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South African Minister Locks Horns With Microsoft
naheiw writes "The South African minister of public service and administration on Monday addressed the opening of the Idlelo 3 free software conference in Dakar, Senegal, saying that software patents posed a considerable threat to the growth of the African software sector (video). Microsoft responded aggressively, saying that 'there is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity.'"
are they smoking micro-crack again?
Never trust a nigger with your property, especially your intellectual property.
The growth of Free Software in Africa could be encouraged were Stallman to visit the area. His visit to India was enormously successful. Would that we have a better and more cheaply available biography of the man and his vision (O'Reilly's Free as in Freedom is good, but could be better) that could be distributed to influential figures in the African IT world.
"Nobody develops software for charity"
Hello, my name is Nobody. You know, the one that's prefect. Same dude.
Why they didn`t patent the idea of a FUD already?
Okay, so in the strictest sense of the terms, he's probably right. Software development isn't a charity.
Free Software (GPL/LGPL) is definitely not a charity, it's a give and take trading system. You put in, and you get out, and it largely self-improves through feedback, patches, bug reports, etc.
BSD comes closer, but still required attribution in the past, and of course, the developers were (back in the day) originally producing it as part of various university projects (ie, they get status in return), and more recently, are developing it as for-profit work, but are releasing it. Again, not charity.
That said, whether the argument's been taken out of context, or is accurate in other ways is another matter.
In Microsoft's case I'm inclined to think they're being equivocal on purpose, implying "free as in beer" when the real topic "free as speech."
To fight back, I think we should be calling it "freedomware" rather than "free software."
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Just you wait, those hooligans with their "Open Source" will start jacking up the price, and you'll be sorry then, but I won't help you then!
Quick, someone tell these people they don't exist!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1#Software
I couldn't believe anyone at Microsoft would actually say something like that in public, so i had to read the article to see it myself. I am no fan of Microsoft's business practices or products, but I would like to believe that that employee was misquoted somehow.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I am developing a replacement for your crap Windows "Operating System"
Go To Hell.
Sincerely,
Filipino Monkey
PS: What is the chance that the person who said that at Microsoft will be looking for a job very shortly? Having your upper management assert that they are moving toward a more open model and then having some bozo say something like this must look terrible even to the Microsoft Marketing Department (tm).
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
Umm, having developed software for charities at various points in my career, I have to say that is not the case...
Oh, wait, I am a nobody. At least so far as Microsoft is concerned. It's not that I didn't make enough money to "put food on my family", it's just that I didn't make enough to matter and I never will.
However, the feeling is mutual. If I didn't have clients who need products delivered on MS platforms, I'd happily never touch a piece of MS software again. It's not that I'm ideologically against them, but Microsoft doesn't cater to people like me; we're not a profitable market for them. In fact, we're nobody as far as they're concerned.
That's OK with me; the Gap doesn't offer a line of clothing for people like me; the local Evangelical church doesn't have special Sunday services for people like me either. I'm perfectly happy for each of these organizations to provide their services and wares for people who for whatever reason think they fulfill a need. We just move in orbits that, for the most part intersect.
I think the mutual indifference thing breaks down because Microsoft wants to be everything to everybody. They want to have the one important operating system and the one important file format "standard". Since they don't intend to cater to me, the only way for that to happen is for me to have to use products that were not designed with the things I value in mind. The file format thing is a great example. What I want out of office file formats is not at all what Microsoft is prepared to give me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
won'>t be standing series of debates marketing surveys
Like the people in the RIAA, Microsoft just doesn't get it. The fundamental issue is not about whether software development is a charity (although sometimes I think that is a motivation), but about Economics 101 and prices in a competitive market. If they had paid attention in class, they would remember that, in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is found where price = marginal cost. The marginal cost of an additional unit of any digital work is very close to zero. So MS, the RIAA, and many others are engaged in an attempt (futile in the long run, IMO) to construct an economic perpetual motion machine by legal schemes and other rent-seeking behavior.
Microsoft in their arguement has managed to demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of the core issue.
Software is not a charity, nobody is discussing it as such.
Software is, however, a written tool, in the end. Control of that tool is the key to empowerment. South Africa, actually all of Africa was held under oppression for many centuries by corporate interests such as microsoft, who held the keys for livelihood out of the masses hands in order to force the yoke.
