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RMS says software licenses worsen Y2K bug
RMS at the Singapore Linux conference on Saturday
pointed out the obvious: the bottleneck in fixing the Y2K
problem comes from
proprietary licensing practices. Perhaps Y2K damage will
help hammer the free software point across... Notice thato
RMS said "Business and making money are not bad" - only
restricting others' freedoms.
I may complain a lot about RMS, but one thing I've noticed is that his messages do tend to be consistent, if a little messianic.
This is what I've noticed from the interviews and articles I've read. Anybody with a different experience, please flame on....
I stopped reading that guy's drivel a long time ago. Yes I believe open-source is a good thing, but that doesn't preclude everything else.
Stallman is a heavily-biased loudmouth who constantly tries to draw attention to himself. He's trying to be to the Internet what Howard Stern is to radio.
Blah. I'd rather hear from someone who's more open-minded, personally.
My freedom is not restricted in that I am forced to exchange money for CDs. My freedom is restricted in that I can't do what I want with software I own.
Oh, I don't know.... Unix, the Internet, seem to be pretty innovative ideas from the open source community.
Where are your Sendmails, your Binds, your Apaches?
Open software is so stagnant.
Stallman is just taking advantage of the public awareness of Y2K to drive home his message: "Proprietary software is bad for the customer". Obviously it's much, much too late to take a new approach to Y2K problems at this point, and I'm sure he understands that.
Not quite. It's "how not providing source code for software is restricting others freedom". RMS has never said you must give software away for no charge, but he does have an ethical problem with people who like to withhold the source.
The example RMS gives in his lectures is that he received - for this lab - a new printer from Xerox. However Xerox refused to provide source code for the printer spooling software, which was horribly broken to the point of being unusable. You couldn't replace the printer spooling software because the interface was proprietary. He found a colleague who'd managed to wrestle the source code from Xerox, but the colleague refused to hand over a copy to RMS because Xerox had made him sign an NDA on the software and the interface.
As far as RMS is concerned, not only this is very anti-social, but it made the printer basically useless. RMS found he was better off using an older and less capable printer, simply because he had source code for the older printer's interface. RMS uses this example to highlight the technological stagnation that proprietary software brings, and also to show how unbelievably inhuman it is to inflict an NDA upon anybody. It's anti-social by being totally against the normal human nature of wanting to share ideas and help others.
Proprietary software has no place in the ideal society. We aren't in an ideal society, but we can all help get there by refusing to use proprietary software.
Company A has a piece of shit hot software they have developed. It'll sell really really well...
Company B has been trying to develop the same product but hasn't got there yet...
Exactly what advantage will Company A get by making the software Open Source (or GNU or whatever), thus giving it away for their competitors to see?
Jeez, quoting einstein huh? Why bother - he was as thick as sheep shit wasn't he...
All the things Richard is/maybe he is very consistant.
What's your point? You write software that has a very narrow application and is of dubious general use. If a power plant needs you to write software, why not write it, they're welcome to pay you to write it. Do you think they'll suddenly stop wanting it, if they realize that they can't get you to license it to them and them only? Better yet, wouldn't your software be great if a consortium of power plants jointly funded your work, therefore reducing costs on an already very niche-market program? Wouldn't the power companies benefit from the reduced cost and shared fixes?
There is nothing that prevents someone writing free software from getting paid for it, especially if it's in such a niche market. I'm sure people would gladly shell out money for the initial version of a very specialized free software project.
Or would you just make personal attacks against someone you don't agree with? RMS is nothing if not eloquent, literate, and persuasive. If you don't agree with him, try to do it on technical merits and not personal attacks.
Company A gains no advantage.
Company A shoud not be developing software to gain competitive advantage with the software by itself.
Company A should be developing software to solve its clients problems.
If Company A software solves the same problem better, business will naturally flow its way (do you prefer to have Paul Vixie's company configuring BIND for you or Joe Doe's Soft Schemes?).
"Stupid people (like you) say stupid things."
--Me, 5 seconds ago.
RMS is very consistent and logical in his
arguments. I've had lunch with him and spoken to
hit a few other times. His reasoning is rock
solid. it depends if you agree with his basic
claims and his conclusions not the reasoning
in the middle
Alan
So choosing not to say something is violating other people's right of free speech? Rather, it's a violation of my right of speech to be forced to say what I think.
You're missing the point. Suppose you had a really great meal, and it was cheap and easy to prepare. There would be nothing wrong with selling that meal. It would be a violation of someone's rights if you started telling someone that they could not attempt to figure out a recipe to the meal, could not tell other people about the construction of the meal, and could not change the meal in any way, even if it was quite nessecary (RMS uses such an example himself to emphasize why it is nessecary to allow modification). Even if they agreed to these terms, the restriction would still be artificial, unnessecary, and harmful. To correct your analogy, it's a restriction of people's right to free speech if you were to give a speech, and then forbid anyone from quoting any part of it, or telling anyone anything about the construction of the speech, or even trying to understand the ideas behind and inspiration for the speech.
In addition, property of any sort is a basic human right. If I choose not to give the means of making something to someone, I'm not limiting their freedom, since it's mine to do with as I please.
Information is a unique beast in this aspect. I agree that nobody should be able to force you to give up arbitrary information, but once you give out that information, it no longer belongs exclusively to you, and you should not be able to dictate what people can do with it. If someone tells me that they plan to blow up my friend's house, and tells me not to tell anyone, I am certainly not obligated to keep that information secret, by any means.
That doesn't stop someone from making their own version of the same thing however, which extends to mean that patents are worthless, as they actually do limit people's rights.
Okay, fine, good point =)
By the way, feel free to overanalyze and correct my analogies. I deserve the criticism if they need to be corrected.
RealNetworks is simply a broadcast audio stream, and was around in the late 80s in various freebie forms (including several UDP broadcasters over Ethernet). The software isn't difficult. The real innovation Real has achieved is convincing the mega-record companies to use the technology, and it now seems they did this by lying (claiming that RealAudio couldn't be pirated on the client side).
ID Software invented a few neat 3d games but this is hardly innovative. BSP maths has been around since Sprague (70s) and there are a number of code snippets in graphics books. Admittedly they all used floating point, so I supposed the only real innovation that ID brought us was implementing BSP in integer, and that's only because the Intel platform sucks so hard with floating point maths.
As for Macintosh, this is your worst blunder of the lot. The GUI design is usually attributed to Xerox PARC, not to Apple. Xerox PARC was a "think tank", a community in which all your ideas are freely exchanged with everyone, and all source code is open for peer review. This is far closer to the free software model than the proprietary model. It is also interesting that despite the hoopla claims that Xerox PARC invented the GUI, this is no more the truth than claims Apple did it. The *students* at Xerox PARC built on ideas that had been created in universities by great minds like Engelbart, and early GUI attempts such as Sketch (which had hand writing recognition for annotations to CAD drawings in the early 80s). The original ideas *did* come from the utopian programming environment that RMS pines for. Apple's Macintosh just slapped a bunch of otherwise free ideas into a proprietary box with a price tag.
It's taken me 2 decades to realise, but all truly innovative software has been produced mostly by home hobbyists and university students. The mega companies never produce great software, they at best produce mediocre ripoffs, or charge fortunes for maintenance and service. The brilliant break throughs have been inspired by universities and think tanks. And what is free software if not the world's largest think tank.
Nobody says you can't charge for delivery (i.e. software on media), support, etc, in an open source project. Nobody is saying that you can't pay the programmers (Red Hat has their Advanced Development Labs with salaried people working on open source software). Open source is a distinct lack of certain restrictions, not a set in stone method of coding and delivery, and certainly not a lack of revenue (if you claim this, then why is Red Hat still in business?)
And, having been an Emacs fan for years, and a user of FSF utilities (when others were not available or deficient), I know how much I owe him (and the thousands who have contributed to my happiness). So, thanks Richard.
PS. I dropped a ten in the FSF bowl at Linux World. Enjoy. :)
Nobody can be sure without trying it, and different cases will obviously get different results, but here are some possibilities:
1)Company A has code-savvy users, or corporations that can afford to hire coders (you said this software was hot, right?) fixing their bugs for them, adding features to their software, etc.
2)Company A gets a "good guy" image for itself.
3)Company A can make money by selling "official" copies of the software, manuals, and support, "all from the people who actually created the software", thus giving them an edge over independent vendors.
and here are two reasons why making it proprietary would give Company A little benefit:
1) They are first to market either way, giving them a huge advantage
2) Company B is probably going to finish their software either way
The Internet was and is built on "Free" software. Software that people can use, change, adapt, fix, improve, and enjoy. Unless you think the Web is "marginal", you are wrong.
Most companies are not charities. Speaking bluntly, the main aim of a business is not to help clients solve problems, its to maximise profits for its shareholders.
I think that Company A does need some form of at least a short term advantage to be compensated for the financial investment they have made developing the product to effectively compete against new comers who have spent nothing at all.
I agree there are ways in which companies can make money selling support for software that they give away, but there is less money there than the situation where you can both charge for the product and support afterwards.
If managers when deciding to commit funds towards development of a product do not see sufficient returns in the future, then the project won't go ahead, and potentially everyone loses out.
Ok, well this one...
This is different, because normal laws fall apart when a crime is involved. For example, a contract is null and void if the nature of the contract is an illegal act. As a result this isn't a very good analogy to use.
The far better analogy is the meal, which I first heard of through RMS. It has a striking analogy to computer software (even more so than the popular car analogy :-) and clearly illustrates the obvious problem with restricting modification: I like chili sauce on my dim sims, imagine if my DIM SIM End User Eating Agreement didn't permit me to modify the condiments presented on my DIM SIM.
Heh, after purchasing some absolute dud computer components, I can heartily sympathize with RMS.
UNIX was invented by Thompson, not AT&T. AT&T had no idea that Thompson was working on UNIX, and would probably have canned his money (which he was officially using to create a typing system for the patent office) if they'd found out he was directly competing with the Real OS they were working on - Multics.
Afterall, what good can one lone hacker do, when Multics had hundreds of professionals working on it? Ha!
And UNIX in its original form was pathetic. It was only because AT&T couldn't sell it so let Dennis and Co distribute UNIX *FREE* with *SOURCE* to all the universities that UNIX grew so quickly and became so popular. UNIX wasn't faster, it wasn't more elegant, it wasn't more robust, but damn it came with source and university people love that.
Source code is the ultimate form of open standard, and I think you're being disingenious if you deny that.
Damn, that's so witty. Did you see that on David Letterman?
Perhaps you could give us some "empirical examples" of the innovative, closed-source predecessors to Sendmail, Apache and BIND.
Do you think this type of reasoning still works in niche software markets where software licenses currently cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars per seat, but with very small volume (because of size of market, not price)?
It looks to me like a recipie for suicide for a company. Ironically, the better designed and written the software, the less need there is for customers to compensate the developers for what they have done.
What you've cited isn't the problem. The problem is that the speech is the property of its creator. Unless specifically granted, what right do you have to take this material (someone else's property) and use it for your own benefit? Why should such a right exist?
First of all, that "right" of ownership is completely artificial, because duplicating information is not "taking" it. The original "owner" is deprived of nothing, and anyone who has the information should be able to do with it exactly what the author can, short of claiming credit (and perhaps a few other things).
Since when is listening to (or reading) a speech tantamount to granting ownership of its contents?
It never has been, and never will be, because nobody can naturally own information, at least in the sense that it is an exclusive ownership (that is, even after the information has been distributed), and not in terms of having and knowing information. If the latter is what you mean by "ownership", then it has been that way since information has existed, because it is the very nature of information. I feel obligated to draw attention to the fact that your statement seems (to me, at least) to be an attempt to put words in my mouth. I never claimed any transfer of ownership, in the first sense described above.
Isn't it ironic how we could both nail each other for copyright infringement right now? If we had both been 100% observant of copyright laws, I don't think either of us would have risked quotation.
And how many times does Company A's "hot shit" product turn out to be a piece of shit? Sure, it does what it claims to, but it also crashes every 5 minutes. Company A is just a startup and they can't be bothered to fix my problems. Then after the program isn't quite as successfulas the original hype, Company A goes belly-up, leaving all of the users of the "great program" out of luck.
No thanks, I'll stick with free software.
If you are going to personally attack people, at least have the guts to do it as something other than AC. Don't get me wrong, I think AC is good and allows people, who otherwise wouldn't or couldn't post as themselves, to add to the discussion. But don't hide behind the AC when you are going to make an insulting attack on someone.
(P.S. Notice I submitted this as an AC, but did not attack you in any way).
This is again and again the old english-only confusion between free and free. Says who you can not sell your software? Not only you can sell it, entering first in the market as open source
There is nothing stopping anyone else from printing CD's of your software immediately after you've released it and selling them for a couple of bucks. The open source model moves revenue for software companies from $$ per copy to $$ per support call or additional feature developed later.
Besisdes, if there is a problems there will be a solution. That is what is being advocated. The custumers themselves will finance the development even if A Company manager do not let it go ahead.
I agree that if demand is high enough it will eventually get developed - you'll have to wait a lot longer for it. I believe it will to a certain extent discourage risk taking as the chance for windfall profits is reduced.
I think there is room for a patent like system - release the source code, but restrict other commerical usage of it for a period of time (say a year or two). Kind of like the QT model, only with time expiration.
"The web was primarily a fluke."
/. this morning about CAD) and 3d shooters (DOOM, Quake, etc ad nauseum) out there.
How was it a fluke? There was no one-time event that made it suddenly popular. The reason the web (and other Internet protocols/programs) have grown so quickly is BECAUSE OF the openness. Anyone can create an HTML page so everyone did.
