey
Ah, but when we don't want to switch to GPLv3, the RMS-is-GOD-and-can-do-no-wrong crowd attempts to pound us into the ground because our idea of freedom is different, and we're exercising that freedom by refusing GPLv3.
Seems kind of self defeating and hypocritical by so-called supporters of "free" software.
IF refusing to use anything GPLv3 means no more linux for me, well, thats fine. I'm sure Apple or Microsoft would be happy to have my business back.
People are free to tell you whatever they want to. You are free to listen or not. Speech is not capable of "pounding you into the ground." As far as I can tell, there is still much debate over GPLv3 and the "RMS-is-GOD-and-can-do-no-wrong crowd" are a very small minority of open source supporters. In any case, you can always use the GPLv2 version and update it yourself under v2. Just because someone happens to think RMS is god is no reason for you to steal their work. And if there is one thing I know about the RMSIGACDNW crowd, it is that they don't give a rat's ass if you use their software or not.
What "business" are you giving that crowd, anyway? How much are you paying them? Nothing? You mean you're just a whining leach who doesn't want to contribute but wants to dictate how others contribute? Gotcha.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
On the contrary, the TiVo DRM is applied to the contents of the initrd and bash. If they aren't able to DRM the initrd and shell, that blows a hole in their DRM immediately. So they'll be faced with either forking bash and all the other tools in the initrd, or letting us use GPL software as the authors intended.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I donated to the FSF.
I was obviously misapplying my funds.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Things like the Open Solutions Alliance still make OSS quite exciting. Going big is the new cool challenge.
--
MeTheGeekMeTheGeek
I work in a fairly large IT shop in an industrial company. Today was our annual "IT Town Hall". During the question and answer portion of the proceedings, the question came up:
"Have we thought about what our policy is regarding Open Source software?"
The answer was short and simple. "Our policy is to use the software that works. If we have an area that you believe can benefit from Open Source, make a case for it."
Simple enough. The truth is that we licence software from Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, and many other companies, and nearly all of it is closed source. We have some OS stuff around, but we don't pick software because it's free. Our direction must always be to solve business problems. And if the closed source product is better at that task, we're fine with paying for it.
The quasi-religious attitude towards open source that you find in many places isn't present here. If it works, we use it.
We don't see a halo. Just tools that we might or might not be able to use.
Who really cares if you you are jumping on the bandwagon, or paying lip service to the OSS community? At the end of the day, the fact is that the OSS community has just been handed some product that was previously closed. Isn't that enough?
Is the OSS community really so ungrateful that a company has made what is often a very difficult decision to open their code that it breeds disdain? Or, do these critics somehow gain from creating an *artificial* disdain for these companies on behalf of the OSS community, without basis in fact?
You decide.
When that Wallace a$$hole decided that the GPL/Linux was destroying the market for for-pay OS'es by giving them away, he was completely laughed off of Slashdot, and the courts also.
But now some tool says that IBM is destroying the market for for-pay IDE's and DB's by giving them away, and actually gets an article posted on Slashdot as serious grounds for discussion.
Please explain to me how that works.
As the descision in Wallace pointed out, giving something away where you have absolutely no way to raise the price later is not illegal, or even immoral, predatory behavior. Anti-trust law is designed and intended to protect consumers, not necessarily competitors.
SirWired
...had Microsoft released Visual Studio as free software 10 years ago, that almost certainly would have been seen as predatory behavior. [...] IBM released Eclipse for free, and it's killed off all the commercial Java IDEs out there. Sure, the source is available - but why isn't that seen as predatory?
Issues of monopoly aside, it's not "predatory" precisely because IBM is making the source available, without reserving any special rights for themselves. They may be destroying someone else's market, but they are not "preying" on it, meaning, they are not doing it to take away someone else's market share for their own benefit.
It's also not a "loss leader" because it probably doesn't cost them anything to release it (they couldn't have made a business out of Eclipse anyway), and they are not planning on recouping the money later. They simply think that it's a good thing for the market and their business as a whole to have an open source IDE around. And they have been right: Eclipse has been spectacularly successful driving innovation and the development of common software tools.
In contrast, a "free" binary-only release (Microsoft) or a dual-license release in which the releasing company retains special rights (Troll Tech, Sun), often is predatory. That is, companies that do that in the hope that they can destroy their competitor's market with a free offering and then profit from the remaining market niche. And they do it to get naive users hooked on products that, in the end, are often going to cost the users more than if they had gone with a closed source in the first place.
