I think you're reading rather too much into the 'do it yourself' response. Nobody is forcing you to use Open Source software, so of course you can go and buy Photoshop if it better meets your needs. However if you want specific functionality added to the GIMP then they have every right to decline to do that for you — to suggest otherwise would be absurd. They are simply telling you the harsh reality that if you want it to happen and they don't have the time and/or inclination, then you either have to make it happen some other way or live without.
Yep, I heard Microsoft is thinking of killing off Windows and Office because Ballmer wokeup one morning with a sour stomach.
Er, hardly the best of examples. As I mentioned above they did kill off Windows XP, and because of product activation and OEM licensing it won't be long before it is really quite difficult to obtain and use a copy legally, let alone fix any problems that arise. Granted the decision probably had more to do with profits than alimentary secretions, but from a customer point of view it hardly matters: their interests weren't going to count either way.
Now I'm not saying that Microsoft should be obliged to support old software indefinitely, or that running old versions of Linux is a pain-free experience, but that doesn't change the basic fact that if you want or need to do something badly enough with Open Source software than you can, whereas with Microsoft software you need permission from Microsoft.
So, no, both open- and closed-source products are subject to natural selection, it's just that the selection forces on them are somewhat different.
In a sense that's true, yes, but the distinction I was trying to make is a finer one. Open source software is directly exposed to competitive pressures. Closed source vendors may be exposed to such pressures too, but closed source software is not — except indirectly through the vendor.
Now I don't want to argue about terminology, but there is a world of difference between an outcome that results from many thousands of individual decisions, and one that is the decision of a single individual or company. Projects like Linux and Apache won‘t die unless their communities abandon them — a natural death. There was nothing natural about how Microsoft decided to end the life of Windows XP (in spite of large and continuing demand) just because it happened to suit their business plan.
after a decade plus of open source developers using the "do it yourself" line to escape from listening to feedback and requests from end users.
You mean to say that, when working for no reward, they work on the features that suit their interests rather than your interests? How shocking.
Your concept of user requests as something that developers have to ‘escape’ from betrays completely the wrong attitude. Listening to requests is one thing, but actually implementing them may require a large commitment of time and energy that you're not paying for. If you can convince someone to do the work anyway, for whatever reason, then that's great: everyone wins. If not then ‘do it yourself’ is a perfectly reasonable response.
Worse, even fewer would be interested in doing so.
A telling statement. If enough programmers find the program useful, but in need of improvement, then it is very likely some of them will improve it. If enough non-programmers think that way then they can pay to have it improved. If this doesn't happen then maybe the program wasn't so very important after all.
This is merely natural selection at work, and for the most part the outcome will be as it should be — unlike closed-source products, which live entirely at the whim of their creator.
IANAL, but this is a subject I've looked into. Limited liability can help greatly when you have acted in good faith, but it is unlikely to shield you if you have shown malice or willful blindness. This is especially true for very small companies that are effectively a vehicle for the acts of one person.
Granted there will be some lock-in to the product, but little or none to the vendor. It is lock-in to a vendor that matters economically, because they are the ones who will extract large sums of money out of you given half a chance.
one of the biggest problems lies outside the control of web site administrators, ad servers.
Nonsense! I for one have chosen to keep my websites ad-free, hence no ad servers and no slowdown. The same goes for untold thousands of other webmasters.
If you've chosen differently then... well, I suppose it's your website and your decision — but please don't come whining to us about the consequences.
Also, the arguments about disk space are specious; at least in the Mac OS X world, there is a utility called "lipo" which will pull apart a fat bnary into only the pieces you need/want to install.
apt and dpkg already go one step further than this: they only download from the repository the pieces you need/want to install (thus saving bandwidth too, which for most people is much more valuable than disc space).
It doesn't exactly, because the data part of the binary is shared
Er, yes, that's why I said it was an approximation. However to address your point:
The data section might be shared (it can't be in the general case because of issues such as endianness). If it is then this might buy you 25% on the scale factor, but it doesn't change the fact that this technique is ultimately non-scalable.
To a first approximation, the size of the binary will increase in proportion to the number of architectures supported.
