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Minutes to the NYSIA/WWWAC Software Summit
Stephen Adler has writen up his
experiences going to the NYSIA/WWWAC Software Summit
and the presentations he attended: the Java Breakfast,
the digital music panel, the free software panel with
RMS, a CORBA talk and, the keynote panel on the future
of the Internet/software industry over the next 5 years.
It also talks about patents and slashdot (well I never!).
I wish Stallman would stop insulting libertarians and the anti-tax and pro-free market crowds quite so much. He's got Vernor Vinge on his FSF board, and Vinge wrote "The Ungoverned" and everything else about how cool things like a free market in tax breaks would be -- so do Vinge and Stallman flame each other over this stuff every time they get together?
It's pretty clear that Stallman has a lot of very strong opinions on subjects even beyond his already-controversial position that all software should be free. I've heard him express some of them. Try asking RMS about religion sometime. :-)
I appreciate his efforts in promoting his opinions, with a courage and consistency that most people just don't have, but you should understand that he really manages to offend a lot of people with his style, whether he intends to or not.
They're the world's "second largest software company"? Who are they? If you believe Oracle's commercials (and who doesn't believe commercials), Oracle is second only to Microsoft.
Of course, they're all evil anyway...
Just how much code do you expect to get for $10,000.? For a large corporation, to code a piece of software from scratch that perfoms the same functions as SAP would cost in the multi-millions and take at least a few years. You can bet that SAP charges a whole lot more than ~$10,000 to its bigger customers.
Dave K
daking at infinet dot com
I found his comments about writing GPL'd SAP clone software to be hilarious. He can't be serious. Just who does he think is going to write all that code? I mean, the free software community considers the Linux kernel and Mozilla to be "large" projects, both of which are trivial compared to writing software to compete with SAP from scratch. He would have to mobilize an army of free software developers, most of which would have no personal interest in or use for the kind of software SAP sells.
Dave K
daking at infinet dot com
hmm, seems like "the /. effect" is beginning to be kind of a big buzzword...in any case i think this site has gone further than CT ever thought it would...good going!
He's this somewhat hazy figure to a lot of people, and as a result I think a lot of folks tend to idealize him in one way or another, and end up seeing him in much more flattering terms than actually apply. Because of his association with free software, an enormous number of people seem to have convinced themselves that "he's not really that bad/extremist/creepy/whatever, and he's done a lot for free software, so we all ought to revere him". Well, he *is* that bad. Maybe you've managed to convince yourself that the guy is really rational, that he's really on your side, etc., because you want the luxury of seeing the OSS/CSS conflict in purely black and white terms. God knows plenty of people around here seem to see MS that way, in the most simplistic kind of good guy/bad guy mentality.
I'd bet that if 85% of the /. readership (nevermind the population at large) were to really dive in and read all of his writings, and meet him in person and talk to him about his beliefs, they would end up being thoroughly creeped out by the guy, not to mention many of his ideas regarding intellectual property. This isn't a knee-jerk reaction- I've been paying close attention to this guy for years, and over the course of those years my opinion on him has gone from modern-day prophet to someone who in another life would have ended up as some black helicopter militia guy living out in the woods.
So, anyway, IMO these kinds of articles are very healthy, because it lets people see him like he really is, more than how they would like to think of him. He's become something of a demagogue, and I'd prefer to see more people apply some critical analysis to his ideas, rather than just preach the gospel according to RMS, just cuz you think free software is cool and it never occurred to anyone to actually question his legitimacy.
Basically, if you believe in *any* form of intellectual property, he's opposed to you. Really. He'll deny this completely. But that's what it comes down to- read his stuff, go see his talks, pay attention to gnu.misc.discuss.
He's also got some issues with the whole concept of private property, period. He's not a communist, but his vision of the software industry is. Go read about his software tax idea, if you disagree. That vision extends to books, music, and anything else related to intellectual property.
He's also got a pretty severe case of tunnel vision, familiar to anyone who has lurked in academia for 5-10 years. To him, the world is split into two halves: stuff related to computers, and stuff that isn't. And the stuff that isn't just doesn't matter to him. He is incapable of seeing any bigger picture, or of relating to people who aren't programmers. He probably would be a full-fledged communist, if his myopia were lifted and he could see outside the world of computers and software. But to him, all of that non-software-related stuff just doesn't matter, so he neither thinks nor cares about it.
At some point the mass media will discover him. I bet this year will be an even bigger year for free software than last year, maybe 5-10 times bigger. At least in terms of media coverage. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if at some point in the next couple of years, RMS finds himself on 60 Minutes or some other news giant. And it's not going to be pretty. He's going to end up making the free software community look like a bunch of crazed loons, and the responses on /. the next day are going to be more along the lines of, "Holy shit, I had no idea he was like *that* :(", rather than, "Yeah, go RMS!"
Oh well, sorry for the big long rant. Flame away, guys.
Your post is a prime example of Stallman's simplistic worldview. You sit there and characterize everyone as being part of "the establishment", or part of something else. The author of the original report exhibited the same fallacy throughout his piece- look at how often he referred to "the suits in the corner" and people from "the establishment". This is characteristic of people who have not intellectually evolved in any significant way since, oh, high school. Sorry, the world is just not that simple. It is just not that cut and dried. I'm assuming you're either in high school or college, and perhaps you can be forgiven for your naivete. If not...well, yuck. Grow up, read some books, and think for yourself. The most dramatic way of looking at the world is not necessarily the correct way of looking at the world. Start trying to think about truth and what's real rather than "what viewpoint can I adopt that makes the world seem as simple and dramatic as possible".