I don't know where you hang out, but there is plenty of 3d software (in fact, check the announcment on
I don't know what MRP is.
SMP: Ummm...I just tried to install a DUAL NT setup a few weeks ago, and I can tell you it doesn't have SMP even NOW.
If it were, would it make you feel:
a) glad
b) afraid
c) warm & fuzzy all over
d) like you could fly
e) all of the above
limitation of future profits from initial research investment, loss of intellectual property protections, creation of similar yet different versions of product, etc.
sounds like OSS is no corporate solution to me.
Just because proprietary software has had some successes (most notably in the GUI area) does not mean OSS has anything called "historical failures" and even if it did it wouldn't make them "general trends".
You could just as easily point to features (such as stability, flexibility, speed, etc) that OSS has that CSS doesn't have and turn your whole argument against itself.
And once again COMMERCIAL!=PROPRIETARY. NO ONE is denying that commercial software is a good, necessary, non-evil thing.
There's some coverage in the Singapore press here. Some interesting bits. Read what Stallman says when they show him software pirates at work.
"If you are going to personally attack people, at least have the guts to do it as something other than AC"
are you NUTTS?? what better way to chew up someone than to post as AC?? you gotta be a moron. dim wit.
(sheesh, almost signed on this thing)
Nice link, but since when is RMS a Harvard graduate? If memory serves, he took exactly one university class (in compiler design I think).
Steven Levy's book "Hackers" mentions that he graduaded (with honors) from Harvard with a B.S. in Physics. (All the while spending nights hacking at MIT).
The Web IS marginal, damn it. Do you eat food? Can you name a "free speech" supermarket re-ordering scheduling package? Of course you can't.
Hint: all these things that people are terrified will fail during Y2K run on computers, and there's not a damn thing that Emacs or gcc can do to step in and take up the slack. Provincial twit!
(Correlation between "I use Emacs" and "Stallman's views are even remotely practical in the real world": 1.0)
>Albert Einstein: Great spirits will always encounter violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Me: "Stark raving loonies will always encounter violent oppression from mediocre minds."
In other words, people are sometimes oppressed because they deserve it. RMS's apparent misunderstanding about politeness earn him flames just as he dishes them out. His refusal to use it seems to indicate he thinks Webster and/or Miss Manners must have made 'polite' proprietary software (wetware?:)
RMS's work as a coder may be great. But, that doesn't mean his political views are necessarily great, and definitely doesn't mean his politeness is very great either. Excellence in one area doesn't mean jack s*** about excellence in other areas. You can use his code without having to subscribe to his political or politeness views, or even respect either of those.
Either you view computers and software as tools to enhance our collective understanding of the world and each other, or you view them as toys; toasters; products to be marketed and hawked to gullible, illiterate consumers
Wow, a textbook false dichotomy! So rare to see them in the wild these days.
RealNetworks; Id Software; the Macintosh?
Yeah, stuff non-nerds want. Go figure those stupid sheep. When every NT server in the world is replaced with Linux, the growth curve is going to flatten out instanter unless you people get over your Soviet-era "sexy is evil; difficult is rewarding" rubbish.
Everyone knows that computers are only useful for sending e-mail,serving web pages, and transferring files via ftp. Controlling power plants? Video editing? What kind of fantasy world do you live in?
Besides, if someone theoretically wanted software to do something (absurd, I know) non-Internet-related, he could just pay you to write it for him on a custom basis. Yes, every single business should have custom in-house software. Decreases duplication of effort, don't you know.
"They laughed at Galileo! They laughed at Columbus!"
"Yes, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
The mouse was not invented at PARC. Ever hear of Engelbart(sp)? The poster you were replying to mentioned him. He and his team were the ones who invented the mouse, and a number of other ideas that supposedly came out of PARC. The reason for this is that a number of people who had originally worked under Engelbart moved on to PARC. The fact that you're wrong about the mouse calls into question some of your other views about the inventions from PARC. I will admit though, that some interesting things were created there, and they did tend to attract people with good ideas. The way PARC worked more or less allowed the workers there great intellectual freedom to work on futuristic ideas. It was a closed community, to be sure, but internally, it was at least something like the open source development ideal. PARC was an ingenious concept by Xerox. They really, really had something good going there. Of course, they never really did anything with it.
By the way, a bit more on Engelbart: there's been some things written about him recently. Not a huge amount, but he's gotten some of the publicity he really deserves. There was a mention on Slashdot just a few weeks ago. As I said, he's the original force behind the mouse and a number of other things often attributed to PARC. From what I've read, he's something of a visionary, who pretty much forsaw a lot of what really has come to pass in the computing industry. Of course, he wonders why it took decades rather than just years. His main vision is that computers will be usable as tools to augment human intelligence. In other words, he didn't invent the mouse for the purpose of point and drool interfaces. For most of his career, people haven't known what to make of him, considering him highly intelligent, but something of a crackpot. He's been described as demanding and uncompromising. He's also frequently been absolutely right. I find some of the paralells with Richard M. Stallman interesting. Of course, there are differences too, but it's funny how the real visionaries often get pushed to the fringes by those of us who supposedly know how the Real World(TM) works and who declare their ideas unrealistic.
Didn't Id also come along well after Wolfenstein 3D (shareware)?
Why is it "wrong"? It is certainly illegal here. However, it is illegal only technically over there (if at all?). No one is being deceived in the transaction. I'll buy that people who sell *counterfeit* software are "wrong," but this is just an honest deal.
Sorry, while I agree with a lot RMS has to say about Free Software, I disagree in a fairly fundamental way with his take on free software getting us anywhere with Y2K, either now, or ten years ago.
Where are all the real killer Y2K bugs? They're not in Windows, or MacOS, or AmigaOS, or any other desktop operating system. You think any of these things run the power grids, plants, routing stations, Telephone COs? Not likely. The desktop is the door to these systems, but these systems operate independant of the desktop. You can open a window on the Mainframe without Windows, DOS, etc. There are dedicated terminals for almost any of these things.
And what is the critical software that is most likely to take us out? Unix? Not. Some shrinkwrap that some company holds the source to? Not. 15-25 year old, custom built set of programs coded up and protected like a small slow child? You're getting close.
How would free software benefit us here? Release source code for the Mainframe that people could look at to their hearts content, but not run a lick of until the put down the dough for a heavy CMOS box, and then without the rest of the system, never makes heads or tails of? Or software that runs on a custom built phone switch that controls the routing of trains, or monitors the levels of coolants or turns of the turbines?
Stallman is soapboxing with the best of them, but it's not the Xenix system that runs your local Credit Union that is going to take down the system, and it isn't the fact that some secretary isn't going to be able to sort through the Senior VPs mail, or that some handful of Mini's aren't patched up enough. It's that little bit of arcana, that has been holding some system together, nearly untouched for 20 years, and that very few people would understand if it was printed out and dropped in their lap would care about let alone understand.
Frankly, the fact that Stallman is trying pontificate with some computer/pop cultural buzzword doesn't help him in mine eyes, nor anyone else likely to be close to a Y2K situation.
Either he can't see the forrest for the trees, or he's pushing his agenda with something that really doesn't play to it. Either way, esteem drops.
Y2K Coward
Source escrow is pretty much as you describe it. The particulars vary with the contract, but in most cases, the customer gets some say in what happens to the source. Specific conditions concerned vary -- an aquisition might not be the same as a business failure or incapacitation of principals.
Your friend's argument is like saying it's bad to talk about life insurance because it means discussing death, disability, and/or dismemberment (read a contract -- almost as good as Stephen King). Grown-ups call this "contingency planning". Particularly if you're a small company, such a term might make you much more appealing to your potential (and current) customers. The forever joke in programming is "what happens if you're hit by a bus?". It's a serious business risk. Your friend is playing ostrich.
GPL is a possible escrow policy (it's essentially what Troll Tech has adopted with Qt, though they're going BSD-like, IIRC). The developer and customer should both negotiate (or consider) the terms of escrow and their own business, security, support, and confidentiality needs.
OT: RMS is really not particularly radical in his suggestion. Until the early/mid 1980s, much business software was distributed with sources. Some still is, particularly to larger/more critical customers.
Hey, that's not fair. The Crystal Space hasn't had anywhere near as much time to perfect their code as Id games has. The Crystal Space engine is shaping up very well at the moment. Sure, I can't get a lot of the very frequent (every few days) releases to compile, but the periodic stable releases work quite well and are fairly full featured. Version 0.12 has just come out. I know that doesn't sound all that advanced, but, realistically, the versioning doesn't mean much. They may get to version 0.15 and suddenly realise that they're ready for a 1.0 release. In any case, I'm very impressed just by the number of different operating systems they're supporting. When they're done, games written to use the Crystal Space engine should be very portable.
All this said, I have to say that I have immense respect for Id software. They have shown in the past and continue to show true technical excellence as well as great taste (Ok, maybe not in game subject matter, from a certain point of view) in their operating system support. I still can't wait for Crystal Space to be ready for prime time though. I've already started doing some work (ok, not so much actual work as preparing to do some work) on a game that I want to create using the Crystal Space engine.
Actually, Id (or is it iD?) games created Wolfenstein 3D and it was distributed by Apogee. Of course, Id has always been a pretty Open Source friendly company. They have released the source of all their own games so far, and they plan to release the source to Quake in the not too distant future (they don't plan to do it until all of their licensees have finished and released their products, however, since that would be in pretty bad taste). Id is a pretty cool company.
Now, there hasn't traditionally been a lot of free software work on creating new games, that's true. A lot of what has been produced in the past are clones of classic arcade games and the like, written by people who simply wanted their own version of a favorite. This has been changing. At the moment, there are a number of interesting game projects out there, like the Crystal Space 3D engine.
Software isn't just illegal technically in Singapore, it *is* illegal. Police regularly raid Sim Lim Square (the shopping center in the article) and arrest the shopkeepers. It's just that the pirates keep coming back -- the business is just too lucrative, due to:
1. The absurdly high price of legitimate software,esp. when compared to the earning power of Singaporeans (US software prices but lower than US wages). This is due to exploitative, monopolistic pricing by MS and the like, who regularly lead raids on pirates, hoping that by clamping down on pirates, they won't have to lower their prices instead. But of course it doesn't work, pirates keep coming back despite their best efforts -- this indicates that there's something fundamentally wrong with the system the companies have setup.
2. Complete lack of value of original software -- What technical support? Call a 800 number in the US? Mail the software back by air if it's defective?
At least RMS wasn't kicked out of Harvard. Or "dropped out" as the press usually says. I just seem to recall hearing somewhere that Mr William Gates the third was actually asked to leave. Something about stealing code from somewhere he was working as an intern or somesuch and putting it into his companies product.
FallLine said:
"Apache, Bind, Sendmail, etc are all very nice pieces of software. What they are not is innovative. They are predominantly all 'open' approaches to the original work for the most part."
More important to this discussion about Stallman, I don't think any of them are GPLed.
The license for Apache does not forbid commercial reuse of the code. And Apache is still the top web server.
Lots of folks who defend the GPL argue that without restrictions such as those imposed by the GPL, products are vulernable to companies like Microsoft. But it hasn't happened with Apache, and it's certainly not because Microsoft isn't interested in the market for web servers. Nothing Microsoft can do will take away from the fact that the original Apache code is open source. That is something Microsoft cannot change.
The fact that it took off like it did was, like many other technical innovations, accidental. It didn't take off simply because it was open.
What Tim wanted or didn't want is irrelevant. The point is that if the Web WASN'T open it would have died. This is in direct oppostion to the theory of the previous poster that Open Source tags behind Closed Source. In this case OS led the way.
I have a dual processor system at work running NT very nicely.
So do I. That doesn't mean NT has TRUE SMP as mentioned. I'd say NT's SMP is probably around the level of Linux 2.0's.
...Sendmail, Inc and Ghostscript?
But why should I play YOUR game. Why can't RH being a shining example? Does it really matter who wrote a lot of the code that sits on their CD?
They are still an OSS company. And they are still making money (hand over fist, I might add).
Tony said:
"The list of open successes (as opposed to open-source-software, which is a *very* recent development) is quite long: most successful languages are open (C, C++, Lisp, FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, etc), as are most successful networking protocols. (There's a reason Novell gave up on IPX and now uses IP.) "
None of these standards that you mention have clauses prohibiting their use in proprietary products. But Stallman advocates such clauses. That's one reason he draws a lot of ire.
> The problem is that, unlike in the physical
> world, there is no inherent scarcity with
> software.
> We're not talking about refusing to give away a > physical product here, we're talking about
> preventing people from using a resource that is > naturally unlimited.
What product is naturally unlimited? The years of man hours invested by the program's authors?
> Proprietary software is like (and about as moral > and ethical as) damming up a river, the only
> source of water for a town, and then selling it > back to the townspeople in bottles under the
> stipulation that you can't even share your
> bottle of water with anyone else.
False. Proprietary software is like a well you dug up closer to the town than the river. You spent the time, energy, and resourcefullness to create the well, not the towns folk, hence you have the right to charge whatever you want, and impose arbitrary limitations on it's use.
The part about sharing the water is a false analogy.
> "Now," you may say, "what about the limited
> real-world capital that goes into the initial
> production of the software?" The thing is, with > any software, there are also associated
> real-world products and services (media,
> support, etc) that you can charge for and make a > decent profit and pay your programmers too.
This "support" argument dumbfounds me.