So, to see whether something that comes under some form of open source license is "predatory" or not requires looking at what exactly is being released and how. AFAIK, most or all of IBM's releases have been non-predatory.
In effect Open Source has become a free pass for all sorts of competitive actions that would once have been--at a minimum--roundly criticized.
Quite wrong. If Microsoft had released and continued to maintain Visual Studio under the GPL, BSD, or Apache license in 1997, they might have destroyed the market for other IDE vendors (they did anyway, as you may have noticed), but it wouldn't have been predatory, since they would actually have given up all future revenue from that product for themselves. There would have been no justification to criticize them over that.
It's part of the way today's software world works, and in many ways it provides direct advantages to IT customers. However, don't mistake it for altruism
The notion that open source software is altruistic is a myth created and perpetuated by its enemies. The reason to adopt, and contribute to, open source software is and has always been simple: it gives its contributors and users a business advantage.
And the reason to criticize predatory open source releases is not because they are self-serving, it's because they are bad for users; that is, if you use open source software for which some company retains a commercial license, the software probably has self-serving restrictions on commercial use and the software will probably evolve to serve the interests of the releasing company, not the users.
Open source is successful because it is self-serving for all its participants. Predatory open source, on the other hand, is self-limiting: usually, if it's predatory and the releaser has some scheme of benefiting from it in the long term, people figure out that those benefits are going to come out of their own pocket and reject it.
When people start talking about the "values" and "culture" of open source software, it's a real turn-off. It's a tool that does work, not a lifestyle, not a way to "think different." Lose the attitude.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
"Yeah, and they don't. They just say "you cannot use my code for that"."
Good thing there's more to FOSS than just the GPL.
Pounding into ground = look at the slashdot moderation. You dare to speak out against RMS, the FSF, or the GPL and you're moderated as troll and flamebait. There may not be many of them, but they always seem to have mod points.
As for my "business" -- I've personally donated about $4k over the last three years to various open source projects, and my company is currently using RHEL, which has a fairly sizeable pricetag attached for support. And to shoot down your next argument, I'm self employed, not a code monkey for a big corporation, and if I decide to dump linux, it will actualy happen, and the change would also be minimially disruptive. Maybe I don't personally donate code, but I'm no leech. So nice try, better luck next time.
Mod me troll, flamebait, whatever. You've proved my point about the free software group being hypocritical, with the added bonus of being fairly immature to boot. Enjoy life, enjoy your GPLv3. I'll enjoy mine without it.
Oh no! Set your disdain knobs to 36, kids. It's the nouveau open source! They aren't part of our community. They're trying to make money. They're using Microsoft technology. They just started doing open source. What if they have women working for them? YE GODS, THEY'RE WEARING POLO SHIRTS! They might play golf or something. They MUST be Evil! Stop them before they make more open source! They might tarnish our image as a bunch of underpaid bearded sysadmins and nerdy college students! People might start expecting us to take showers, or something. Somebody think of the children!
That's the beauty of the GPL. The whole idea is to protect the rights of the community. The article says that companies have been able to leverage open-source against their competitors, but why is this a problem? It's validating and entrenching open-source, including the GPL.
Now sure, some bad companies can use open-source to their advantage, but not to our disadvantage. That's the secret. Only to our advantage. The only area where there's a question mark over open-source is in patent law. But with more people, including big business, using open-source technology, it's progressively in more people's interest to not use patents against open-source, and indeed actively protect open-source software. IBM, for example, aren't about to use their world's-largest patent collection against open-source, because this would be detrimental to them and their customers.
is confusion (sometimes intentional) between the concepts of "Open Source" and "Free Software" (and, occasionally, between the concepts of "Free Software" and "proprietary software that is given away for free"). "Open Source" never had any sort of 'halo'.
/. should interview RMS. (The usual submit questions of which the highest moderated get sent to him type of deal).
Richard Stallman could surely explain far more eloquently that I could - perhaps
I don't believe that the negative attitudes that I've seen as being so prevalent within the "Linux community," affect Open Source as a whole. Some of us think that the attitude among the BSD developers of refusing to try and dictate downstream use is a much more enlightened way of thinking...and in my own mind, the only real reason why anyone associated with Linux thinks that dictating downstream use is a good thing is because Stallman thought it first, and they've swallowed his ideas whole...not because they've actually bothered to think about the consequences of it.