Microsoft cannot understand why people with such a memory would not jump at the option of putting a new yoke on their necks, to work themselves to death in order to enrich a new foreign master.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
p.s. It made me giggle a little to search for ubuntu, free software, and sourceforge on msn.com using firefox on a linux box.
Even since the days before Stallman, the reason people shared software (that is, they gave it away for free), is because it is practically cost-free to reproduce. A community of hackers use the same OS and tools. In my life, it's been DEC TOPS-10, then UNIX, then Linux, but no matter. We all run into the same bugs. Better for one of us to fix and share, than for each of us to find and fix the same bug. Better for each of us to write a tool and share with all, than for each of us to have to write the same tool, most of us doing it poorly. It seems so obvious.
Why did Bill Gates become fabulously wealthy? Because he produces a great product? I think not. Because he produces (and markets) an ok product that he can reproduce for pennies and sell for hundreds of dollars each. And he has managed to lock people into using his products.
The point is that economically speaking, there is a strong argument for sharing (and thereby dividing up) the cost of production of tools if you can reproduce the tools for no cost and with no restrictions. Microsoft may not like this, but a developing nation should understand the point.
"South African Minister Locks Horns with Microsoft
Yes but, were they long horns?
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
God must love idiots, because He made so many of them...
"There is no such thing as free software."
Slavery, anyone?
FLR
If that's Microsoft's position, than clearly this organization is just another profiteer.
I guess they only recognize their own stuff and not the UN's FOSS (free/open source software) and IOSN (International Open Source Network) programs
http://www.iosn.net/foss/foss-general-primer
Fuck you, Africa. I'm fed up with my taxes being used so that government aid can bail you out of your own mistakes.
50 years ago, the cry was for independence - you were mature enough to run your own countries, you could manage democracy, imperialism had only set you back. What happened in nearly every country within 10 years? Genocide, civil war, dictatorship and famine. One man, one vote, once.
"But wait" cries the liberal, "Africa is only in the state it's in because of Western Imperialism. 100 years of occupation ruined these countries." Liberals, I'd like to make a comparison here. We're going to look at 2 countries. One is Ethiopia, one is Poland. Ethiopia has, in the past 300 years, been under foreign rule for 5 years. Poland, by contrast, has been independent for less than 50 of those 300 years, alternating between the German and the Russian jackboot. So, as Africa's problems are solely due to evil imperialism, let's make some predictions here - Poland will have lower GDP, lower life expectancy, lower literacy and less political stability. Right? Well, wrong. On every single metric, Poland scores higher than any country in Africa. So does Iceland, Ireland and Hungary. Hell, so does Israel, and if anyone's been persecuted and oppressed it's the Jews. I don't see them trying to claim reparations off Egypt.
So what, then, is the problem with Africa? Well, the problem with Africa is basically that it's full of blacks, who are, Albanians and Turks aside, the most worthless specimens of existence ever to have crawled out of the primal soup. Blacks have never contributed anything of value to humanity, and short of revolutionary new methods of fossil fuel generation, probably never will. "But wait again" cries the plaintive liberal voice, "What about peanut butter?". What about peanut butter? Europe can claim Mozart, Newton, Galileo, Plato, Locke. The list is endless, a non stop parade of Western achievement and progress. China can claim a legacy of civilization going back to the time when Stephen Hawking's ancestors were bushwhacking Roman legions in the Black Forest. The Arabs have their chemists, the Jews their philosophers, the Persians their poets. The blacks have a sandwich filling.
"But wait" our muesli molester cries, almost daring to mouth the dread accusation of racism that should silence all dissent "it's all environmental. African underachievement is a result of living in poor countries." If this were the case, blacks should prosper when they sneak into the West under false claims of asylum, surely? Except they don't. In every country, blacks have higher unemployment, higher crime, higher poverty and lower educational achievement. There isn't a black majority area in the world that compares favourably with it's counterparts. Instead, we're forced to put up with all the problems they bring as our cities and nations become dumping grounds into which the sewers of the third world can flow.
Fuck you, Africa. You're the problem, and the only aid that will help you is a vasectomy.
Yep your right, people develop free stuff for knowledge, experience, marketing, recognition, entertainment, pride, associated-revenue streams, etc. None of those are totally 'free' in the broader sense of cost.
Of course Microsoft has to stick with its free can't cost less money than commercial development argument. And overall many of MS's business folks can't grasp doing something for pride, fun, or education (unless the company is paying money you to be happy, full of pride, and smart).