This is something you might decide to ignore if you are only supporting two architectures. Debian Lenny supports twelve architectures, and I've lost count of how many the Linux kernel itself has been ported to. I really don't think this idea makes sense.
(Besides, what's wrong with simply shipping two or more binaries in the same package or tarball?)
The makers of proprietary software force you to agree to a massive, complicated license before you can use their products because they want to control and restrict what you can do. Let's not pretend that GPL software is any different.
Er, have you actually read the GPL? From section 9 (GPLv3):
"You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program."
When you talk about the OS you are describing the car. When I or a ****ing textbook talk about the OS I am describing the engine. What you and other deluded newbies want to do is name the engine after the stereo that is installed in the car.
If you re-read my post you will see that it was the FSF's position that I was describing, not my own. As for what counts as part of the OS, granted GNUchess shouldn't, but I think they have a point when it comes to bash, coreutils, glibc and the like.
It's not LiGnuX (look up the first stupid renaming attempt before your time) and it's not gnu/linux, plus when you talk about the whole thing it's Ubuntu, Fedora, or whatever those that put the distribution together want to call it. I didn't do the work on the OS or the distribution so I don't get to name them either, and neither did you, and neither did RMS.
That may be why they phrased it as a polite request as opposed to a command.
This "beige box is the hard drive and everyone who says otherwise is wrong" view of computer systems is IMHO really annoying in a forum like this with a lot of people with a technical background.
To put thing simply: the gnu people did not work on linux, just some tools that others bundle with linux, so calling it gnu/linux
It is the ‘bundle’ that they ask to be referred to as GNU/Linux, not the kernel.
is an insult to those that actually put together the kernel and the software distributions.
I'm not convinced that you are well placed to accuse others of insulting behaviour.
You can't always call it GNU/Linux. In an embedded system it's very likely there are no GNU stuff on it at all.
It is the combination of the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel that the FSF asks to be called ‘GNU/Linux’. If an embedded system contains no GNU then — fairly obviously — their request would not apply. Nobody is asking you to call the kernel itself anything other than ‘Linux’.
You wouldn't need very deep pockets, and IBM could certainly afford it without blinking, but I don't think they will for the very simple reason that those particular copyrights are of little importance: at worst they can be used to threaten a few of SCO's ex-customers, but that's about all.
Of somewhat greater importance are the core System V copyrights, but according to the Utah ruling these are owned by Novell. All that needs to happen at this point is for the Utah ruling to stand.
(Of course, even with those copyrights it would be a huge uphill struggle to threaten Linux at this point, but better that no-one is given the opportunity to try.)
The concept of "open source" was indeed around long before OSI existed, but it was rarely if ever called "open source" until the OSI and their associates started to popularise the term. For this reason alone I would argue that the OSD can and should be considered authoritative.
(Ironically, the reason for promoting 'open source' as a label is that 'free software' was thought to be ambiguous.)
Nonsense: there's a huge difference between promoting the public interest (OSS), versus the interests of a particular corporation or individual — especially when you are working for an organisation whose mission is to advance the public interest (academic/charitable/public sector). One is a virtue, the other is verging on corruption.
Granted it would be a mistake to elevate this above the task of actually getting the job done, but I see no shame in promoting OSS as a matter of policy provided there are no overriding practical considerations.
Why can't we dislike Microsoft and take their code?
After all, ReiserFS is still in the kernel.
Granted the addition in this case is self-serving (mainly benefiting MS and not much use to the average Linux user), but the same could be said of most driver code. I agree completely with those who have suggested that the paperwork be checked very carefully.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't pirate a lot of software in my youth, and I'm not a liar.
Reminds me of the 'Irish Ballad' by Tom Lehrer, about a girl who kills her father, mother, sister and two brothers, but admits everything to the police because "lying she knew was a sin".:-)
(Yes I know that copyright infringement isn't comparable to murder, but the question is, does the RIAA know that?)
Many people claim to support free speech, but somehow have a very different view when it comes to speech that they strongly disapprove of.