Why is it that my software should not have any value on it's own? I want to trade the value my software represents for money. I don't want to have to live off of my support team, and I certainly don't want to write documentation, or do support for a living.
Why should I invest 10 years of hard work to create a new and innovative piece of software only to then only be able to make money through support, or selling media?
If my company makes all of it's money off of support, does this lead my company to produce or encourage better quality software, or worse? In the long run, if the software is of high quality (few bugs), and is intuitive to use (little training/customization required) what would this do to a company based on a support model?
I have heard the opinion expressed in a previous debate that people shouldn't be babied with computers, that is, they should have to understand how they work and be able to fix them. This opinion fits quite nicely with the idea of selling support -- you tell the customer that you aren't going to make things easier for them in the software, instead they'll have to pay for training and bug fixes. Go ahead, take this route. It won't be the software produced by this reasoning that will drive software progress to the next level.
Why should anyone have any rights to my brainchild except those that I grant them? In the well analogy, I can sell the town the well, but what right do they have to force me to tell them how I built it, or to help them fix it?
-> Caveat: On the other hand, I don't have any problems with people reverse engineering my well, that would be imposing on their right to reason about things.
> There are companies do this for free software.
> Exclusively. They make money. Plenty of money.
> Cash. Moolah. Profit.
As RMS says, these companies will never make as much money as Microsoft.
Keeping source closed is not fueled by an intentional desire to rob others of their freedom. It is simply the most convenient way to create a barrier to entry in a market. If it were law that all companies had to give away their code, I feel that we would see fewer companies investing heavily in long term complex programming. Reason being that when the software was finished, another service-only firm could come along, take the code, and then sell it to my customers since they could offer better support since that is all they do (no innovation, just perfecting someone elses ideas).
> I mean, come on, we're all capitalists here,
> right?
> In other words, it has been demonstrated many
> times in the real world that you won't starve
> (and in fact can still make a healthy profit) if > you sell "free" (i.e speech) software.
Well that is certainly a convincing argument...
Motivation for proprietary software: we could get rich!
Motivation for free software: we won't have to starve!
> Another thing -- has the inherent inequity of
> most programmers being payed per project, and
> the companies they work for charging per copy of > proprietary software, ever occurred to you?
> Companies that make proprietary software rip off > their programmers as well as the consumers.
Don't work for them if they don't pay you what you think you're worth. If you do, then it is you who is ripping yourself off. Why should a company do you any favours? By the same token, why should I do a company any favours? If everyone just did what was right for them (without using force upon another) and quit worrying about the other guy I think we'd all be better off.
Don't buy a companies software if you don't think it's worth it. If it's the only thing on the market then tough luck, do without, create your own solution, or but the software.
I would want money from every one of the power plants. Why should I not? Out of charity?
Very good points. As much as OS advocates hate to admit it, money is the #1 driving force of innovation. I know I will never work like a madman for months with my only motivation being a chance "not to starve" and maybe get some recognition.
I'd much rather have a strong company that makes enough money to invest into basic and applied research and actually contributes to things like GUIs and Ethernet (like Xerox used to) than a company afraid to invest in innovation because its competitors would know exactly what they are doing.
Open source is a distinct lack of certain restrictions, not a set in stone method of coding and delivery, and certainly not a lack of revenue (if you claim this, then why is Red Hat still in business?)
If the existence of one very small company that for all we know could be losing tons of money is a proof of a viability of a new development process than I have certain bridge to sell to you...
The GPL was only written in the early 80's.
The concept existed and different kinds of free software were being made long before that.
Now there is a sufficient GPL software to fill two Debian CD's and run an entire business without having to resort to payware, AND it is leaner, faster, more stable, more flexible, and better looking than anything else out there to boot.
Since early 80's enough closed source software was made to fill thousands of CDs, run hundreds of profitable businesses, with maybe several GPL projects coming close to their quality and none being clearly better.
Great spirits will always encounter violent opposition from mediocre minds.
That's the argument many of Art Bell's guests like to use. Does it make them geniuses too?
This point is obvious to anyone who has ever run a business. Unfortunately what you reading here comes mostly from college students (or even high school students if you believe ./'s own polls) so it's very hard to expect any kind of business savvy.
Most of the Y2K problem is being caused by INTERNALLY WRITTEN CUSTOM CODE for automating BUSINESS PROCESSESS UNIQUE TO THAT COMPANY.
Example: billing systems, scheduling systems,
supply chain systems, point of sale systems,
government systems.
The y2k *problem* has scant to do with applications or tools running on people's desktops and more to do with the nervous systems that are running the mission critical systems inside companies.
There is no POINT to open-sourcing these systems, since they are constantly updated, hacked, and maintained by inhouse people.
Example: my company constantly updates its purchase order tracking system on a monthly basis, and yes, it had some y2k issues. But the actual logic contained in the system is so entrenched with the way this company works, it would be better to rewrite it, then try to give away the source so that it can be repurposed for another company.
Frankly, this is just HYPE from RMS. Let's see, how can I push my stooopid moralistic opensource free software idealogy today? Oh, I know, I'll try to tie it together with tbe biggest computer story of the millenium, the Y2K problem.
And of course if Linux was on 99% of everything, running everything, and everything was open source, we'd be in a nirvana with no troubles ever again.
Two reasons: Time and reliability. Ford's reliability (as in ability to deliver; the engines is another story...) is a known quantity. Ford is also experienced at making and servicing their own designs. Consequently, you are less likely to spend your valuable time waiting for the engine, and it'll also show up when it's supposed to. At least, this is more likely than from an independent. And if something's wrong with the design, Ford can fix it fast, as their designers know the engine. I'll let you figure out the analogy to software.
If your argument were true, no company would bother releasing specs for inexpensive things either, like electrical outlets, switches, and so forth. Look up commodity in your Business 101 course book. Stallman is basically arguing (if you insist on arguing only from a business perspective) that software is a commodity, and if we want high quality commodities, we need to keep the specifications and designs open. Otherwise, we end up with crummy software. Imagine what kind of lightbulbs we'd have if only General Electric were permitted to know the "secret" of such, and could successfully sue anyone who dared to make their own bulb?
This of course ignores the whole "freedom" aspect, but you seem to still be caught in the old 80's "bottom-line" mentality, so I doubt that concepts like "long-term" and "planning" would mean much to you, much less "freedom."
Y2K is nonsence. Paranoia. If anybody says his software is Y2K-compliant, he generally says his software is "idiot-compliant" - for idiots without any knowlege, persuaded by adverts and dumb speeches. Only idiots believe fairy-tales about armageddon in 2000.
I had a S3virge driver for OS/2. It was certified by IBM as "Y2K-ready". But it was buggy: it crashed my machine every 3 days. Let they fuck off with Y2K problems. I don't care if it displays 1.1.2000 or 1.1.1900. I want it to work! Software contains more severe bugs than displaying bad date. Idiots don't care if program crash - but they want it to display correct date in 2000 year, 'cause media are making Y2K much more serious problem than shooting to memory, race-conditions, deadlocks and similar bugs.
I thought RMS is intelligent enough not to talk about such fictive problems.
The point is if they haved released the source code from the begining in the 70's/80's these Y2K problems would be easier handled.
All anyone really wants to do with their computers is run Vixie cron and sendmail. Graphics, games, multimedia - a monstrous lie, all of it. (Please get the hell out of here with X, Abuse and "you didn't have XCF 1.2.3 installed with the Xyzzy dependencies before upgrading - of COURSE your audio doesn't work! Dumb ass!")
DARPA had nothing to do with US military. Their software that they used on Honeywell computers (the routers of arpanet) was open source endeed.
You mean that if you get inside an irrational zealot's head, he starts to make sense? Wow!
If he's going to behave like an ass in public and on the record, the least he can do is wear a t-shirt with "GNU" on it in big letters, and STOP MENTIONING LINUX.
None at all, obviously. But what happens if company C comes along with an open source product, which they sell for a small support fee? Potential customers of company A will ask "How much added value is there in A's product?" If the answer is "not enough", business will go to company C. Of course C won't rake in the big bucks, but they will get the business. Company A is toast.
You are right that this is not a good business model when development costs are high and need to be recovered. But the point is that once development costs have been recouped, the product is ripe for commoditization. The point is that a lot of software that people currently use should have been commoditized long ago - spreadsheets and word processors for example - but this hasn't happened, to the detriment of the consumer. The open source movement won't destroy commercial software, but it will speed up the process of commoditization.
In the operating system market, RedHat is company C. So far company A has been any competing Linux distribution which has tried to add value with a proprietary installation/configuration system or desktop. Microsoft may well be company A in a few years. Clearly Microsoft gives more added value now, but the gap is closing.
In the computer games market, company A is id, and they do indeed release their source code when they have recovered the development costs (and then some). But there's only room for one id. The 3D games market is so saturated now that id's competitors have to distinguish themselves in terms of game content, and margins may not be high enough to justify licensing id's engine, hence the recent appearance of open source game engines.
> "What product is naturally unlimited? The years > of man hours invested by the program's authors?"
>
> No, the resulting product. The author should be > compensated for their labour but the software
> should be free.
Explain how I am to be compensated if I don't want to do the support thing for money and I give away the rights to my source code (i.e. anyone else is free to charge nothing for my code and sell it only to support it).
> "Proprietary software is like a well you dug up > closer to the town than the river. You spent the > time, energy, and resourcefullness to create the > well, not the towns folk, hence you have the
> right to charge whatever you want, and impose
> arbitrary limitations on it's use. "
>
> Again, you should be rewarded for your work but > you should not act so bad towards the rest of
> the people or hide from them how to dig wells.
You're damn right I'm not going to tell them how I built it! If I ever need something from them I will trade value for value, I see no reason to give away the value my method represents for nothing -- just because it would be nice to the townsfolk. If it means duplication of effort, fine, maybe the next guy will come up with a better way, maybe not. I don't care, my goal is not to help humanity, just myself. If in serving myself, I contribute to humanity than all the better.
>
> You are right about the support. The best thing > is if users pay for the (speach-free) software. > Watch Red Hat.
Redhat is primarily a support and media selling company (we'll wait and see if RHL puts out anything innovative). Hence they are precisely the type of company that I was not talking about.
I'm not saying that a support and media based company is bad, just that there should also be room for a company that just wants to produce software and make money only from the software.
>
> "As RMS says, these companies will never make as > much money as Microsoft."
>
> And that's bad? Think about what much better
> things those resources could have been used for.
Yes that is bad. If my primary goal is to make money then I will not sell free software. End of story. Again, I'm not advocating that one's primary goal should be making money, but there is nothing wrong with it either.
>
> "Well that is certainly a convincing argument...
> Motivation for proprietary software: we could
> get rich!
> Motivation for free software: we won't have to
> starve!"
>
> Motivation for proprietary software: we could
> get rich!
> Motivation for almost everything else: we won't > have to starve!
I don't know what you're talking about here.
I was talking about the monetary motivation for creating free vs. prop. software. If we broaden this to all business then I think that the problem with the logic stands. One doesn't undertake the huge investment of time, money and sometimes heart wrenching work that comes with starting a new company simply not to starve. If that was your goal if would make more sense to go work at McDonalds.
> It works.
What works?
> "If everyone just did what was right for them
> (without using force upon another) and quit
> worrying about the other guy I think we'd all be > better off."
> There is *many* who needs your help.
Tough for them. They should do for themselves. If they want anything from me without trading any value then they'll have to steal it.
What we're talking about here is Company A developing a product, then Companies B-Z making copies and getting all the cash and glory. Presumably, Companies B-Z have someone to sell this to who isn't capable of making copies(here's the important bit) and servicing and installing this product. Otherwise there wouldn't by definition, be a market. Right?
Well, if Company A understands the product better because they developed it, then who do you think the customers will go to? Why will people go to an expensive store, like The Bon, and buy the exact same clothes they could get at a discount store for half the price? Service, a guarantee that a flawed product can be returned, that sort of thing. The major investment with software is time, not the basic cost of the software. What good is it if you can't use it, ot it takes five years to learn? Or if you don't know how to install it or fix it? This is the type of question paying customers ask, and where the most money comes from. Do-it-yourselfers are a tiny minority, even though they dominate the linux sector at the moment.
Yes, it's me.
>> What product is naturally unlimited? The years
... I guess Mozilla w/ NGLayout comes to mind > first here. Definitely shoddy, uninnovative,
... let's see ... does a
... how's that work, I
>> of man hours invested by the program's authors?
> Nope. that's real-world capital, unlike the
> software. You're confusing the capital used for > production with the good produced.
Strictly true. I think that products that can be reproduced at low/zero cost (medicine/software) should be valued by the initial investment, not the cost to produce a single unit. This solution does have a problem in that after one has recouped ones expenses one can continue raking in pure profit. There is no way to stop this however, apart from the free software solution, I just think that it is easier to recoupe costs by keeping software proprietary then freeing it.
I'm not saying that free software doesn't have it's place, simply that so does proprietary software. There are few absolutes in the world and I think that to say that freeing software is the absolute best thing for the software industry is naive.
>> False. Proprietary software is like a well you
>> dug up closer to the town than the river. You
>> spent the time, energy, and resourcefullness to
>> create the well, not the towns folk
> This applies only to "from scratch" software
> developed under a so-called "cathedral model",
> then.
>> hence you have the right to charge whatever you
>> want, and impose arbitrary limitations on it's
>> use.
> Yes, you did find a valid problem with my own
> analogy here -- I didn't include anything that
> adequately paralleled the initial capital
> investment required to make the software in the > first place.