Several 501c organizations develop software for other 501c organizations simply to reduce the cost of administrative overhead...i can't name names, but I ran across a few when hunting for a job with my MPA. Since any decent charity is judged by its works _and_ its administrative overhead, it made sense to folks working with multiple non-profits to spin-off administrative systems and software. I will say that such processes are usually extremely rare, especially when involving gov't organizations or funds due to regulatory/control reasons--I was very surprised to see them.
Is it charity to develop software for free (or in this case, not for profit) to lower mgmt costs? I would say yes, because the goal of the technology is to lower the costs of work and thereby get more support to those who need it--this is back office charity. And those non-profit employees that still get paid...well they're donating their own work at less than market value (no stock/upside) with a greatly increased risk (very unstable funding).
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/open/opencharity.mspx
Oh, the irony! Or is it hypocrisy?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
problem; a few recent a0Rticle put 40,000 workstations
What Microsoft says is technically true though. Yes, there are many developers who write code for no money, but at the same time, I don't know anyone who does it entirely for selfless, charitable reasons.
Many of the most active open source coders are poster children for being self absorbed. It's just that, instead of being self absorbed with money and material possessions, they prefer to be paid in the form of being well known, having prestige, and generally getting their ego stroked.
Many others program just to stick it to the man because they have some sort of grudge against govt. or corporations, and others because they simply want lots and lots of software for free (thinking if they give theirs away, others will too). Stallman probably fits into both of these camps.
Finally, some program for free just to learn more or have fun. Not necessarilly saying that any or all of the above reasons are bad, only that there are few, if any, programmers who write free software for charity. Most expect to get some sort of benefit out of it. The thing the Africans need to realize is that most programmers prefer to get money in exchange for their coding, and if you don't allow patents, and therefore don't allow programmers to get money in exchange for coding, you have cut off about 98% of your source of new code. You can get some people to work for ego stroking, but most have mortgages to pay and lives to live, and they need money like everyone else. In general, Microsoft is very correct that software costs money, and you aren't going to get it for free.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Just as no Chef ever creates an interpretation of a recipe for charity.
Many people spend their time and effort contributing to the development of Open Source and even "free" software. They pay the price so others don't have to reinvent the wheel. While it isn't $$$ we're talking about, time is valuable.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
This is a false dichotomy. Software patents are obviously not the only alternative to developing for charity.
it's "free, as in speech," not "free, as in beer."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
We all know Microsoft has them, but I was surprised to learn that South African
ministers possess horns as well.
A good chunk of their network stack came from BSD... you that free code they insist doesn't exist.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I hear the same argument from developing countries who wish to break all sorts of patents; on drugs, on biomedical research for example. The downside for them is that they often find themselves cut out of the distribution for the latest and greatest of these life saving tools, or, are often at the mercy of haphazard quality controls from second or third rate manufacturers.
He minus well have said - we need slavery, nobody will grow cotton on the plantations for free. The point being that copyright and patent are nothing like a normal property right and are the anti-christ of freedom and free markets. Every 'value' that they have is coerced at the expense of someone else, is asserting control over things they have no right to control, is an artificial monopoly.
Especially not Bram Moolenaar.
Patents and copyrights pose threats to third world countries because with them they cannot legally use the software they need or want to use to get themselves out of the "third world".
Nothing new here. Same thing in China and Russia, etc...
They want a free ride until they get on their own feet.
I've got no problems with that, but don't try to pass this off as some failure of the patent system.
I agree, that is the original intent of patents.
But has anyone heard of a little guy using a patent to stave off a large corporation from stealing his ideas in the last decade or so? It only works if the little guy has lawyers good enough to go to bat against the megacorporations likely to steal his patent. Which, of course, means he's not a little guy.
The patent game is a game played by companies with teams of lawyers on the payroll. IMHO, the little guy was bounced out of this arena sometime around 1950 or so. I know I haven't seen it be otherwise in my lifetime.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I recommend this to him.
Jump into #openbsd on freenode, and ask the guys to explain something to you.
See if you still have any trouble finding "rich" documentation for open source projects then.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
...and nobody codes for fun!
Against my nature I RTFA, and I noticed that from MS' side what this seems to be about (if you read between the lines) is the courting of local developers. The comparison with India speaks volumes.
I'm willing to speculate that if you look at market entrance for the (lower) continent SA is likely the gateway. Is Shuttleworth a large employer there? Is it a veiled threat WRT employment possibilities?