Similarly, it's all very well respecting copyright when you can afford to buy the licences, but I think the better test is what you did when you couldn't.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're reading rather too much into the 'do it yourself' response. Nobody is forcing you to use Open Source software, so of course you can go and buy Photoshop if it better meets your needs. However if you want specific functionality added to the GIMP then they have every right to decline to do that for you — to suggest otherwise would be absurd. They are simply telling you the harsh reality that if you want it to happen and they don't have the time and/or inclination, then you either have to make it happen some other way or live without.
Er, hardly the best of examples. As I mentioned above they did kill off Windows XP, and because of product activation and OEM licensing it won't be long before it is really quite difficult to obtain and use a copy legally, let alone fix any problems that arise. Granted the decision probably had more to do with profits than alimentary secretions, but from a customer point of view it hardly matters: their interests weren't going to count either way.
Now I'm not saying that Microsoft should be obliged to support old software indefinitely, or that running old versions of Linux is a pain-free experience, but that doesn't change the basic fact that if you want or need to do something badly enough with Open Source software than you can, whereas with Microsoft software you need permission from Microsoft.
In a sense that's true, yes, but the distinction I was trying to make is a finer one. Open source software is directly exposed to competitive pressures. Closed source vendors may be exposed to such pressures too, but closed source software is not — except indirectly through the vendor.
Now I don't want to argue about terminology, but there is a world of difference between an outcome that results from many thousands of individual decisions, and one that is the decision of a single individual or company. Projects like Linux and Apache won‘t die unless their communities abandon them — a natural death. There was nothing natural about how Microsoft decided to end the life of Windows XP (in spite of large and continuing demand) just because it happened to suit their business plan.
You mean to say that, when working for no reward, they work on the features that suit their interests rather than your interests? How shocking.
Your concept of user requests as something that developers have to ‘escape’ from betrays completely the wrong attitude. Listening to requests is one thing, but actually implementing them may require a large commitment of time and energy that you're not paying for. If you can convince someone to do the work anyway, for whatever reason, then that's great: everyone wins. If not then ‘do it yourself’ is a perfectly reasonable response.
A telling statement. If enough programmers find the program useful, but in need of improvement, then it is very likely some of them will improve it. If enough non-programmers think that way then they can pay to have it improved. If this doesn't happen then maybe the program wasn't so very important after all.
This is merely natural selection at work, and for the most part the outcome will be as it should be — unlike closed-source products, which live entirely at the whim of their creator.
No, the point was that if the cash penalty is disproportionate then the case should be tried in a criminal court with criminal standards of proof.
(Yes, I reluctantly agree that this should apply here too.)
IANAL, but this is a subject I've looked into. Limited liability can help greatly when you have acted in good faith, but it is unlikely to shield you if you have shown malice or willful blindness. This is especially true for very small companies that are effectively a vehicle for the acts of one person.
Granted there will be some lock-in to the product, but little or none to the vendor. It is lock-in to a vendor that matters economically, because they are the ones who will extract large sums of money out of you given half a chance.
The existence of a gender imbalance is a verifiable fact. Whether that is a problem is a matter of opinion. Using capital letters won't change that.
Nonsense! I for one have chosen to keep my websites ad-free, hence no ad servers and no slowdown. The same goes for untold thousands of other webmasters.
If you've chosen differently then ... well, I suppose it's your website and your decision — but please don't come whining to us about the consequences.
I think you may be confusing good citizens with obedient citizens.
Also, the arguments about disk space are specious; at least in the Mac OS X world, there is a utility called "lipo" which will pull apart a fat bnary into only the pieces you need/want to install.
apt and dpkg already go one step further than this: they only download from the repository the pieces you need/want to install (thus saving bandwidth too, which for most people is much more valuable than disc space).
It doesn't exactly, because the data part of the binary is shared
Er, yes, that's why I said it was an approximation. However to address your point:
The data section might be shared (it can't be in the general case because of issues such as endianness). If it is then this might buy you 25% on the scale factor, but it doesn't change the fact that this technique is ultimately non-scalable.
To a first approximation, the size of the binary will increase in proportion to the number of architectures supported.
This is something you might decide to ignore if you are only supporting two architectures. Debian Lenny supports twelve architectures, and I've lost count of how many the Linux kernel itself has been ported to. I really don't think this idea makes sense.