I've said before that with most of the little people associated with Linux, there isn't a problem...they're just doing their thing each day, maybe contributing patches to a few different projects here and there, and generally living quietly and agreeably. The "leaders" of the "community" on the other hand, are people who I really wish would crawl into a hole in the ground somewhere and die, to be honest. (Bruce Perens, I'm talking to you, among others) That also includes a number of ACs I've had replying to me on here recently who don't even have the basic courage to put their name to what they write, and then expect others to care about their opinions.
I've realised that one of the main differences between Linux people and the BSD developers is actually posessiveness. The gift culture that ESR wrote about doesn't actually exist with Linux. The BSD people *do* give away their work, genuinely and completely, with no strings attached. The GPL on the other hand encourages an attitude which basically says, "We wrote this, but we'll let you use it...but on the other hand, we don't ever want you to forget that we wrote it, and we also want you to know that we feel that because we wrote it and you are using it, you are forever beholden to us, and we have the right to dominate you in more or less any manner we see fit."
I want to suggest to Jeremy Ellison and a few of the Debian people in particular that maybe you're nowhere near as high minded as you think, but that in fact, you're actually a group of extremely selfish, controlling, mean-spirited human beings who get off on the fact that writing FOSS under the GPL allows you to superficially appear to be altruistic when in fact you're the complete opposite.
BSD developers use the BSD license to completely give away software without stipulation in order to benefit other human beings. *Some* GPL developers at least use the GPL to write software which they can then try and use to *control* other human beings...because they have the attitude that if people who use said software start doing things they don't like, the access to the software for said users will be removed.
You can try and justify this as much as you want, (and doubtless you will) but I think it sucks, that you're completely rotten human beings, and that you're made all the more rotten by the fact that you try and make out that morality is something that you actually are concerned about. You're confusing your own morality with a desire to control what it is that *other* people do. Although again, that's merely an idea that you picked up from the usual source...the root of most of Linux's fundamental problems: Richard Stallman.
..not a bug.
This is why Eric Raymond coined the phrase "Open Source" in the first place. He said there was no way a corporative executive was going to accept anything with the word "free" attached to it (as in "Free Software"). So it was changed to OSS to disguise these ideals for the corporate push.
The whole Open Source movement began in 1998 as a way to get GPL'd software accepted by the corporate world. At this point, getting upset about corporations overlooking the "Free as freedom" part is just muddle-headed thinking.
(Which is why RMS always insists on using precise phrases like Treacherous Computing or GNU/Linux so the fundamental idea is always clear. People attack him for this, but once again, he is proven right).
YEAH! Or like spending money to make money... oh wait.
http://outcampaign.org/
I fail to understand the point of this article. Explain to me again how the world is worse-off because IBM chose to open the code for Eclipse. Hall's argument appears to be that opening code may advantage a company like IBM by forcing smaller competitors like Borland to compete against a zero-cost product. That argument seems pretty myopic to me, to say the least. It reflects an outdated view of the software marketplace that ignores the fast-growing competitive threat of free software. Borland and other proprietary software companies are no longer competing just against one another. Their competitors now span the globe and include individual developers, noncommercial cooperatives, and yes, even some commercial entities like RedHat and IBM.
I guess I no longer care whether companies like Borland survive. Their contemporary equivalents now display their wares at SourceForge. In another ten or twenty years, many more people will look to open-source repositories, and not to Microsoft, IBM, Borland, Staples, or download.com, when they want to find some new piece of software. Of course, there's already so much free software available that all or most of the programs most ordinary people need are already included for free on a Linux distribution CD.
Sure IBM has enough resources that they can develop a product like Eclipse and give it away, but what's the harm in that? Society as whole almost certainly benefits, if only in an economic sense, whenever commercial software can replaced by an effective no-cost alternative. Many of us, myself included, think that society also benefits, and perhaps benefits more greatly, when that no-cost alternative is also open-sourced and freely redistributable.
Open source has its greatest competitive advantage when it's written to fulfill some commodity function, be it serving up web pages, displaying a graphical desktop, or providing tools to develop software. These days an IDE is a commodity and not likely to be a major profit center in the years ahead.