You manage to completely trivialize the original post by jumping to conclusions about the author's perspective and bypassing every single point that was made. Talk about intellectually shallow. Geez. You can accuse people of being "conditioned by the suits" all you want, but if you want people to listen to you you really truly do need to actually apply reason and talk about ideas and stuff that really matters. A healthy exercise is to make a point of constantly playing devil's advocate against yourself- come up the best arguments against your own views and try and refute them. You might learn a lot about yourself and the world. But you'd never do that, you're much more interested in living in a dramatic, simple world of white hats and black hats where you never have to think about truth.
him, I didn't realize either
I don't think Stallman means "free market" in the libertarian sense of the word. When you him say "free market in tax breaks" you should probably read "rent seeking", something libertarians are dead against.
You must have missed the link to Stallman's letter. He corrected the author and explicitly stated that he was not going to write an SAP replacement himself, but rather that someone eventually would.
SAP has two strikes against them when it comes to wide public recognition: they only sell to big business, and they are based in Germany. SAP seels ERP (enterprise resource planning) software. They have modules that basically do anything your business would need to do, ranging from financials to manufacturing control, to distribution, inventory, etc. It is red hot. The occupy (roughly) the same niche as companies like PeopleSoft, Baan, and the Applications side of Oracle (eg, Oracle Financials).
IMO, Stallman doesn't believe in socialism much at all. I don't think he really cares one way or another about it government from a philosophical standpoint. I just think he cares how a particular structure would affect the freedoms of ordinary people. But most of what he advocates is pure capitalism. Copyright and patent monopolies on software are a classic example of the fruits of corporate rent seeking. He only seeks to eliminate those distortions from the market.
OTOH, he as at times written proposals that are socialistic (his software tax in the GNU manifesto) but I haven't heard any of them lately. Perhaps in the early 80's when free software was not nearly as viable as it is today he thought maybe this was an area where the government needed to step in to provide funding. As it turned out, he was wrong.
Stallman is clearly not a mainstream kind of guy. But that's no crime. And it's clearly not a reason to refute his free software philsophy.
BTW: I think you are wrong about his view on property rights. Stallman appears to support property rights in all physical objects. He is smart enought to recognize that property rights are just social inventions we created to arbitrate access to scare resources though. He is willing to question the current definition of property rights when he finds that they are not benefiting humanity. But in general he seems to support strong property rights.
Where he has a problem is in non-scare property rights in such items as software. Even there he doesn't claim there should be no rights. In fact he claims that there is no compelling reason to allow people to modify postings like this one that explain our thoughts and actions. What he does have a problem with are property "rights" that hurt humanity and that enrich rent seeking corporations at the expense of everyone else.
Just because someone is seeking a tax break doesn't mean that they are not engaging in rent seeking. Lots of corporations/industries seek to obtain favorable tax treatment for themselves in order to make more money without seeking tax relief for anyone else. A tax break can be equivalent to a subsidy.
The world needs idealists, or extremists... whatever you want to call them... RMS has an ideal, and he's actually working hard towards building that ideal -- he's devoted his life to it.
So, sure he's creepy. And he doesn't make compromises to try and appeal to the "norm" - I mean, taking his shoes off at lectures, and stuff -- not the way to win over suits, is it.
This is where ESR would like his place to be - the spokesperson...
I dunno if you Americans realise this, but to us in the UK, gun-toting libertarians are pretty creepy too. It's just not an ideal we're used to.
Thirdly, I believe this "free market" in tax breaks will be just for those that RMS mentioned: the corporations. Let's see income taxes go up and up, while the corporations pay nothing. That would hurt the poor the worst and break us into the poor, who get poorer and the rich, who would get richer. No thanks. America of the people and for the people really beats America of the corps and for the corps.
Stallman's right. The competition for tax rates is a disaster. What it means is that those who can easily move (corporations, the wealthy) will pay zero tax, while those who cannot (people with mortgages) will pay higher tax. Someone has to pay for police protection, fire protection etc.
What's more, the cities and states engaging in the practice only lose: they and their citizens get nothing in exchange for the breaks, except for the opportunity to offer even more breaks. If the city or state doesn't dramatically cut its budget, they have to tax others more to give tax breaks to the favored few.
If a company gets a deal where they don't pay any tax, it means that you and I are paying to give them services for nothing. They will claim "but we provide jobs". No, they don't provide anything. If company X doesn't offer you a job, you go work for company Y. It's not a charity. In the case of NYC, most people getting the jobs NYC is subsidizing live in Jersey or Connecticut or suburban New York anyway.
It was especially nice to see Stallman standing up for principle. I would have loved to have been there to see the look on the politician's face as Stallman (indirectly) reprimanded him for his payback to the NY industries.
I also loved his comments about ``whom do you sue?''. I like Stallman's vision: moving to a society where we can trust each other rather than one where we each try to look out for our own interests only. And besides, when was the last time you sued Microsoft because NT crashed?
Cheers,
Joshua. (I realize my website is down. xfsttos2 is on Hobbes if you want it. Roadrunner has decided to block *all* traffic except to their stupid proxy server.)
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Think a compelling OSS desktop is tough? GPL'd line-of-business manufacturing and supply chain management software . . . free-SAP; that's the work of a patriot!
I'll assume he wasn't just saying this argumentatively (I'm convinced he almost never gives over to palaver). This sort of software goes for $2500-$11,000 per seat (depending on reputation it seems). Is this a declared project? Where do I sign up and what can I contribute (equipment, money, industrial eng research, code, APICS pulp, blood)?
A very enjoyable piece.... as if you were
there yourself.
What could they have to say about slashdot and patents???? /. isn't doing anything illeagal!