> Hrm. Okay, I'll bite. A well _would_ be a better > analogy, except that well water is a finite,
> exhaustible, resource -- river water (at least
> as far as the needs of a single small town are
> concerned) is not, provided nobody upstream
> interferes.
> Basically, your well analogy would be valid if:
> - the groundwater was inexhaustible (note that
> digging another well would be analgous to
> creating a new software product)
> - you (or the townspeople) could take water from > the well at zero cost (like duplicating
> software)
> - an essentially infinite number of people could > have access to the well at once without causing > problems
> - the physical nature of the well didn't imply
> concerns regarding land use rights
>> The part about sharing the water is a false
>> analogy.
> I don't think so. Very nearly all proprietary
> software licences that I've read restrict the
> use of a particular copy of the software to a
> specific set of people (generally one).
> I'm not sure either of our analogies are
> necessarily that valid, given that water is
Agreed.
> itself a physical, finite, resource (although in > my river analogy, it is, considering the meagre > needs of a small town, unlimited).
> Software itself (I'm not talking about
> production captial) can be duplicated and shared > at zero cost; it's not a finite resource at all, > and creating artificial scarcity (so you can get > more money) in such a case is just unethical and > wrong.
I disagree with the last sentance. I am selling you software, I value it by the work that I put in to create the software, not by the cost of the media it's on. Why is this unethical?
>> I have heard the opinion expressed in a
>> previous debate that people shouldn't be babied >> with computers, that is, they should have to
>> understand how they work and be able to fix
>> them.
> To a limited extent, yes. Like people who drive > cars know at least the basics of how the car
> works, and can open the hood if they need to and > fix basic stuff. Beyond that, I agree with you
> in that users can't be expected to know
> everything about the internals of the system
> (even programmers can't), but I disagree with
> you in that they should have the chance to learn > about the internals if they want to.
I agree to a certain extent. It is important that users can learn about the underlying pieces of their software, but we run into a problem because the the code is both the product, and the assembly line. One can look into a car and fix things, but even a good mechanic couldn't build one from scratch (I mean digging the ore, smelting, etc.. really from scratch not parts) in a reaslistic amount of time or money. This is the crux of the matter. I don't think free software is the complete solution to it though.
>> This "support" argument dumbfounds me.
> Yeah, support isn't the best way to get funds if > you're a software producer, but yet even
> proprietary software companies are expected by
> their customers to provide support. Hrmm....
> Actually, with free software, I tend to see a
> proliferation of companies, some of which
> specialize in support, some of which specialize > in software production and/or packaging. All
> around, the same amount of software generates
> more wealth (in general) than the equivalent
> proprietary software would.
And how much are the programmers being paid? Oops, most of them are getting nothing. Either that, or the funding is coming from tax coffers/tuition (university derived code), or from a propreitary product (code given by companies).
Obviously there are companies such as Redhat, and Sendmail that are trying out programming free software for profit. Only time will tell whether they will be successful.
> You'd be suprised how many people would rather
> buy a CD than download something.
I wouldn't invest millions of dollars of development costs on the hopes that my customers might choose to reimburse me for the media I sell it on when they can just download it. Try selling that idea to a venture capitalist. Redhat could swing it because they didn't have to invest much effort in creating a distribution. I don't seem to see any companies out there that are saying: "You know Linux has some flaws, lets hire a team of top notch OS coders, write our own OS and after we're done we'll give it away." Where are those companies???? All of the companies I see are doing what is smart, capitalizing on free labour.
Even better, the free labour has deluded itself into thinking that carrying these companies is moral!
>> This opinion fits quite nicely with the
>> idea of selling support -- you tell the
>> customer that you aren't going to make things >> easier for them in the software, instead
>> they'll have to pay for training
> Yeah, and you've never seen people shell out big > bucks to be trained on, say, basic usage of
> Microsoft Excel (and that is IMO, one of the
> best designed products of it's class,
> user-interface-wise). Convince me that
> people don't need to be trained to use
> proprietary software.
Of course. The software world is not at the next level yet. By next level I mean that software will be essentially forgotten by the users, they will be able to use a computer like a personal assistant.
> Hrm. I kind of avoided your argument there. I
> think to remedy that I'll just point out the
> various projects that are working on increasing > the usability of free software, many funded by
> companies that are selling it.
> (By the way... I do agree with that making a
> poor product just to do more business with
> support is just wrong. I just don't see
> companies producing free software doing that,
> though.)
>> and bug fixes.
> Could you please explain to me how a company
> producing could (on a practical level) charge
> money for bug fixes if they didn't place
> restrictions on the redistribution of the
> software? Charging for bugfixes is only seen
> in the world of proprietary software.
RMS advocates just this. If someone buys free software they have the ability to pay for bug fixes from anyone, including the original vendor, if their need is greate enough (i.e. cannot wait for next rev.)
>> Go ahead, take this route. It won't be the
>> software produced by this reasoning that will
>> drive software progress to the next level.
> Oh
> inefficient, non-standards-compliant stuff.
It's not the next level, it's just innovative iteration.
>> Why should anyone have any rights to my
>> brainchild except those that I grant them? In
>> the well analogy, I can sell the town the well,
>> but what right do they have to force me to tell
>> them how I built it, or to help them fix it?
> This is about the water in the well (the
> software product) not the well itself (the
> intial investment needed to produce the
> software). You're still confusing the capital
> used to produce the good with the good itself... > in the case of software, a limited capital
> investment allows you to produce an infinite
> amount of the good.
Yes, and no. As I said earlier I think valuing software, or any intellectual product as simply the cost of reproducing it is wrong.
> Presumably you're not selling your programmers
> to the end users, are you? (or is there a black > market in programmers that I don't know about?)
No I'm selling the result of their work, to the customer it is just a product, to me it is a massive investment of time and money so I want to be paid for it.
> Presumably you're not being compelled to give
> them support (helping them fix the well) for
> _free_, are you?
> In most situations, the licensing fee you pay
> for proprietary software also pays for support.
Only if I decide it does (of course a company that didn't provide support would scare away customers pretty quickly).
>> -> Caveat: On the other hand, I don't have any
>> problems with people reverse engineering my
>> well, that would be imposing on their right to
>> reason about things.
> Okay. That's certainly fair.
>> Don't work for them if they don't pay you what
>> you think you're worth. If you do, then it is
>> you who is ripping yourself off.
> Can you think of any examples of proprietary
> software companies that do pay their programmers > per copy licenced? ANY examples?
No. But this is fault of the programmers not the companies. If every programmer went on strike and demanded this then we would get it. Bear in mind however that there are hidden costs on such things as the vision of the founder that may be difficult to quantify. I.e. how much should the owner/founder get per seat? In my opinion, as much as he wants, but at the same time only as much as his customers will pay, less what his staff will work for.
>> Why should a company do you any favours?
> Oh, I dunno. Moral obligation to pay their
> employees fairly?
There is no such moral obligation. The only moral obligation they have is not to use force against you. Paying you less than you would like is not immoral.
>> By the same token, why should I do a company
>> any favours?
> Indeed. I could just make unauthorized copies
> for all my friends. But I don't, because that
> would be immoral (breach of contract, at
> minimum).
Yes, you would using force upon them.
>> If everyone just did what was right for them
>> (without using force upon another) and quit
>> worrying about the other guy I think we'd all
>> be better off.
> By "right", do you mean moral, or beneficial?
> The context indicates the latter...
I mean that if everyone did what was beneficial for them without imposing force on others it would end up being beneficial for all.
> The problem is that people who are only looking > out for their own (immediate; people are
> short-sighted) interests will inevitably resort > to force to resolve conflicts between their
> interests and other people's interests.
Then they wouldn't be following what I said so what is your point?
> Maybe you're right
> consumer who makes unauthorized copies of
> software do so because:
> a. the software company doesn't use force to
> prevent them from doing that?
> b. they are looking out for their own interests, > and not those of the software companies?
They are using force upon the software company. Goes against what I said so it is not relevant.
> It cuts both ways, man.
Keep trying.
> Despite this, I will say that I think that
> looking out for the interests of others
> (occasionally, at least) is the only thing
> that's kept us (as a species) alive for this
> long.
I think that it has led us to the sorry state of affairs the world is in. What you are advocating is to live for the sake of all other men first, yourself second. This is self destructive.
>> Keeping source closed is not fueled by an
>> intentional desire to rob others of their
>> freedom. It is simply the most convenient way
>> to create a barrier to entry in a market.
> I think I'll refrain from comment.
Good argument.
>> As RMS says, these companies will never make as
>> much money as Microsoft.
> So, there are other proprietary software
> companies that make as much money as Microsoft?
Microsoft is currently top-dog. It will not always be so; if Microsoft misses the next big step than it will be surpassed.
>> Don't buy a companies software if you don't
>> think it's worth it. If it's the only thing on
>> the market then tough luck, do without, create
>> your own solution, or buy the software.
> Unfortunately, as software is becoming more and > more important to our society, doing without is > becoming less and less of an option daily. I
> would venture to say that in the space of a few > decades, access to software will be as important > as, say, access to water or food (moreover, our > access to those resources may be at least
> partially dependent on software).
> Water and food are finite resources; software
> (itself, separate from production methods) is
> not. More's the pity that people try and play
> tollkeeper to software resources it as if they
> were.
How would you suggest repaying the initial capital investment on software, service, support, etc..?
How does this work if it's an algorithm, or software so bug free, and easy to use that it requires no service, or support?
> Now, as for making my own solution, at home, I
> do just that. I have not payed money to license > any of the software on my machine, and yet I'm
> 100% legal. (yet note that I have still
> exchanged money for goods with software
> companies like RedHat
> wonder?)
Are you under the false assumption that I use Microsoft's products (or any other proprietary products)?
>> This solution does have a problem in that after
>> one has recouped ones expenses one can continue
>> raking in pure profit.
> Pure profit is (in and of itself) fine, but
> inflating the value of your product by creating > scarcity (which is what proprietary software
> licensing amounts to) is to my mind immoral, and > an unprovoked application of force. I think this > is especially true of critical products, like
> food and (soon, if not already in some cases)
> software.
BTW: I agree that propreitary software does create scarcity where none exists, but we're disagreeing over the validity of that practice. (Just so we're straight about the matter).
Here we go...
Case 1. You don't *need* the software, in which case if you want it you can make a decision as to whether the value you want to trade is equivalent to value I do. If you do not agree to my licence then you do not buy the licence. If you buy the licence then you follow it or you are using force upon me.
Case 2. You *need* the software. There are two issues here. How did you get yourself into this jam? i.e. I'm not blaming you per se but that a society allowed itself to become so dependant on one vendors products that such a situation arises.
We obviously have an example to discuss in Microsoft. Microsoft's "monopoly" is partly a result of the lack of thought most people put into buying software/anything. Instead of choosing the best technology they choose the software their friends/other companies have -- they let their friends decide for them (relieving themselves of the need to reason independantly which most people hate). If the public chose products based more on the quality of the technology, companies could afford to compete in that space.
Aside. There is of course the issue of compatibility, but again, that is a matter of reasoning about what would be best for oneself -- an open standard, or a propreitary one. Most people don't think about what would be best in the long haul: a little problem now with compatibility with a client, versus being locked into the dilemma we're talking about now.
Another piece to the Microsoft problem is their use of force upon competitors, i.e. stealing IP, hiring programmers with massive saleries just to kill a competitor, starting a project (OS/2) with no intention of actually finishing it thus leading IBM off the tracks, etc... The so called CPU tax is another matter. It is arguable whether or not this was the real problem. I submit that the real problem was that society forced computer makers into the situation where they had to rely on one software vendor. The fact that Microsoft capitalized on it's position is not in itself wrong. It is in fact how any business is run, you charge as much as you can for your product. If you have no competition then you're pretty much free to charge whatever you want.
I'm not saying that it is good to have companies doing this, but it is not the fault of the company, it is the fault of the customer (assuming that it's not a natural monopoly).
Case 2 (continued). The second issue is that you seem to think that I should sell you something more cheaply simply because you need it. I don't subscribe to this notion. I submit that it has been this very idea, that is, trading value for need, that is part of the underlying problem with human society as we know it.
Trading value for need is not self-sustaining, whereas trading value for value is.
>> I disagree with the last sentance. I am selling
>> you software, I value it by the work that I put
>> in to create the software, not by the cost of
>> the media it's on.
> You have no way to directly recoup that cost;
> you're not selling the well, you're selling the > water. Bleah. I still can't find a good physical > analogy for this. Software just can't be validly > compared to a physical good.
> Anyway, the thing is that charging for media is > one thing -- you can include the value of your
> development work in the price you charge. That
> goes for any other physical goods or services
> associated with the software.
How do you recoup your costs if you sell only one copy, and you don't have the support infrastructure to do the support thing?
I.e. I've worked for companies who compete for contracts heavily based on price, their clients don't care where the code comes from as long as it is good quality. If the company was to release the source why would their client pay them? We had a problem with a competitor stealing our code and selling it more cheaply to a potential client. How does one remedy this with free software?
> Forcing people to pay you for additional copies > of the software, however, is wrong. If they made > a copy of the software once they had it, it
> would expend _none_ of your resources. They're
> not taking anything away from you that you
> already posessed. Why, then, should they be
> obligated to pay you?
Say you were taking a course, and you were lazy and didn't study. The final comes and you're not ready so you ask someone who is prepared to write it for you. Why should they?
By your argument they should do it since they already have the knowledge and you're not taking anything from them to just let you copy them.
My argument says that they should not do it because the value they possess is not the knowledge required for the exam, but the hours of preperation they did.