It's a tried and tested method used by corporations to get their way, use (potential and actual) employment as bargaining chips to get the government pork.
"Nobody develops software for charity.'"
I hear echoes of a letter written by a certain William Gates over 30 years ago:
http://www.blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html
"What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? "
They get tax benefit!
Everything is give and take, no matter how you look at it. A good system keeps the wheels running, a bad system does not.
Microsoft have used software libraries that were released by the BSD community in their products for years. They "incorporated" tools written by hobbiests into DOS, back in the day, without any note to the contributors. It only proves they move blindly towards the money, never look behind, and never clean the people they step on off the bottom of their shoes.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
If you're wondering, in the article:
GOD DAMN IT! People are starting to believe it's a word because people wearing suits and ties are saying it! It's worse than the likes of "ain't" because it was mostly used by rednecks and other 'uneducated' sorts. But now I have to wonder what other "noun" roots can have "-ise"/"-ize" endings added to them to make them into verbs? "Horseize"? Nope... "Dogize"? Nope... "Loveize"? Nope... "Georgeize"? Nope... "Martinize"? Yes, but that's an exception since it's a trademarked word. "Ostrichize"? Nope... but would "Ostracize" close enough? "Penalize?" YES! Oh wait, that's not a noun root... it's an adjective root!
So what I'm ranting over here is the use of "Noun"+"-ize" where as far as I can tell, it should be only "Adjective"+"-ize" only.
And while it fits in this case, every time I hear "incentivize" I think of the speaker as a frikken idiot!
Microsoft cannot tell the difference between Patent Encumbered Proprietary Software, Patent-Free Proprietary Software, "No such thing as software patents" Copyright Protected Software, Open Source Software, and Free Software.
There is an awful lot of Baby left in that Bathwater when you go from "Software Patents Threaten Africa's Software Sector" to "Free software, as the only available alternative to Software Patents, is non-existent charity." Hello, all of the eighties and most of the nineties are on the phone and they want the money they paid for Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Microsoft Office back. Even you, Microsoft, made _billions_ of dollars (US) selling software that was not patented.
Maybe it isn't FUD, maybe Microsoft people are just stupid.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
I think the minister should take a big cup of shut the fuck up. She is the minister of public works - her department is a cesspool of incompetence and corruption. Why should she take on another separate topic if she can not even do the job that she is paid for?
.NET, Visio, Office, SQL Server, etc.. Now open source Nazi's are going to rail against this. But remember, there is a market for .NET programmers (for example as outsourcing). If this is what brings in the money, then so be it.
If the government really wants to encourage free software, why not sell their share in Telkom and act against that monopoly? It is impossible for most people to get a basic internet connection in the country. If you do get ADSL, it is capped - this fucks with most internet activities (including outsourcing, call centers and back office work). In all fairness, Telkom is a much worse monopoly than Microsoft can and will ever be.
How the hell will you download a new copy of your favorite Linux distribution? (500MB costs around R189).
To me it looks like the governments "open source" policy is to gather around a bunch of incompetent programmers. They are then paid (with tax money) to write bad open-source software that no-one will use. Yipee kay jay.
Now back to "evil" Microsoft. Microsoft provides all of its software free to any educational institution in South Africa (Academic Alliance). By that I mean everything - Visual Studio
Oh, yeah. The Bill and Melinda charity provides a shitload of money for anti-AIDS programs. This is while the current president makes statements that poverty causes AIDS, and the minister of health promotes beetroot as a cure for AIDS.
They have everyone debating paying for software versus getting software for free. That has *nothing* to do with patents. Patents "protect" ideas. Copyright protects code. People should be free to build on the ideas of others. That's how we've made such progress to date. Imagine the kind of dark ages we might be living in now if someone had a patent on such basic ideas as fire, the wheel, the inclined plane, etc. Would we be where are now if all the basic science of the past had been patent protected? Also, why did we even have any progress at all in the pre-patent days? What was the incentive to advance science from the dawn of time without patents? Oh my, somebody's logic must be flawed somewhere, eh? ;)
Years and years ago, around 1992'ish I think, I wrote an app for the Mac called StartupFrills. It was a toy which showed a different screen each reboot, played a different sound, movie, read something out using Speech Manager...that kind of thing. I released it as freeware, with a note in the readme saying if you liked it please donate to your local children's hospital.