(Besides, what's wrong with simply shipping two or more binaries in the same package or tarball?)
Er, have you actually read the GPL? From section 9 (GPLv3):
When you talk about the OS you are describing the car. When I or a ****ing textbook talk about the OS I am describing the engine. What you and other deluded newbies want to do is name the engine after the stereo that is installed in the car.
If you re-read my post you will see that it was the FSF's position that I was describing, not my own. As for what counts as part of the OS, granted GNUchess shouldn't, but I think they have a point when it comes to bash, coreutils, glibc and the like.
It's not LiGnuX (look up the first stupid renaming attempt before your time) and it's not gnu/linux, plus when you talk about the whole thing it's Ubuntu, Fedora, or whatever those that put the distribution together want to call it. I didn't do the work on the OS or the distribution so I don't get to name them either, and neither did you, and neither did RMS.
That may be why they phrased it as a polite request as opposed to a command.
This "beige box is the hard drive and everyone who says otherwise is wrong" view of computer systems is IMHO really annoying in a forum like this with a lot of people with a technical background. To put thing simply: the gnu people did not work on linux, just some tools that others bundle with linux, so calling it gnu/linux
It is the ‘bundle’ that they ask to be referred to as GNU/Linux, not the kernel.
is an insult to those that actually put together the kernel and the software distributions.
I'm not convinced that you are well placed to accuse others of insulting behaviour.
You can't always call it GNU/Linux. In an embedded system it's very likely there are no GNU stuff on it at all.
It is the combination of the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel that the FSF asks to be called ‘GNU/Linux’. If an embedded system contains no GNU then — fairly obviously — their request would not apply. Nobody is asking you to call the kernel itself anything other than ‘Linux’.
You wouldn't need very deep pockets, and IBM could certainly afford it without blinking, but I don't think they will for the very simple reason that those particular copyrights are of little importance: at worst they can be used to threaten a few of SCO's ex-customers, but that's about all.
Of somewhat greater importance are the core System V copyrights, but according to the Utah ruling these are owned by Novell. All that needs to happen at this point is for the Utah ruling to stand.
(Of course, even with those copyrights it would be a huge uphill struggle to threaten Linux at this point, but better that no-one is given the opportunity to try.)
There's a big difference between being competent to declare something safe, and knowing enough to declare it unsafe.
The concept of "open source" was indeed around long before OSI existed, but it was rarely if ever called "open source" until the OSI and their associates started to popularise the term. For this reason alone I would argue that the OSD can and should be considered authoritative.
(Ironically, the reason for promoting 'open source' as a label is that 'free software' was thought to be ambiguous.)
Good analogy. The legal term for this is "acting in reliance" upon the contract.
If you can't rely on the transaction being final once you have paid and they have delivered, then when exactly can you rely on it?
Nonsense: there's a huge difference between promoting the public interest (OSS), versus the interests of a particular corporation or individual — especially when you are working for an organisation whose mission is to advance the public interest (academic/charitable/public sector). One is a virtue, the other is verging on corruption.
Granted it would be a mistake to elevate this above the task of actually getting the job done, but I see no shame in promoting OSS as a matter of policy provided there are no overriding practical considerations.
Why can't we dislike Microsoft and take their code?
After all, ReiserFS is still in the kernel.
Granted the addition in this case is self-serving (mainly benefiting MS and not much use to the average Linux user), but the same could be said of most driver code. I agree completely with those who have suggested that the paperwork be checked very carefully.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't pirate a lot of software in my youth, and I'm not a liar.
Reminds me of the 'Irish Ballad' by Tom Lehrer, about a girl who kills her father, mother, sister and two brothers, but admits everything to the police because "lying she knew was a sin". :-)
(Yes I know that copyright infringement isn't comparable to murder, but the question is, does the RIAA know that?)
as I get older, I want to pay for products
Many people claim to support free speech, but somehow have a very different view when it comes to speech that they strongly disapprove of.
Similarly, it's all very well respecting copyright when you can afford to buy the licences, but I think the better test is what you did when you couldn't.