(BTW: I'm not talking about the ethics of cheating here, or the feasibility of doing it -- assume there's no chance of getting caught, and no cost to the copied person. I'm also not drawing a direct analogy with software, just the idea that intellectual property has no value once it's been written down)
>> Why is this unethical?
> Because you're coercing people into paying you
> money for a service that they do not need you to > provide. In your terms, it's an unprovoked use
> of force.
I didn't force them to buy the software. I didn't force them to need the software (if I did then it's another matter). I did hard work and I want compensation -- note that I'm not saying that I have the right to compensation just because I worked hard, it's still up to the volition of the potential customers whether they value my work at the same level as I do.
>> Are you under the false assumption that I use
>> Microsoft's products (or any other proprietary
>> products)?
> No, I didn't know enough to assume that. I
> suspected you were an author of proprietary
> software, however.
I am author of both propreitary, and free software. As I've said before I have nothing against free software, just the idea that it's the answer to everything.
In fact, RMS has conceded exactly the point that I've been driving at: in small markets free software doesn't work. Where did I hear him say this? At a talk hosted by him...
So I take it you a believer then...
;-)
When are you going to give up this Linux nonsense and join us on the Hurd? We need you!
p.s.
Lisa costed an arm and a leg, it was poorly evolved. The end user never even saw the damn thing. Macintosh was the first GUI for the end user, you can't deny it.
Additionally, open source != open standards, and open standards != open source. While there may be an improved correlation between open source and open standards. A standard implies just that, a STANDARD. As in all machines speaking the same language. Tell me, how many open source X Window Managers are out there. How many Linux distributions, all with their own differences. Open source splinters as well.
Also, it would be a mistake to compare hardware to software in this case. When the VHS and beta wars were on, one had to think about wether or not they could rent beta or vhs etc. A changing standard meant that you'd have to spend more money. This is not neccessarily true with software. And not all software products really need a 'standard'. There is no need for a 'standard' quake distribution. Or a standard audio product.
My point was never that OSS isn't good at somethings, but rather that OSS will never replace Propietary software. In fact, I think the majority of software products will remain closed and propietary.
Just because you can't differentiate between Innovation and Invention does not mean that my argument failed. When you say things like "the ratio of open source developers..." you only further my point. I'm not taking the number of developers into consideration. It is totally irrelevant. The fact is that the GUI took a long time to mature in the OSS world, and its not even close to done yet. If Open Source movement failed to mobalize developers, or lacks developers, to complete a given product it only furthers my point.
-FallLine @ a different workstation
"No, but the product is, and that's what's being kept and charged for, etc. Demanding payment for labour is fine, but, if you're going to do that, say that that's what you're doing.
Typically, labour-payment is based upon man-hours..., anyway..., what was I saying?
Oh, yes: doing something is not the same as having done something, and, if you want to recognise one,
then do, but don't recognise one and call it the other."
Good point.
I said:
"In fact, RMS has conceded exactly the point that I've been driving at: in small markets free software doesn't work."
I should state what RMS actually said:
"In niche markets the issue [free software] doesn't arise."
I took this to mean that in niche markets there would be little value in using free software because there would be so few people interested in the software other than the client, the creator, and his competitors. In retrospect I think that it could be interpreted differently by someone else. Just posted here to avoid complaints of misquoting, or giving people false statements of what RMS actually said.
It wasn't RMS who bought it, he just had to use it.
Some anonymous coward wrote:
Just as a minor aside...I actually *do* know of a case where someone has basically banned reverse engineering of a food which is dead simple to prepare, has banned you from making the food for others without a license, and will NOT tell the recipe, and if you legally want to make a version and do get a license you cannot make substitutions.
Specifically, a particular type of chocolate nut pie common in the Kentucky area for literally years is now trademarked as Derby Pie by one particular company that makes its own version. You literally CANNOT make your own version and call it Derby Pie (you have to call it "chocolate nut pie" or "festival pie"), you cannot use the ingredients they use in your own version (otherwise, they sue for trademark infringement) and they will not provide the recipe, and (assuming you were able to get a license to make your own Derby pie and call it Derby pie) you can't make necessary substitutions (i.e. leaving out the whisky, or substituting pecans if someone is deathly allergic to pecans or nuts). If you do this, and try to sell it, the company that trademarked the name (which was being used for YEARS before they came along) will have their lawyers sweep down on you like crazed banshees. Not that the company would ever give you a license to call your pie Derby pie anyways...
from the land of proprietary pie,
Forgive me for interjecting a bit of history, but...
Jobs did not start the Macintosh project. It started out as an experiment, and only after Jobs discovered it, did he use it against Steve Wozniak, who was the creator of the original Apple. Although Jobs was the business leader, the techheads at Apple liked Woz better, and followed his lead. This led to such spectacular disasters as the Lisa (man, did I want one of those when the came out). So yes, I *can* deny that Jobs assembled the team that brought the GUI to the end user.
(As a side note: He did assemble the team that brought us the NeXT. Now *that* was an innovative machine-- that used the GNU compiler and the Mach kernel.)
This is just a nit, but I think it is indicative of your general logic; make illogical conclusions based on scanty and often incorrect assumptions.
The list of open successes (as opposed to open-source-software, which is a *very* recent development) is quite long: most successful languages are open (C, C++, Lisp, FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, etc), as are most successful networking protocols. (There's a reason Novell gave up on IPX and now uses IP.)
History shows that proprietary non-standards fall to open standards. Why don't machines communicate in EBCDIC instead of ASCII? Why did Beta fail and VHS succeed?
Standards. Open, non-proprietary standards.
Only in the last three or four years has there been a significant number of people programming for Free Software. You have no history to make the judgements you've made; the ratio of developers to innovative ideas is *much* greater in the Open arena.
So, although the Free Software movement may fail, and you may eventually be vindicated, you *cannot* make these great pronouncements as Truth. You may say they are your opinion, but they are demonstrably Not True. (Not the same as false, mind you.)
The average American is so stuck on the idea of commercialism, it's hard to realize there is so much more to life than drinking Coke at a McDonalds after a good shop at the Gap. But commercialism is not the end-all, be-all of existence. Perhaps something better is finally coming along to supplant it, at least in the software field.
Better luck on your next argument.
-Tony
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
>Open source is a distinct lack of certain restrictions, not a set in stone method of coding and delivery, and certainly not a lack of revenue (if you claim this, then why is Red Hat still in business?)
... 80 people. Ooo, I'm impressed.
Um, because they sell SUPPORT? Red Hat pays for the development of a miniscule fraction of the software they sell, they don't sell their own open source product. The major vendor for the huge Linux effort, the combined product of what, 10,000 people, supports a grand total of
STOP making this bogus claim about Red Hat as a shining example of profiting by open source. And don't bring up Netscape either; they continue to work on browsers to keep themselves in the proprietary web server market.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Yeah, Y2K is nonsense. Just do
sed s/Y/K/g
to all the files that need the Y's changed to K's, and you're done.
:-)
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Let to add a different take to this than everyone else.
Piracy runs almost exactly counter to what RMS wants! First, it's free beer, not free speech. Source code is not being distributed. Second, by making software free as in beer, it takes away a large part of the incentive to move to free as in speech software. If you can get commercial programs for free, then your incentive to get an open source program and fix the few problems that bother you is much reduced. And since your fixes aren't in there, there are more things that I'd need to fix in order to use it, so the bar is raised for me too.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
>...Sendmail, Inc and Ghostscript?
Both Sendmail and Ghostscript make money selling proprietary versions, and thus violate Stallman morals.
>But why should I play YOUR game.
It isn't my game, it's the question of whether companies can survive on open source. So Red Hat becomes an example of one company which supports ~100 people, and that mainly by selling support for software written mainly by other people.
You Stallmanites* claim companies should just completely open their source and they'll make money. We Torvalders want a real examples, where the money is being made on a product primarily or at least largely coded by the company, not on a hook (Netscape makes some money selling Netcenter advertising) or by selling proprietary extensions.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
(I'd written a nice long response in the school's computer lab and Windows went and crashed... Trying again on my Linux machine:)
You write:
Not innovative? It depends on how you look at it. Apache was based on NCSA's httpd. Bind was written to the DNS specifications in various RFCs. Sendmail, well I'm sure sendmail was based on something. On the other hand, Apache was forked because the authors wanted to make too many changes, add too many new things. Rob's probably glad that someone came up with mod_perl. Bind was one of the first name servers around. Sendmail was one of the first mail-routing programs on the Internet. I think that there's plenty of innovation coming from your examples.The projects that you mention have been in development for a while. That doesn't imply that they've been unusable for that long. (I get the impression that's what you mean by "None of these Open Projects developed all that rapidly.") The nature of free software means that it's never quite done. Developers tend to be perfectionists. (Given the chance, I know I am.) The programs you mention have been in serious use despite being continually in development.
You go on to ask:
Your approach depends on your time schedule. If you have time, start writing. Release the code to the world and let people use it. You'll be doing most of the work, but as more people begin using your program, you'll get bug reports, some of which may even have fixes attached. If interest is wide enough, you could end up with multiple co-developers, and the code will benefit. If you don't have the time for that approach, hire some programmers to work on the program full time. If you're writing the program as an in-house solution, the budget should allow for the salaries. If not, you can pay for the development by means that have been discussed numerous times on Slashdot and elsewhere, including selling support, custom enhancements, or just "official" versions.(Mini-rant about expecting the "Open Source Community" to write your program included below.)
Finally, you say
Let's see... Much of this is because the concept of free software has been spreading fairly slowly, and people are more accustomed to using proprietary methods of software development. The proprietary method still works a bit better in today's economy. (I believe that can be changed.) Let me address your points individually, though. The free mp3-style algorithm? I have no doubt that there are people working on it. Ideas are tricky things, though. You can have a whole community working on something, but ideas come from people. Music compression ideas come from a very narrow subset of people, and there are probably more of them working towards proprietary goals than free ones. As free software spreads, the balance should shift. Why does one company have a death-grip on PGP? Because today's world allows software patents, and companies routinely use them to try to cripple competitors. The free software world has, however, produced a href="http://www.d.shuttle.de/isil/gnupg/">GPG. No free 3D shooters? You've finally found a point I'll concede. From what I've seen, a good game has to be created by a very small group of talented people, and the idea is all it has. The former means that the free software world may not have as many game developers as the proprietary software world does. The latter means that it's hard (AFAIK) to make money from free games. The best solution I've heard is to free the engine and keep the data proprietary. Why no spreadsheet? You mean you don't do your taxes in hex?I think that free software is a better development model. It allows more "innovation" because people are allowed to share ideas and build on them. I think that companies that decide to "Open Source" their programs in the hopes that the teeming hordes of programmers of the world will write their software for them are missing the point. (Not to mention that they're going to be disappointed.) Free software is (to me, at least) about sharing and writing better software, and maybe making the world just a little better
--Phil (OK, sappiness is over. Thanks for reading this far.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
What suprises you so much about it? He says as much in his "Why software should not have owners" paper in the philosophy section of www.fsf.org.
RMS has demonstrated quite consistently that he isn't going to soften his image just to gain support. Give an inch, they take a mile you know? Perhaps you should read and digest the paper I've mentioned to gain some insight into the man *and* his motives.
First of all, RMS is perfectly happy if you sell your software. He does not advocate giving it away. He rallies against proprietary software licenses, because they undoubtedly restrict other people's freedoms.
Consider this: If I buy a proprietary software product, I give up my freedom to explore, understand and improve my own property. I have to give up the freedom to help others and share my property with them. You, the software vendor, attempt to control what I do in the privacy of my own home.
I think RMS has a point when he says that proprietary software makes the world ugly.
How would you like a band-aid manufacturer who sells his product under the following license agreement: "Buyer agrees to apply product only to his or her own body". It is probably legal, and with the right marketing and price, it may even be successful. But there can be no question that it is immoral since it tries to prevent cooperation. Cooperation is a good thing.
Note that RMS does not want to force anyone to abandon proprietary software. His approach is twofold: customers should avoid proprietary software because selling away ones freedom to cooperate is ugly, and developers should stop selling proprietary software because enticing people to stop cooperating is ugly. His arguments, at the core, are aestethical ones.
--
As long as the speech is in your head and in your head alone, it is your sole property. If however you give the speech to an audience, its contents enter the brains of the listeners. They turn into electro-chemical structures in those brains. Everybody owns their own brain; nobody has a right to control other people's body parts.
--
Hmm, if people want solutions wouldn't the best way to accomplish that be to avoid reinventing the wheel?
/mill
How many word processors are there in the proprieraty world and they are all more or less trying to do the same thing. WOuldn't it be wonderful to improve on the works of others' instead of starting from scratch yourself.
Btw, I see a computer as a tool, but since I enjoy tinkering it is probably more like a toy.
Now, if only the Crystal Space folks would autoconf-ize their stuff. (I'd do it but I can't understand the horrible tangle of Makefiles they use. :-(
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
but he also said (re. writing proprietary software):
"I would have looked back and realized I had spent my life building walls and helping to divide and conquer people."
Isn't that what he does mostly?
I've spent my working life writing (mostly) "proprietary" software; I thought I was just helping to build power plants and video editing suites for people who didn't WANT to program it themselves. So, in case I get a burning desire to provide my local PSEG plant with "free" software, how many people in the open source community can I count on to turn their house into a coal-burning high-voltage supply for testing?