You will be amazed how many emails I got saying that people had done exactly that. I had no idea at that time - the idea of putting it up on the net at all was something of a novelty for me. I remember one mail from a Freemason, who said it was his duty to donate and that he would donate to a children's hospital this time round because I'd asked people to. He then said he was actually head of the Freemasons in Texas, and he would be asking all in his...err....chapter? group?....whatever the word is to donate to their local children's hospital that time. I have no idea how much that raised, but it's not a bad start is it.
I was astounded. I have a particular interest in donating to children's hospitals - as I kid I caught polyneuritis, was paralysed, 'died', was in a wheelchair and yet actually fully recovered - there's no trace of that in me now beyond a tracheotomy scar. I expected nothing from releasing StartupFrills and asking for donations, and I was extremely surprised at what took place.
Cheers,
Ian
The rest of you are shit out of luck. "For innovation to continue, there needs to be value - and even open-source applications have some form of market model, which incentivises them to continue innovating." That's true, for those of you who have your market blinders on. because markets are the only thing that matters. Unlike your "value-added products and services", however FOSS exists beyond markets. It's undead.
Want proof? Go out of business. No one will use Windows anymore, but GNU/Linux will still be available.
The answer, to me, is that F/L/OSS is charity, a charity that produces information the same way the above charity donating to a library produces information, and is a charity that turns a bunch of metals and chemicals into a finely-honed computing tool, the same as the above charity created a park. What we do is indeed charitable, not because we deprive ourselves, but because we enrich others. The cost to ourselves is zero, because we would have scratched our itches anyway. You can't rationally add as a cost of sharing the cost of pleasing ourselves.
Charity obviously allows for return on investment, it just means that others also get a return on your investment. But it doesn't require that others give any kind of feedback at all. If you make a public park and only you visit, it's still public, it was still an act of charity, but it's an act of charity you get exclusive benefit from.
Microsoft's statement, then, is a dark one indeed. No charity, of any kind? It says that they gain no pleasure in the results of their labour, that they suffer with every release, that every enhancement and refinement is a source of pain. Quality must be endless torment (which would explain some things). It is a bleak future when everything is misery and there is an apparent determination to spread that misery.
If they wanted to spread even just contentment, through their freely-donated hot-fixes, patches and service packs, freely-donated Microsoft Research products and freely-donated e-mail service and instant messenger, they'd be guilty of charity. Since they have denounced the charitable and all their works, these things cannot be given for the use of others. But, if they are not usable, even in theory, what are they? Microsoft's comments deride and slander all who would offer service to others, so the only conclusion is that these things are intended to cause suffering and misery, which - to judge by Vista service pack 1 - is indeed what they cause.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What Microsoft - and the GPL-fans, for that matter - have oh-so-conveniently forgotten is the mechanism of PD software. Write it, share it, go on with your life. The more people do that, the more useful things will get created. Personally, I find the GPL just as corrosive as software patents, and for very similar reasons. I try to stay away from both. But that's just me.
Actually the only reason the GPL exists is because copyrights exist, if copyrights didn't exist the GPL wouldn't either. It it called copyleft for a reason.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There is no such thing as getting paid in spades for something with practically no manufacturing cost. See, Paulo, I can make completely false statements, too.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Now let the inevitable yammering begin about how anybody who takes out a patent is a either a sleazy patent troll or a corporate weasel....
How long did it take you to compile that list?
"Do as I say and not as I do shall be the whole of the law".
I don't know if he said that but it sounds like him. And this reverses the saying in Kabalism as well as Wicca, in Wicca: "An it harm none so mote it be."
FalconShould there be a Law?
I found it interesting that the minister took the recent addition of several new African countries to the ISO process with a very different spin. Many of us simply saw these new additions as evidence that Microsoft was "buying" votes to try to ram their OOXML through ISO. I still think this is the case, but the Minister saw a different outcome. Her hope was that, as these nations have become involved with the International Standards process, they will continue to be involved in the future. Rather than just seeing themselves as passive bystanders, these nations can dig in and start to be participating members. Of course, that assumes a lot in terms of developing their own experts who really have some sort of idea of what they are talking about (as opposed to parroting their Microsoft handlers), but there's nothing like jumping in with both feet to start having your voice be heard.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Bullshitizeitis - Use of words like incentivises is a key symptom of this fatal (well I can hope) disease :)
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
There's an irony in Microsoft saying there is no such thing as free software, while claiming to compete in a free market, which doesn't exist.