Soon after the invention of web, a number of companies attempted to sell proprietary web-server software. Most of those companies are gone, destroyed by a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who took free software (NCSA httpd -- paid for by the US taxpayers no less) and refined it into the dominant web server on the planet. Even Sun and Tim O'Reilly probably aren't all that sad about the failure of their efforts to make money selling web-serving software. O'Reilly has no doubt made more money selling books about Apache and related software like PHP than it ever would have selling the web server software itself. Maybe that's why O'Reilly left the software business in 2001.
If having open software means that some 13-year-old who wants to learn Java can do so more easily with Eclipse, in the long run everyone benefits. If companies can't compete effectively against open-sourced software products, then that money would be better invested in some other endeavor.
"I'm not impressed when a company whose software is totally built on Microsoft technologies goes open-source,"
Because we all know that open source has never been about open source code, and has always been about toppling Microsoft, and anyone who's doing it for any reason other than to aid in the Holy Jihad against Microsoft, is a lousy bandwagon jumper, right? And above all, we all know that the second objective of open source (after destroying Microsoft, of course), is finding something to complain about. It doesn't matter what, because everyone and everything is pure evil!
I really do believe a nice, steaming cup of STFU is in order, here.
What most people don't understand is that IBM _really_ is going OSS to kill competitors, but not for the reason sited in the article. Since IBM is B-I-G they kan kill all major competitors by "supporting" OSS early and therefor be the first big fish in the pond. This is done so that IBM can easily eat all other small fishes that enter the pond. Other big fishes are either left in drying ponds (for the reasons sited in the article) or forced to enter the pond in much the way IBM dictate, for being there first.
The reason is consulting. If a new market exploads around a new cool OSS project, IBM can simply embrace it, fork it, and make more money on consulting. It's simply self serving.
Does anyone else find it slightly ironic that most of this wonderful, altruistically written, free, open source software seems designed to support large businesses and is written in java so it can run in a large, corporate client-server environment?
Oh, maybe it's just me...
Take Eclipse as your starting point. Or Mozilla, or any other
large software project licensed via BSD/GPL/MIT license. The amount
of time it will take you to understand the codebase and extend it in
a radically new direction, will nullify any "head start" you got
by using the code.
I think you picked the wrong projects as examples.
I am not familiar with either Eclipse or Mozilla, but Mozilla is quite modular, and Eclipse has a plugin system.
Mozilla roughly consists of gecko and XUL. An HTML rendering engine is an HTML rendering engine, you cannot extend it into a radically new direction, IMHO. No, I really do not think you would have to understand the codebase of Gecko and XUL if you wanted to write a more usable browser, or a better browser. The hardest part would be understanding what you want the radical extensions to be.
And you can do wonders by customizing eclipse with plugins, which I don't think would take too long to get used to. And if it is that difficult, you can hire a couple of programmers who are.
In short, both Mozilla and Eclipse are modular and extensible systems with well defined APIs, and would be very easy to drastically alter their functionality without having to understand the millions of code therein.
"And do you pay for the FOSS products?"
Some we do, some we don't. We've paid for ongoing support in the past, although I don't think we have active commercial agreements with anybody for the OS products we use.
..... used to force Tivo, or any other company, to use other's people software. For free.
They are perfectly free to develop their own OS, but if they want to use other people's work it may be that their current bussiness model may not fit with that (it may very well happen that they continue using GPL 2).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... to leech and to use other people's work against them.
Paint me unimpressed in regards to your argument.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... in terms of how much you are allowed to leech.
Sorry pal, I don't care how much money you have padi for FOSS, you may have padi thousends but that has not being enough to educate you about what freedom means in the context of free software.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Really pal, you are out of order.
People are giving code away for free and opening it to the world for general use as people see fit.
If that is having a big ego then you must know only people with very little self confidence.
Software that is given away in what can only be described a charitable way, is a god's send. If users think it should be improved they can organize themselves, hire some people to put the improvements in place, and be happy.
The problem with you and many other people is that you want the user to keep playing the passive role they are used to when it comes to software.