Maybe Richard would? No, he lives in a rented room... maybe his children... oh no, can't have kids, that would interfere with his work. Unlike Linus, I guess. What a great contrast between those two! Fortunately, I can just admit I don't have kids because I'm selfish.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Of course, some people would just say he apparently didn't bother to research this one purchase and has thus let it drive his life.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
The point IS that most software has narrow application and wouldn't be worked on by a distributed group of volunteers because nobody volunteers to do that kind of thing. Get it? No proprietary software=many things we don't have. In that example it would equal much more soot in the air, or much higher electric bills.
As far as the consortium goes, the way reality works is that a "consortium" does fund it; that would be the set of power plants which buys the software. The company puts money into it and takes the risk that it WON'T be bought; that's why it remains proprietary. That's why there IS proprietary software. It's not evil, just a natural reaction to the normal process of funding a project.
My comments about his lifestyle were intended to point out that he wouldn't be capable of supporting a development effort IN the real world (i.e. not a gift lab from MIT) that required private facilities of the sort needed to build industrial software. And RMS was the one who gets up on his soapbox and says how pure he his for not having kids so he can be a better martyr. His reaction to the Xerox printer was that of a selfish child, and he can't even be honest that that's why he doesn't have kids. I'm also too selfish to have kids, but it's not to keep my work pure and I can admit as much. If following his creed requires living in a room and not having a life, then I think it's reasonable to reject his arguments on those grounds.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I've never heard of this term. It sounds like a provision where if the company goes out of business, then the source code to its products will be released to .... whom? Only the customers, or everyone?
I was debating a clause like this with a friend of mine who has his own side company. I said that if he should include a clause that says that if he ever shuts down his company, the source code to all of his software will be released under the GPL. His response was that it was bad business to talk about shutting down the company and other such things.
Plus, if a company does say they'll release the code under the GPL, then it means that if someone buys the product from the company, and the company goes under next month, then the person will have purchased a product right before it became free! Yeah, I know - there's still the support issue.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
"What product is naturally unlimited? The years of man hours invested by the program's authors?"
No, the resulting product. The author should be compensated for their labour but the software should be free.
"Proprietary software is like a well you dug up closer to the town than the river. You spent the time,
energy, and resourcefullness to create the well, not the towns folk, hence you have the right to charge
whatever you want, and impose arbitrary limitations on it's use. "
Again, you should be rewarded for your work but you should not act so bad towards the rest of the people or hide from them how to dig wells.
You are right about the support. The best thing is if users pay for the (speach-free) software. Watch Red Hat.
"As RMS says, these companies will never make as much money as Microsoft."
And that's bad? Think about what much better things those resources could have been used for.
"Well that is certainly a convincing argument...
Motivation for proprietary software: we could get rich!
Motivation for free software: we won't have to starve!"
Motivation for proprietary software: we could get rich!
Motivation for almost everything else: we won't have to starve!
It works.
"If everyone just did what was right for them (without using force upon
another) and quit worrying about the other guy I think we'd all be better off."
There is *many* who needs your help.
The entire concept of intellectual property is freedom-limiting. RMS assumes people understand this is what he is referring to.
I must say I never thought of it before I heard hi say it, but its true. Code is speech. Restricting speech is a violation of your rights.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
OSS has evolved slowly?
The GPL was only written in the early 80's. There was a MacOS and most of the features we would associate with a "modern" PC before the first piece of software was ever GPL'd.
Now there is a sufficient GPL software to fill two Debian CD's and run an entire business without having to resort to payware, AND it is leaner, faster, more stable, more flexible, and better looking than anything else out there to boot.
So sad there's no streaming video under GPL for you yet today, but the field is still a new one.
Why don't you start a project to address these few remaining shortcomings?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
So choosing not to say something is violating other people's right of free speech?
Did I say that?
Rather, it's a violation of my right of speech to be forced to say what I think.
?
In addition, property of any sort is a basic human right. If I choose not to give the means of making something to someone, I'm not limiting their freedom, since it's mine to do with as I please.
Yours under intellectual property laws, not by nature.
Code is basically logic and math. People don't "invent" it so much as "discover" it. (that is my own opinion)
If you "invent" integral calculus, should you be able to prevent the rest of us from building bridges unless we pay you a royalty?
That doesn't stop someone from making their own
version of the same thing however, which extends to mean that patents are worthless, as they actually do limit people's rights.
Now you're talking sense. Down with intellectual patents.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
No argument here. The thing is, there are about 500 company B's to every company A.
...Except the profit margins of poor poor company A.
A stands to lose it's edge, but the B's can only gain. What sort of companies make up the global software industry? B's of course.
Who benefits? Everyone!
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
You are precisely the sort of person Einstein was talking about, aren't you.
.signature?
Brilliant quote by the way. Can I put it in my
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I mean, come on, we're all capitalists here, right?
Hasta la revolucion siempre!
Er, I mean, no one here but us capitalists! Go Microsoft!
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Alan, is that you?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I was unaware that the developments at PARC were available for anyone else to review.
Just to set the record straight, I think the first windowing system was actually made for VMS.
That said, the mouse (and a windowing system that uses it), ethernet, and WYSIWYG are also PARC originals.
I know I'm leaving some out.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
^ May I quote you on this? If this is true, then why is it that everyone in Linux is awaiting the ports of all these different applications from the wintel platform.
We like the warm fuzzies that come with outfits like Oracle telling us that our software is better for running big RDBMS's than MS's billion-dollar babies. Aside from that, we don't need the support of commercial vendors, at least I don't.
In regards to the GUI. Xerox may have invented the GUI, but it never came anything even close to being capable of leaving the lab.
Actually, Xerox didn't really invent the idea of the GUI. It had been available (and usable) for DEC machines previously.
Steve Jobs _made_ it a reality. This is called innovation. It is one of the finer points of capitalism.
Point of order. Jobs came up with the idea for the pretty case and picked the color beige. Jobs is a visionary, not a hacker.
Many of the Mac developers were the same folks who worked at PARC. They left for Apple because their ideas were going nowhere under Xerox management.
Ok, so maybe RMS was still in academia at the time of Macintosh's development. But this does not let Free software off the hook. Why is there no half powerfull GUI word processors, spreadsheet programs, MRP systems, 3d software, first person 3d shooter games.
OSS hasn't been targeting the desktop until very very recently. These applications will come, but that hasn't been where the primary interest is. A keen first-person shooter takes a back seat to a stable underlying system.
Hell, it was previously difficult to get hackers interested in graphical stuff at all. Gimp, Gnome, KDE, et al are very recent developments. Now that there are keen GUI's and graphic editors in abundance, folks uninterested in kernel work have a place to make their spreadsheets and games. They'll come. They're starting to already.
Why is it that, gulp, NT had true SMP before Linux.
NT still doesn't have true SMP. NT is also slightly older, and had much code contributed from the OS/2 project which is even older still.
Linux would not be where it was if MS wasn't such a crappy company.
...and MS would not be where it is if IBM hadn't been so clueless. What's your point?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
EOF
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I can understand "do something nice, give it away". But "stop restricting people's freedom"? Come
Having access to source code is good. It doesn't mean that you are giving anything away. Here is a little story, years ago I worked at a bank that had a bunch of PDP-11/70s that were used to send messages to many other systems. At one point I had written a job that read a tape backwards to remove some messages from the end of the tape and sent them via comm lines.
Then we upgraded the O/S to a new version and as soon as we try to run my job the system crashed (this was a nightly job). Since the old PDP-11s came with the source to the operating system and all the drivers, I was able to find the problem (it was in the tape driver), fix it and have everything working in about a day.
I then send my fix to DEC (via snail-mail) and it was published in the next set of monthly patches.
Do that with Windows NT.
...richie
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Friday, Nov. 20: I own how many O'Reilly animal books.
The problem is that, unlike in the physical world, there is no inherent scarcity with software.
We're not talking about refusing to give away a physical product here, we're talking about preventing people from using a resource that is naturally unlimited.
Proprietary software is like (and about as moral and ethical as) damming up a river, the only source of water for a town, and then selling it back to the townspeople in bottles under the stipulation that you can't even share your bottle of water with anyone else.
"Now," you may say, "what about the limited real-world capital that goes into the initial production of the software?" The thing is, with any software, there are also associated real-world products and services (media, support, etc) that you can charge for and make a decent profit and pay your programmers too.
There are companies do this for free software. Exclusively. They make money. Plenty of money. Cash. Moolah.
Profit.
I mean, come on, we're all capitalists here, right?
In other words, it has been demonstrated many times in the real world that you won't starve (and in fact can still make a healthy profit) if you sell "free" (i.e speech) software.
Another thing -- has the inherent inequity of most programmers being payed per project, and the companies they work for charging per copy of proprietary software, ever occurred to you?
Companies that make proprietary software rip off their programmers as well as the consumers.
DNA just wants to be free...
...or I'm especially humour-impaired tonight; not sure which.
DNA just wants to be free...
> What product is naturally unlimited? The years
... I guess Mozilla w/ NGLayout comes to mind first here. Definitely shoddy, uninnovative, inefficient, non-standards-compliant stuff.
... let's see ... does a consumer who makes unauthorized copies of software do so because:
... how's that work, I wonder?)
> of man hours invested by the program's authors?
Nope. that's real-world capital, unlike the software. You're confusing the capital used for production with the good produced.
> False. Proprietary software is like a well you
> dug up closer to the town than the river. You
> spent the time, energy, and resourcefullness to
> create the well,
> not the towns folk
This applies only to "from scratch" software developed under a so-called "cathedral model", then.
> hence you have the right to charge whatever you
> want, and impose arbitrary limitations on it's
> use.
Yes, you did find a valid problem with my own analogy here -- I didn't include anything that adequately paralleled the initial capital investment required to make the software in the first place.
Hrm. Okay, I'll bite. A well _would_ be a better analogy, except that well water is a finite, exhaustible, resource -- river water (at least as far as the needs of a single small town are concerned) is not, provided nobody upstream interferes.
Basically, your well analogy would be valid if:
- the groundwater was inexhaustible (note that digging another well would be analgous to creating a new software product)
- you (or the townspeople) could take water from the well at zero cost (like duplicating software)
- an essentially infinite number of people could have access to the well at once without causing problems
- the physical nature of the well didn't imply concerns regarding land use rights
> The part about sharing the water is a false
> analogy.
I don't think so. Very nearly all proprietary software licences that I've read restrict the use of a particular copy of the software to a specific set of people (generally one).
I'm not sure either of our analogies are necessarily that valid, given that water is itself a physical, finite, resource (although in my river analogy, it is, considering the meagre needs of a small town, unlimited).
Software itself (I'm not talking about production captial) can be duplicated and shared at zero cost; it's not a finite resource at all, and creating artificial scarcity (so you can get more money) in such a case is just unethical and wrong.
> I have heard the opinion expressed in a previous
> debate that people shouldn't be babied with
> computers, that is, they should have to
> understand how they work and be able to fix
> them.
To a limited extent, yes. Like people who drive cars know at least the basics of how the car works, and can open the hood if they need to and fix basic stuff. Beyond that, I agree with you in that users can't be expected to know everything about the internals of the system (even programmers can't), but I disagree with you in that they should have the chance to learn about the internals if they want to.
> This "support" argument dumbfounds me.
Yeah, support isn't the best way to get funds if you're a software producer, but yet even proprietary software companies are expected by their customers to provide support. Hrmm....
Actually, with free software, I tend to see a proliferation of companies, some of which specialize in support, some of which specialize in software production and/or packaging. All around, the same amount of software generates more wealth (in general) than the equivalent proprietary software would.
You'd be suprised how many people would rather buy a CD than download something.
> This opinion fits quite nicely with the
> idea of selling support -- you tell the customer
> that you aren't going to make things easier for
> them in the software, instead they'll have to
> pay for training
Yeah, and you've never seen people shell out big bucks to be trained on, say, basic usage of Microsoft Excel (and that is IMO, one of the best designed products of it's class, user-interface-wise). Convince me that people don't need to be trained to use proprietary software.
Hrm. I kind of avoided your argument there. I think to remedy that I'll just point out the various projects that are working on increasing the usability of free software, many funded by companies that are selling it.
(By the way... I do agree with that making a poor product just to do more business with support is just wrong. I just don't see companies producing free software doing that, though.)
> and bug fixes.
Could you please explain to me how a company producing could (on a practical level) charge money for bug fixes if they didn't place restrictions on the redistribution of the software? Charging for bugfixes is only seen in the world of proprietary software.
> Go ahead, take this route. It won't be the
> software produced by this reasoning that will
> drive software progress to the next level.
Oh
> Why should anyone have any rights to my
> brainchild except those that I grant them? In
> the well analogy, I can sell the town the well,
> but what right do they have to force me to tell
> them how I built it, or to help them fix it?
This is about the water in the well (the software product) not the well itself (the intial investment needed to produce the software). You're still confusing the capital used to produce the good with the good itself... in the case of software, a limited capital investment allows you to produce an infinite amount of the good.
Presumably you're not selling your programmers to the end users, are you? (or is there a black market in programmers that I don't know about?)
Presumably you're not being compelled to give them support (helping them fix the well) for _free_, are you? In most situations, the licensing fee you pay for proprietary software also pays for support.
> -> Caveat: On the other hand, I don't have any
> problems with people reverse engineering my
> well, that would be imposing on their right to
> reason about things.
Okay. That's certainly fair.
> Don't work for them if they don't pay you what
> you think you're worth. If you do, then it is
> you who is ripping yourself off.
Can you think of any examples of proprietary software companies that do pay their programmers per copy licenced? ANY examples?
> Why should a company do you any favours?
Oh, I dunno. Moral obligation to pay their employees fairly?
> By the same token, why should I do a company any
> favours?