You're right that in a (theoretical ideal) competitive (or free) market, price = marginal cost. Actual markets are like this to greater or lesser extents. The software market is nothing like this.
Companies need to be big enough that marginal cost dominates, before they can compete. In software, marginal cost will never dominate, so fair competition can never occur.
Say, for example, the market for office suites is 90% Microsoft Office, 5% Corel WordPerfect Office, 5% other. Both Microsoft and Corel are creating 1 product, i.e. they both have to do the same amount of work, but Microsoft gets 18x as much income to do this. In order for Corel to compete, they must be 18x more efficient. The market doesn't favour efficiency, it favours market share, so the idea of fair competition is nonsense.
Contrast this to companies making pies, where company A has 90% of the market, company B has 5%, etc. Company A is getting 90% of the income, but must do 90% of the work, i.e. in order for any company to compete, they must be as efficient as their competitors. In this case, the market favours efficiency, so we have competition.
you know, if we just take the extreme approach of microsoft representative, you can easily say 'no such thing as money'. or 'you dont exist' or 'world is in the eyes of a fish' and etc.
Read radical news here
Compiz Fusion! HTB for packet scheduling.
BTW most stuff in Linux is not UI visible.
And anyway most of developers behind FOSS projects are not hobbyists, but professionals that spend extra time on FOSS projects (Google practice for spending some time on FOSS projects)
"There is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity."
Every time I see statements like this, I smile. It is proof that Microsoft still hasn't gotten it. And most likely they never will.
Nobody cares about free-as-in-beer software. Well, some do, but that's not the point. What is important is of course free-as-in-speech software, and Microsoft repeatedly fails to understand why. It will be their doom, of course... and the smile will stay on my face when they perish.
May we live long and die out
By "for charity" it seems quite clear that they mean software that
-does not come with an unconscionable EULA
-does not do its damnedest to prevent other software from working with it
-is not protected from competition by government granted monopolies
-does not have an expiration date in the form of planned obsolescence/end of support
-does not require that the user surrender hisher hardware to the control of a remote party
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Me.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...I remembered "televise" right after I clicked "Submit" and then tried to reply to my own post to amend it, but then got the "Slow down cowboy!" message and decided... "ah, to hell with it..."
When IT ministers go to a free software conference to talk about how software patents are harmful to society and that everyone should use ODF, you know Stallman has been there in spirit if not in person. Stallman does not own the ideas but he has been clearly articulating them for a long time. People are finally starting to get it and that's a great thing. The man deserves a Peace Prize.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
Microsoft "GET OF MY CODE!!"
MS is all gung ho about free software when it serves to crush the competition, but not when they get crushed by it. I wonder why?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It is free as opposed to proprietary, not free as opposed to commercial. Canonical will gladly sell you a copy of Ubuntu, and Microsoft gives away Internet Explorer, but we still speak of the former as freer than the latter.
To make the world's greediest man seem like a giving person.
Ah... so according to Microsoft no one is developing for GNU? What's next?
Here be signatures
I will not, as a human being, go around with buckets collecting up all that fucking phlegm. I would rather be destitute.
Your sig is a nice metaphor for why I won't work with or near Microshit products.
you had me at #!
the short form for bullshitting
On a serious note:That is only true for some of the open-source applications (i.e. 99% of apps on SourceForge or google code have no market model). Those that actually aim to make money still do not rely any way on software patents (companies like Redhat & to an extent IBM obtain patents for defense) and instead rely on actually creating a worthwhile product. And usually the incentive for companies to donate to open-source apps is that it's essentially a subsidized way to get a solution to a common problem.
While I disagree with the statement that no one develops software for charity; I feel like I have to point out that free doesn't necessarily mean charity. There is tons of free software out there. Only a fraction was built with charity in mind.
Some charitable individual or organization out there might even sponsor your download.
I suppose if, however, you were willing to go absolutely any distance necessary to explicate FOSS from the umbrella of charity, one could make the same foolish argument you've made, but they'd have to follow that argument to its logical conclusion, and in doing so, reveal just how shallow and self-serving any argument that attempts to redefine charity really is. To paraphrase:
I been living a lie then, Open source is a huge lie according to Microsoft. All my money goes in to the flag ship of capitalism, "Steve Ballmer for president of Iraq 2009".