But freedom implies responsibility and compromise, people that want to be free will always be inconvenienced and will not always have things the way they want them, specially if a lot of people follow the "lock in" inertia that makes them more dependable, albeit certainly with a sense of comfort, akin to an animal in a modern Zoo: it seems like it is free, but the damn fences are still there.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People are free to tell you whatever they want to. You are free to listen or not. Speech is not capable of "pounding you into the ground." As far as I can tell, there is still much debate over GPLv3 and the "RMS-is-GOD-and-can-do-no-wrong crowd" are a very small minority of open source supporters. In any case, you can always use the GPLv2 version and update it yourself under v2. Just because someone happens to think RMS is god is no reason for you to steal their work. And if there is one thing I know about the RMSIGACDNW crowd, it is that they don't give a rat's ass if you use their software or not.
True.
What "business" are you giving that crowd, anyway? How much are you paying them? Nothing? You mean you're just a whining leach who doesn't want to contribute but wants to dictate how others contribute? Gotcha.
Wow. I didn't know that /. considered LINUS TORVALDS to be a whining leach. Because, you know, he's not so keen on this GPLV3 thing, either. That's gratitude for you. So RMS=God and Linus=Devil. Even RMS would say that was silly, especially since he is a devout, proselytising atheist in addition to a zealot/revolutionary for Free Software.
This is all a bunch of slashdot monkeys throwing shit from the peanut gallery anyhow. The GPL only applies to developers who actually use, extend, and redistribute code previously released under that license. That probably describes less than 1% of slashdot.
First off, I don't speak for slashdot. Second, I never claimed that everyone who doesn't like the GPLv3 is a whining leach. You know what? I don't particularly care for it myself. And I agree with you, this really only applies to developers. Not whining leaches, which was my point.
Nice strawman, though. Get back to me when you actually have a coherent argument, or even an incoherent one. This doesn't even rise to the level of incoherent argument. It's just a bunch of words and letters strungg together without meaning, as if a monkey had banged on a keyboard.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"Open Source" never had a halo. It wasn't supposed to. The entire purpose of coining the term was to get away from the quasi-religious elements of Free Software.
Instead, "Open Source" was supposed to be a new management fad. Like all management fads, it had its own logic system which promised untold new productivity if followed slavishly. However, half the fun of management fads is the idea that there's some magic system out there which only you and a select few others have been smart enough to find out about. So what has happened to "Open Source" is that it has become mainstream enough that it doesn't make a very good fad anymore.
If you want a "halo", go back to talking about Free Software.
"The reason FOSS will _have_ to be a grassroots movement is because it's not about making money. This is also the reason it will always be a backwater movement, like anarcho-communists or Larouchers, which 99% of people will fail to understand or agree with."
Most people don't have the IQ to code anything worthwhile, and a smaller set has the motivation, so by definition any movement about the creation of code will not be majority. I'm not sure why you would label it backwater though.
It's just another phase in a grand European tradition of public scientific contribution. Pythagoras, Newton, Leibnitz, Darwin right through to Torvalds, Stallman et al. I suspect their names may loom larger in the history books than Gates or Ellison.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Nobody EVER said that Free or Open Source software shouldn't be released as part of a competitive strategy. Quite the contrary, advocates have often pointed out exactly those advantages over a proprietary rival. All else being the same, Free and Open Sourcve software ARE superior to proprietary software. It's no surprise it wins in the market when backed by a big name and support structure. IBM's competition was and remains free to follow suit.
Form the article:
By contrast, 'bad' companies like Microsoft can't catch a break, argues Haff. For instance, if in the late 1990s Microsoft, then in the midst of the Department of Justice's anti-trust case, had decided to release its Visual Studio 97 development tools for free, "What do you think the general reaction would have been? Applause for Microsoft's generosity? Or widespread condemnation for using its market power to make such a transparently anti-competitive attack on other makers of development tools?"
Huh? Free beer isn't really on topic, now is it? Perhaps he WANTED to say "as open source" but even imagining MS doing that was so far beyond reality he couldn't make his fingers type it. Perhaps MS can't catch a break because they've never made a sincere effort to get one.
IBM used to be the "evil empire" and all around bad-guy. Since then, changes in the way they do business, including embracing Free Software have convinced most that they have reformed. The same could happen for even MS if they are willing to reform, but I won't hold my breath.
MS does a LOT more than just keep their source to themselves to earn their reputation as a bad guy. They would need to address that as well.
"...some in the industry are asking whether 'open source' has become a cloak used by IT vendors large and small to disguise ruthless and self-serving behavior." To assume that a company would use common trends, concepts, and buzzwords in order to promote themselves and their products in the market is purely preposterous! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go blog on the web 2.0 and listen to my podcasts.