Indeed. I could just make unauthorized copies for all my friends. But I don't, because that would be immoral (breach of contract, at minimum).
> If everyone just did what was right for them
> (without using force upon another) and quit
> worrying about the other guy I think we'd all be
> better off.
By "right", do you mean moral, or beneficial? The context indicates the latter...
The problem is that people who are only looking out for their own (immediate; people are short-sighted) interests will inevitably resort to force to resolve conflicts between their interests and other people's interests.
Maybe you're right
a. the software company doesn't use force to prevent them from doing that?
b. they are looking out for their own interests, and not those of the software companies?
It cuts both ways, man.
Despite this, I will say that I think that looking out for the interests of others (occasionally, at least) is the only thing that's kept us (as a species) alive for this long.
> Keeping source closed is not fueled by an
> intentional desire to rob others of their
> freedom. It is simply the most convenient way to
> create a barrier to entry in a market.
I think I'll refrain from comment.
> As RMS says, these companies will never make as
> much money as Microsoft.
So, there are other proprietary software companies that make as much money as Microsoft?
> Don't buy a companies software if you don't
> think it's worth it. If it's the only thing on
> the market then tough luck, do without, create
> your own solution, or buy the software.
Unfortunately, as software is becoming more and more important to our society, doing without is becoming less and less of an option daily. I would venture to say that in the space of a few decades, access to software will be as important as, say, access to water or food (moreover, our access to those resources may be at least partially dependent on software).
Water and food are finite resources; software (itself, separate from production methods) is not. More's the pity that people try and play tollkeeper to software resources it as if they were.
Now, as for making my own solution, at home, I do just that. I have not payed money to license any of the software on my machine, and yet I'm 100% legal. (yet note that I have still exchanged money for goods with software companies like RedHat
DNA just wants to be free...
> This solution does have a problem in that after
> one has recouped ones expenses one can continue
> raking in pure profit.
Pure profit is (in and of itself) fine, but inflating the value of your product by creating scarcity (which is what proprietary software licensing amounts to) is to my mind immoral, and an unprovoked application of force. I think this is especially true of critical products, like food and (soon, if not already in some cases) software.
> I disagree with the last sentance. I am selling
> you software, I value it by the work that I put
> in to create the software, not by the cost of
> the media it's on.
You have no way to directly recoup that cost; you're not selling the well, you're selling the water. Bleah. I still can't find a good physical analogy for this. Software just can't be validly compared to a physical good.
Anyway, the thing is that charging for media is one thing -- you can include the value of your development work in the price you charge. That goes for any other physical goods or services associated with the software.
Forcing people to pay you for additional copies of the software, however, is wrong. If they made a copy of the software once they had it, it would expend _none_ of your resources. They're not taking anything away from you that you already posessed. Why, then, should they be obligated to pay you?
> Why is this unethical?
Because you're coercing people into paying you money for a service that they do not need you to provide. In your terms, it's an unprovoked use of force.
> Are you under the false assumption that I use
> Microsoft's products (or any other proprietary
> products)?
No, I didn't know enough to assume that. I suspected you were an author of proprietary software, however.
I'll stop here because Netscape has started flaking out on me.
DNA just wants to be free...
phew. I think you win this one. Sorry if I've taken a while to respond; ... I wish I could relink the thing.
I'm in lynx now; it seems that there's a serious memory leak in the text area widget supplied by the version of Motif statically linked with Netscape, aggravated by long replies. (my last two were done from work, where I apparently have a less buggy Motif implementation)
I guess I needed the time to think about this anyway.
I guess I can at least agree unreservedly for small markets --
the small markets thing was nagging in the back of my mind for some months, actually, due to unrelated conversations.
DNA just wants to be free...
I have a great deal of respect for RMS but his comment about pirated software kind of took my breath away. I can't believe he said that. Wow. Sheesh. Jeeezus.
Sometimes you just have to keep your mouth shut.
Come over here to Asia and see the extremely high prices for legal software and then you'll understand why people *have* to pirate it. These companies exploit people all over the world but here it's more evident.
BTW, the policy of bringing in lower paid foreign programmers to work in the United States serves 2 purposes:
(1) Keeps programmers pay low in the US.
(2) Removes the possibility of foreign countries being able to compete in producing software because of lack of skilled programmers.
Software can and *is* being used as a tool of economic and political oppression. If some of you people in the US would get out in the rest of the world, you might realize that. I have a good friend in Indonesia who works at a local ISP. He's paid approximately $12.00US per month and works 6 days a week. Think about *that* for 5 minutes.
Not that you could even own bought proprietary software. They just grant you a license to use the current version in exchange for money.
Either you view computers and software as tools
to enhance our collective understanding of the
world and each other, or you view them as toys;
toasters; products to be marketed and hawked to
gullible, illiterate consumers
Douglas Engelbart and Richard Stallman fall into
the the former category; Steve Jobs and William
Gates III into the latter.
RealNetworks; Id Software; the Macintosh?
Quite obvious which category you fall into.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
Ok; if you say so.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
As far as what "non-nerds" want, they do not know
what they want. They get told what they want by
zealous hucksters.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
Operating System.
None of which seem to help him very much.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
> The Internet was and is built on "Free" software.
Lemme know when Cisco open-sources IOS, okay?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
For all his high-minded speechmongering on Free Software ... I agree. Wholeheartedly. However, software that is currently closed must be allowed to die friendless and alone (nice little image there), not perpetuated by piracy. RMS's cavalier attitude on software piracy is something I can never agree with.
Okay, perhaps you're not "stealing" ideas if you can't really "own" them. What about all the artists that design the cut scenes, or the special effects or the voice acting? How about the managers who order in pizza for the team, or the salespeople who take the orders?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Can someone refresh my memory as to how not_giving_software_away is "restricting others' freedoms"? People would have even less freedom if it weren't published at all.
I can understand "do something nice, give it away". But "stop restricting people's freedom"? Come on.
Nothing like starting a nice flame war to liven up your afternoon.
My point was about the word RESTRICTING.
An author not_GPLing something is only "restrictive" in the sense that he COULD HAVE GIVEN AWAY MORE (the source, the right to modify & distribute, etc.) It's not restrictive in the sense that it takes away something that you already have (like the right to free speech, or water).
Does RMS actually argue that we all have the inalienable right to modify and distribute everything that other people create? That for someone not to offer me those rights is not just a choice not to be altruistic, but an act of oppression?
We own our ideas even more than we own any physical thing. Maybe we should give them away. But we are not restricting others by not doing so.
Your example of the recipe is off topic. When you go to a restaurant, do you feel restricted if you do not receive a copy of the recipe when your dinner comes?
>> Congratulations, you have been brainwashed into believing that you can own software (duh, just like you can own cooking recipes and building designs and mathematical formulas...)
We are not talking about licensing vs. selling as means of distribution. We are talking about whether it's appropriate to define lack of generosity as restriction.
I suggest you do as RMS does and refuse to use software that isn't free. Then your freedom would remain "unrestricted".
The world would be a better place if all software were free. Probably so much better that people who think they have something to gain by not freeing their software are mistaken. And it's obvious that more and more software WILL be free; BUT
If you want people to free their software, make them feel good about it. Don't badger them into thinking they are doing a disservice by not contributing.
Even if all the buggy code was made open source right now, its far too late to get changes in before 2000. Sorry folks, you're going to have to sweat it out. Its officially too late to really go at this problem in a new way. You'll have to hope that existing Y2K efforts bear fruit, or pray that it simply passes you by.
"Apache, Bind, Sendmail, etc are all very nice pieces of software. What they are not is innovative"
Oh, I really remember there were a huge amount of competing commercial offers for every one of your examples when they were released. Care to name one?
The fundamental problem with free software is that of direction of resources. The only areas which OSS is successfull in is in areas where there is an obvious need. eg: previously existing and well used commercial software.
Ok, let me continue your paragraph for you. Let us imagine I have a grat idea, and this idea is to create a protocol, a server and a client to allow image and text to be send using the existing internet infra-structure. Now what should I do? You would probably incorporate and make Xanadu. Bernes-Lee thought it better and created the Web.
Might it have ever occurred to you that what interests the programmer who wants to develop an OSS project might not appeal to 99% of the population.
That is hardly the case. There will always be someone to create anything. Even tax software (a bad example, as tax laws vary wildly from country to country).
Where was Richard Stallman and Co when Macintosh brought the GUI to the end user
When Jobs stole the GUI idea from Xerox PARC Stallman was probably at MIT. The GUI idea entered Unix world by the way of X some time after that.
Anyhow, I can point out many rational flaws in the free software logic, but I prefer the empirical examples
Gimme the rational flaws, your empirical examples are all making water.
This is again and again the old english-only confusion between free and free.
Says who you can not sell your software? Not only you can sell it, entering first in the market as open source will probably prevent B companies from entering the same market (except for the microsoft-like types , but are you seeing hordes of sysadmins throwing away their Apaches and running to buy Site Servers and NT boxes?).
Besisdes, if there is a problems there will be a solution. That is what is being advocated. The custumers themselves will finance the development even if A Company manager do not let it go ahead.
Sorry about the breaking up of your previous post, but the paragraphs were so well formed (one idea per paragraph, etc) that I could not resist. Let me try another format this time, so as not to add noise to our little conversation.
I am prepared to admit that up to now (now being sometime between 1997 and 1999), little or no consideration was given to graphical applications that seem to be your main point of dispute. Why should it be so?
First, Linux, FreeBSD and Unix were always closely related to academia (where graphical needs are highly specialized) and/or to high-end server space (where gui are IMHO a handcap, not a plus). Second, Linux (or mainly Linux by now) is just now being seem as a possible desktop alternative. Before that you had only Windows, Apple and those one hundred guys using Amiga. So, development of client-side gui apps was no one's priority.
In this respect, you should consider Linux is where PC GUIs were in the mid-80s. Only now standards are being discussed and tested. Hopefully the Gnome/KDE thing will result in a better desktop for all.
I tend to look at Free Software as a new way of doing things. I certanly do not think the only way of innovating is by incorporating and selling the new idea in a beautiful package. I dont know exactly how the existing economic system will deal with it. But it will have to deal with it. We now have many many examples of developers being paid to develop free software. Are they all under some kind of charity? I dont think so.
What product is naturally unlimited? The years of man hours invested by the program's authors?
No, but the product is, and that's what's being kept and charged for, etc.
Demanding payment for labour is fine, but, if you're going to do that, say that that's what you're doing.
Typically, labour-payment is based upon man-hours..., anyway..., what was I saying?
Oh, yes: doing something is not the same as having done something, and, if you want to recognise one, then do, but don't recognise one and call it the other.
-rozzin.
Wow. I remember that old printer, at the MIT AI lab, which was my major teenage haunt when I was a kid. It printed about a page a minute and it put giant streaks in the middle of the paper. It was ancient.
The new printer was gorgeous and shiny and was supposed to spit out a two pages every second. It was more like a page every two seconds, but it was still a magnificient beast. Its software ran on a Xerox Alto, a computer so marginal in performance that it blanked its display whenever it did any processing, because there wasn't enough CPU power to both display and process.
It was a pretty thing, though - first computer I ever saw capable of displaying fonts.
Oddly enough, even though I'd met RMS and my then-girlfriend and I even had him over for a party or two, I never heard him complain about the printer. At that time, he was truly vehement about letting people have free access to the AI computer system over the net ("Tourists", they were called). He had a crusade to make all passwords blank, so that anyone could get in to the new-fangled login program administrators hastily added to his beloved ITS.
The old tourist policy worked well when anyone who had even heard of the AI Lab's computers had to have at least a modicum of clues, but I fear it would be a disaster today. Pity.
D
----
I believe the Xerox printer was a gift from Xerox, not a purchase. That's very nice of the Xerox folks, of course, but you certainly don't have much of a choice of vendors :-).
D
----
To correct your analogy, it's a restriction of people's right to free speech if you were to give a speech, and then forbid anyone from quoting any part of it, or telling anyone anything about the construction of the speech, or even trying to understand the ideas behind and inspiration for the speech.
What you've cited isn't the problem. The problem is that the speech is the property of its creator. Unless specifically granted, what right do you have to take this material (someone else's property) and use it for your own benefit? Why should such a right exist?
Information is a unique beast in this aspect. I agree that nobody should be able to force you to give up arbitrary information, but once you give out that information, it no longer belongs exclusively to you, and you should not be able to dictate what people can do with it.
Since when is listening to (or reading) a speech tantamount to granting ownership of its contents?
Oh, I really remember there were a huge amount of competing commercial offers for {Apache, Sendmail, Bind} when they were released. Care to name one?
I'll bite on this:
Sendmail - There's been hundreds of propretary e-mail products, some of which must pre-date sendmail. How about X.400 systems?
Apache - Lotus Notes predates the HTTP by quite a bit, and does essentially the same thing. There's been other document delivery systems
Bind - Can't name any off hand, but IBM had large internal mainframe networks long ago. Surely they must have had some form of name resolution. SNA?
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I respect RMS, but come on. Granted GPL and OSS has brought us Linux and other great things, but to say that propietary software can bring us nothing good is foolish. This GPL/OSI software isnt exactly that innovative. Where are the RealNetworks, the Id softwares, Macintosh, etc of the 'free' software community. There are some fundamental problems with 'free' software. Granted Linux is a great OS precisely because it is Open and Free, but it is not ground breaking. It has evolved relatively slowly, its features have been gradually improved upon by the community.
I totally agree. The only reason RMS is griping is because many times there is great propietary software out there when there is no Open software. If there is superior free software out there, that does a better job then closed source software is a non issue. The fact is that 'free' software has only been marginally successfull.