"Microsoft responded aggressively, saying that 'there is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity.'" Well... I do. Besides, software is basically only something that makes your hardware work. It's no suprise that hardware companies like IBM use open source software to support their sales. We're entering an age where computer- and hardware manufacturerers no longer really need Redmond to make their products attractive to the public. As this trend continues, we will see more hardware vendors switching to open source, simply because it makes more economic sense. I think the phrase 'open source doesn't mean fee of charge' is way overused, because for the most part, it is.
I can only assume you're trolling, and I *know* I shouldn't feed the trolls, but I have a personal beef against Office 2007 thanks to one "just ride the gravy train and do / know jack" schmuck of an IT guy...
Maybe, on high-end hardware. My wife's school has a bunch of old Dells, and Office 2003 was sluggish, but acceptable on them. The school's IT guy decided in the middle of the school year to install Office 2007 school-wide, without telling anyone. Nice. So the software is slower than a dying dog, and now the UI's so different that all the teachers who had only finally figured out where everything was under the old Office paradigm are crippled in their productivity by this weird "ribbon" garbage. Which, incidentally, is quite the hog in terms of screen real estate when you've only got 1024x768 or less to play with.
Based on what? If it's slower to load, and includes things you don't need, that would seem to be bloat...?
No more so than Office 2000, which, while no winner of any beauty awards, at least we were used to. And see my comment above about the unusability of the ribbon interface on smaller monitors.
This New! Improved! And Innovative! interface resulted in numerous half-bald teachers at my wife's school. Due to tearing their hair out trying to get things done, I mean.
I hesitate to even get into this one much, but the troubles with MSO 2007 file incompatibility with older installations, or the problems with "compatibility" mode using older file formats within MSO 2007, has been documented to some length elsewhere on the web.
So there. Food for the troll, maybe, but at least I've gotten some things off my chest. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
What makes it even more amazing is that one of the most successful FOSS projects out there originated in his own back yard.
siener's youtube channel
And there are different people. While America is a democracy (yet) M$ and such should lay low and look out for people's opinions. In Africa there are mostly corrupt autocracies and corpotations may do whatever they please. I'm much surprised, really, that Microsoft answered so politely. Heck, even in Russia we have a number of court rulings against M$. They just ignore them outright! What could you say about Africa then?
I took the trouble to see the video, and she knows what she's talking about.
Sometimes I think we'll win this one, despite all the billions that MS is stuffing into continuing its corruption. I really thank P.J. and the likes of her that keep dragging MS and related scum from under their rocks into the light. I think that is what's eventually going to finish off MS type business practices.
Bart
That's not what software patents do.
Software patents cover an idea, not a piece of code. Here's an idea: "write information to a digital medium over a network." See how broad this is? If you code something that does what my patent describes, you'll have to license with me. The idea itself is out there anyhow, because it's part of the problem your product is solving. The customer knows the problem and can see your idea and thus your product solving it, so that's not secret in any meaningful way.
Now for the implementation. How exactly is it solved? This should be part of the patent, but often it's not or in such broad terms that anything falls under it. The actual code is copyrighted. You cannot use or distribute code or the applications built with it if you're not licensed by the creator.
Without software patents, you can make different code that solves that same problem in a different (better?) way. The code is protected and can be licensed either way.
Another example is Amazon's infamous single click to buy shopping cart. Besides the blatant obviousness of this idea, there's another problem: if this patent holds, no-one can create a shopping cart that has one click buying, without licensing with Amazon. So, my small time basement startup cannot have a decent online shop without paying up. This does stifle innovation.
Idea: "compress files to a smaller size using compression algorithms." Let's say the Zip people hold this one (I know there aren't any "zip people" but let's assume for the sake of argument.) Would there be Rar? Would there be bz? Or 7z? Or arj? Or mp3?
In short, we don't need software patents to cover code because it's already protected by copyright, and you can make people pay for using it. We don't want it for software ideas either, because that stifles innovation, keeping me from implementing something in a better way.
FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!!!
When Shuttleworth started Ubuntu, it was to not the South African people deal with your bullshit anymore. Take your shit, and get the fuck out of my country. You attention-starved, bi-polar, ex-convict!
"Instead of relying on people wanting to use their platform, they try to trap them into it..."
As a MS Vista/Linux user I know what you mean, but in a larger perspective, one in which the Minister is operating this is beside the point, since it will always be the business of business to make money.