Unix was invented by AT&T. The internet was created by the US military originally. Granted that the Berkley had a large and positive effect on Unix, but it was not a rapidly innovative approach. The internet was not the first networking protocol. The internet's success has been largely due to Open Standards. Open Standards != Open Source. If you'd look carefully you'd see that the initial and the larger implimentations were commercial products.
Apache, Bind, Sendmail, etc are all very nice pieces of software. What they are not is innovative. They are predominantly all 'open' approaches to the original work for the most part. Granted, they are superior, more efficient, etc. But free/open is not perfect. None of these Open Projects developed all that rapidly. They represent years of work and they are relatively few.
The fundamental problem with free software is that of direction of resources. The only areas which OSS is successfull in is in areas where there is an obvious need. eg: previously existing and well used commercial software. Let us imagine that I have a great idea, and this idea is to create the first MRP system. How would I, an OSS developer, go about recruiting talented people to join my project. How can I get them to put in the majority of their hours to get the product out the door. The issue is that not all great ideas sound so great on face value. Or perhaps its just an issue of passing the next, seemingly insurmountable, obstacle. In OSS all you can do is pull and hope. Atleast with commercial software you can pull and push, you have salaries to draw talented individuals to YOUR vision, you have stock options to get them psyched, etc.
Then you have the issue of divergent interests. Might it have ever occurred to you that what interests the programmer who wants to develop an OSS project might not appeal to 99% of the population. The fact that 99% of the population seems to want popup menus, integrated help system, etc, has eluded the OSS world for far too long. I find it hard to believe that you're going to find 100 interested programmers who want to create a really good piece of tax software. And remember, these programmers are only working part time on this. Where was Richard Stallman and Co when Macintosh brought the GUI to the end user.
Anyhow, I can point out many rational flaws in the free software logic, but I prefer the empirical examples. Commercial software has continued to break ground long before free software has. Where is the free mp3 algorthym. Why is it that a certain commercial firm has a lock on PGP. Why are there no OSS 3d shooters. Why hasn't there been a free GUI spreadsheet program until only recently.
I hate people who attempt to break down every posting into minute details in an attempt to somehow get a leg up. But...
'There will always be someone to create anything.'
^ May I quote you on this? If this is true, then why is it that everyone in Linux is awaiting the ports of all these different applications from the wintel platform.
In regards to the GUI. Xerox may have invented the GUI, but it never came anything even close to being capable of leaving the lab. Steve Jobs _made_ it a reality. This is called innovation. It is one of the finer points of capitalism. There is a world of difference between pure research and actually developing a working product. By the way, Xerox had email in PARC, they had filesharing, they had a laser printer, and many other things.
I never once said _all_ Open Source projects are predated by commercial software. I merely said that the projects were essentially inevitable. Not only that, but they are relatively few. The web was primarily a fluke.
Ok, so maybe RMS was still in academia at the time of Macintosh's development. But this does not let Free software off the hook. Why is there no half powerfull GUI word processors, spreadsheet programs, MRP systems, 3d software, first person 3d shooter games. Why is it that, gulp, NT had true SMP before Linux. Linux would not be where it was if MS wasn't such a crappy company. Why is it that most coders need to turn to O'Rielly to get sufficient documentation to learn a new language.
The key word here is innovation. The distinction between innovation and invention is one of the finer points of capitalism. You are right to say that PARC invented the first GUI, laser printer, networking, etc. None of these products however were ready for the real world. Most of them were pretty crude, and expensive. Steve Jobs brought these products into the real world, where they actually did people some good. You may scoff at the distinction, but it is a large one none the less.
Id software has developed a whole series of games that people have enjoyed for a long time now. These games may not have been 100% state of the art, but they've certainly done the users alot more good than Crystal Space has.
Where are the GPL'd equivelents in anything that might be regarded as fun. Where are the GPL'd Word processors......
Jobs may not have been a master hacker. But he was, as you say, a visionary. He assembled the team that brought the GUI to the end user. He made it happen plain and simple. This you can not deny.
I see OSS's historical failures as a general trend, not just something left in history. I think this slow development will continue. I have given my reasons, and I've seen a general trend that confirms this. Time will tell. I hope Linux suceeds in knocking MS down. But I suspect that if it does, it'll suceed only in cooperation with commercial outfits.
Stupid people say stupid things.
That is one of the most stupid post I have read on Slashdot.
Are you trying to make a little confession?
AFC
Not that he'd listen.
Notice that RMS said "Business and making money are not bad" - only restricting others' freedoms.
"Radical socialism" my ass. If you want somebody who's done great work but who's a divisive, arrogant knucklehead when he opens his mouth, you can start with Tim O'Reilly as well as with Stallman.
(Yeah, I've got a shelf full of O'Reilly books too, just like everybody who flames Stallman has a bin directory full of GNU programs and a GPL'd Linux kernel. Deal.)
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
You know, by chance, here I am sitting and listening the the first Velvet Underground album, and I decided to have a look at Slashdot . . .
Over the past thirty-three years, how many bands have come and gone who wanted to sound like the Velvets, but "better", more "reasonable", more "accessible"? And now, after all these years, which record am I listening to?
Just a thought.
Oops, the record ended. Stooges time! (Gee, a lot of bands have "improved on" them, too . . .
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
You forgot something.
Neither company A nor company B would bother do the R&D to start the product under a GPL license. There just wouldn't be an economic incentive to do so.
Je ne parle pas francais.
They called GNU "Gee Is Not Unix"! Had to write to the Straits Times of Singapore to get it right.
Also, my 'unofficial' take on parts of the Singapore Linux Conference and my mail to the newspaper is here on my web-site. Today (9th March) there's another article in the press about RMS's talk at the National University of Singapore. This time they got the GNU right (but still spelled Gnu) - duh? (Straits Times online only releases todays edition at 12 noon local time).
Oh. My. Gawd. RMS has ventured into the deep end without his waterwings again. Please understand I have a huge amount of repect for the man(aside from his assinine insistance of prepending GNU to linux), but lately he seems to just be getting weird.
First off, most of the systems that companies of >20 people run are either custom (especially Fortune 1000 corps), or the licensing agreements are fine tuned to the individual purchasor. Almost all have a source escrow provision, in case the vendor goes out of business, and almost all vendors of business systems have been Y2K compliant for at least the last year. Conclusion: companies either need to upgrade their own software, that of a defunct vendor's, or move to the latest rev of an existing vendor.
The biggest problem most companies have isn't with systems that were purchased, but with their own in-house developed software. Between a lack of resources to wade through the code and sloppy configuration management over the years (I have the binary, has anybody seen the source?), most business system problems are *internal* to a company's IT department, not to an external supplier. Obviously, there are exceptions, but for RMS to make a blanket statement like that is just one more demonstration that he has never lived in the real world.
Besides, the Y2K stuff that really worries me isn't the big business "mission critical" stuff, but all that code out there floating around in embedded systems. I'd hate to have my VCR get confused and not record "Friends" when I'm hiding in the mountains around Dec 31!
So, what you're saying is that your boss aquired the source code under some agreement with the original vendor? The proprietary software got fixed. Seems you've just proven the opposite of what you intended.
-Bzzzz-
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So choosing not to say something is violating other people's right of free speech? Rather, it's a violation of my right of speech to be forced to say what I think.
In addition, property of any sort is a basic human right. If I choose not to give the means of making something to someone, I'm not limiting their freedom, since it's mine to do with as I please. That doesn't stop someone from making their own version of the same thing however, which extends to mean that patents are worthless, as they actually do limit people's rights.
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
Unix and the Internet are innovative ideas from the open source community? Ya, right! Neither of these things originated from any open source movement (btw, back then it was called shareware). And certainly, neither came from RMS.
I guess that is the next big thing. Open source taking credit for all computer innovations. Sound like some corporate entity you know and hate?
The Web was fluke in the sense that TBL didn't set out to create something of this magnitude. His original intent was to create a system to dissiminate scientific information at CERN. The fact that it took off like it did was, like many other technical innovations, accidental. It didn't take off simply because it was open. You are incredibly naive to think this is the reason.
SMP: Ummm...I just tried to install a DUAL NT setup a few weeks ago, and I can tell you it doesn't have SMP even NOW.
And I can tell you it does. I have a dual processor system at work running NT very nicely.
Hypocrite. You belittle someone (and require the use of profanity to do it), and attack the speaker and not the argument. Then you quote the
/etc files or recompiling their kernel every other day. You can go off and claim these people are stupid because they are hackers, but you would be exposing you immaturity. Most people want things to work, and Windows, for the most part, delivers.
following "The Internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it."
I use to believe in open source, Linux, the FSF, etc. (and I backed up my belief with monetary donations to the cause as well as developing software). But, it is becoming very clear to me by the example of people like you that OSS is not about freedom. It is about power. You want to be number one, just like MS, Sun, etc. and are no different. The problem is this effort is populated with people who think they have all the answers for the use of computers. News alert! 99.99% of the people don't give a crap about gcc, gdb, emacs, the GIMP, or KDE vs. GNOME. They want solutions. They don't want to spend hours of their free time diddling aroung with
You even start off by claiming that people view computers in one of two ways: as tools or as toys. I hate to break it to ya, but most Linux users probably fall into this latter category.
Personally I agree with you (Stallman) in most parts,BUT if you do not wish to participate in the ongoing discussion here at slash, it makes it very difficult to discuss anything at all ...
...
... (Lost my temper ...)
I use this platform as a developer, it is my "HOME", do you read me ?
Major corporations are putting in more and more free code into this little OS. They undrestand that the currency respected here is code
Aghh forget it... Nevermind
send + more == money?
By "not giving away 'whatever'", you imply that yo are the greatest slice since bread
Nevermind
----------------------
The last time I fucked my girlfriend, I actually checkced that she was having a good time as well as I
But to answer your question;
Well made software can enslave people that do not know how to produce equally well looking products with freely available products (like TeX)
I know TeX, and you know TeX
If Knuth and Lambert had not shared their knowledge, I would have known nada and been lying to my friends
"Shared software" is not enforcing anybody to use it.
Lack of alternatives forces Bill Gates to be the wealthiest man on the planet (he can't help it >;->)
send + more == money?
IIRC, Apache was an outgrowth of NCSA httpd, which was the first HTTP server in widespread use. I don't recall what kind of licensing the original httpd server used, but I think it was similar in principle to modern Open Source licenses. At any rate, the program and source code were pretty freely available. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong...
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
subject
I can personally attest to the accuracy of Mr. Stallman's analysis. The company I work for was founded four years ago to fix Y2K bugs in (unnamed) proprietary mainframe software, when customers who used the software were not being supported by the producer of the software. Because my boss had the foresight four years ago to quit and start his own company, a lot of companies are now fixed (hopefully) that would not have been. If my boss had not been feeling entrepeneurial the day he quit, those companies would have been wholly dependent on the manufacturer of the (unnamed) software.
Does RMS actually argue that we all have the inalienable right to modify and distribute everything that other people create? That for someone not to offer me those rights is not just a choice not to be altruistic, but an act of oppression?
I have an 'inalienable right' to read a book of recipes, modify some recipes to my liking, and publish a new book containing the modified recipes (and the original ones, too). Good recipes take a lot of work to come up with, too...
At one point some people simply decided that software should be treated differently. This idea has then been hammered into your head. Congratulations, you have been brainwashed into believing that you can own software (duh, just like you can own cooking recipes and building designs and mathematical formulas...)
--
Victor Danilchenko
One problem here: just because I have the specs for a Ford engine, doesn't mean I can build that engine to same level of quality that Ford might. With software, a copy is indistinguishable from the original. If I buy a knockoff Red Hat CD for $2, I know (objectively at least) that I'm getting the exact same code I would receive from the original vendor.
Having open software specifications isn't the same as having open *code*. I think the former is really more important, since it's necessary for products to interoperate. Open source is a good thing, but it's not the only thing. If a closed-source product gets along with my other software and has capabilities significantly greater than the free alternatives, then more power to it.
I think you're right on target here. If a company is developing a breakthrough piece of software in a narrow market, then they need short-term control of the market to recoup their development costs. Open development isn't an option prior to release because 1) there won't be many volunteers since there isn't much demand for the product, and 2) a small group of dedicated programmers has a better shot at breaking new ground.
Once the product takes off and becomes mainstream, the equation changes. There are now enough people who depend on it that you could realistically recruit developers for a free alternative. Also, the fundamental design of the application is already done, so bazaar-style development becomes an efficient option. The original developers have hopefully raked in a pile of profits at this point, so they will be more willing to consider a partial or complete opening of their source code. Since they've already made their name, they can continue to sell branded versions of the software and support. This could even be beneficial to the company in the long run, since it forces them to keep producing new products instead of milking what they've already created.
This is how I see proprietary software companies working peacefully with the free software community. I think, for example, that we would all like to see a quality free word processor (no, LyX doesn't count). When we have that, though, I would still be willing to pay for proprietary add-ons if they offered functionality that was useful to me. If, however, that add-on became a "must-have" feature for most users, I would like to see a free alternative developed.
shelf full of O'Reilly books
/. poll to see how many folks have.
Yeah, I was just noticing the other day how many of those suckers I had. Might make yet another stup^h^h^h^h interesting
-- Alastair
I'm the main author of the Crystal Space project.
It is not exactly fair to compare a finished
product (Quake and all ID games) with an
unfinished product (Crystal Space). Of course
Crystal Space has done the users no good for
now. There is nothing for the users yet.
But just give us a little time...
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4