The Minister is spot on in that a country like South Africa is burdened by widespread poverty, lack of educational opportunities for technical advancement and must largely rely software that delivers the greatest efficiency for the least cost. They clearly have no choice but to seek to promote a software-creation playing field that lowers the cost of participation. They can hardly fund their own pension systems, much less that of Bill Gates, not that Mr. Gates has not donated significant personal funds to fight AIDS in South Africa.
While it might be said that the US and hence its corporations like MS would benefit from continuing to pursue a stranglehold on patents and insisting increased prominence in patents in international trade deals, this approach actually overlooks a fundamental vulnerability the US has in that to pursue this approach tends to increase poverty and hopelessness in countries such as South Africa and consequently, slowly but surely adds to political instability and political realignments. Yes, some would argue that we should get our profits out first at all costs before we concern ourselves with such issues. However, in the long haul we actually have more to gain in seeing a prosperous South Africa that is disposed toward good relations with American corporations than one that is resentful of it. The sad truth is that it is precisely this kind of neglect that is increasing the role of the People's Republic of China and Europe as South Africa's business partners to the detriment of longterm US interests.
When MS declines to accept an open standard only to create a "standard of their own" in an attempt to continue their control over the process of business to business, business to government/government to business, and government to government computerized communication of data, it only serves to further destabilize a country that can not afford to pay for the use of such "standards". This undermines the broader interests of the United States, which is more than just making sure its corporations make extra money whenever possible (Although, admittedly it would be hard to tell by only looking at so many of our politicans eagerly accepting kickbacks and perks for doing so).
No doubt the current adminisration or its extension (vis a vis McCain or Clinton) will fail to recognize this, just as they see staying in Iraq, because it benefits our defence contractors and corporate oil titans, as somehow good for America. I suspect this will be just another step in the long steady march toward America shrinking into the sunset. By failing to take a more open stance toward software development, Microsoft is only setting itself up for ultimamte failure. You can already see this in other countries such as India, who have rejected MS's "standard". Soon, only the US will use such "standards" and "patents" and we will be the ones paying more than everyone else for the privilege these types of inter-institutional kinds of data "regulated/standardized" kinds of exchange and software. At that point innovation and leadership will have migrated elsewhere.
I'm a South African living in Europe. I did a long hard look at the SA IT market last year as I was considering moving back to SA. Having just read the speech, which is much the same as many other politicians in other countries have made, as well as having read the responses written by various South Africans on the forum of mybroadband.co.za, I kind of feel depressed. It just never ceases to simply amaze me what a bunch of clueless morons my countrymen are, no matter what their skin colour (in case someone was going to mention race). There are a few that notice that, on the face of it, the idea that software patents are highly damaging and restrictive to the software market (they might not be if there laws governing licensing but in general, patents are mostly used to restrict competition, isn't that so, Bill Gates?), but for the most part, white South Africans, in spite of being the home country of Mark Shuttleworth, will mindlessly criticize anything that anyone from the government says.
White South Africans are terribly bitter about the fact that legal employment quotas mean that it's very difficult for a white to get a job. The problem with white South Africans is that, as a corollary, will see: Microsoft good, Government bad. This, despite the fact that there are almost guaranteed to be almost no South Africans that could actually afford a retail version of Windows, much less a retail version of Office (South Africans are dumb enough to think that the cracked Windows and Office on their low quality packard bell computers are free.), given that the South African currency lost even more against the Euro this last year than the Dollar did.
The sad thing is that they are, to a tiny point, right. The South African government is so corrupt and so occupied with internal power struggles that the no national Linux system will ever be installed and the education system is so poor (10 year Delphi, of all things, as a standard), that no real development will ever get done.
It breaks my heart to see my country being ruined by its goverment and its population.
Honestly. I am curious.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There is a limited supply of electricity in RSA. Regularly power is switched off for entire cities for up to 3 hours at a time, on for 2 hours and then off again. In 1998 as a kid I said the government can not plan for the long-term and they would not be able to uphold the infrastructure as they would not invest in it as that requires seeking long-term rewards rather than short-term rewards. Eskom is the national supplier of power, that is holding not only software companies back but the whole economy. If there is no power, there is no business at all. Furthermore, anti-white policies is prevalent, it is so bad that most white engineers have left the country and after 13 years of so called democracy (where people vote based on the colour of their skin for the corrupt ANC) there are not enough qualified engineers to fix the problems. Viva ANC. .. (let's * this country up good)
This is my sig.