All in all this spells disaster for any company that even thinks about touching GPL software.
You mean, like Microsoft? (They've been distributing modified GPL software for a few years now. "Interix", I think it's called, was the company they bought up that was doing that, and they continued to do it -- distribute modified GPL software -- long after they bought up Interix. They might still be doing it now; haven't checked for awhile.)
Re:Insecurity: A Bogus Objection
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Opengroupware
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the point is that qmail installs that aren't up to date are vulnerable
Okay, but my qmail installation is circa June 2001, about two years old. I haven't had to keep mucking with it to keep it from being vulnerable; It Just Works. And updating the configuration to handle my third domain name, instead of leaving it to a redirecter and/or my old dialup ISP, was trivial and didn't in any way make it more vulnerable.
So, of all the links you posted, only one pertained to anything that could be called a "vulnerability" in qmail; that post was six years old; the other links pertained either to other products or to vulnerabilities inherent in the technology; and even that one vulnerability could, AFAIK, not be exploited in the sense one might think (it was not a security vulnerability, didn't break down the walls between different users' emails, etc.).
In the future, be careful to avoid "equivalence via terminology". In this case, just because qmail could be said to have once had a "vulnerability" and Exchange can be said to have a "vulnerability" does not mean both products are equivalent from the point of view of vulnerabilities.
qmail, unlike most any other email software, was designed from the ground up to be inherently invulnerable to common security problems, by someone who has demonstrated a track record of knowing what he's doing under such circumstances. Its source code is fully available for peer review, and it is so small and compartmentalized that vulnerabilities, should they exist, are much easier to spot.
(In fact, the one vulnerability you pointed to was found not by it being exposed in the field, but by someone studying the source code. We can all give that a whirl when it comes to qmail, GNU software, the Linux and *BSD kernels; how many of us can try that with Exchange, Outlook, and so on?)
Personally, I haven't mucked around with sysadmin/netadmin tasks for awhile now and am just getting back into it, so I've been renewing my acquaintance with qmail, learning djbdns, so I've rediscovered the joys of being able to grok a technology (such as DNS) not by reading a book (O'Reilly's "DNS and BIND" left me totally confused years ago, though I find O'Reilly books usually work well for me), but by reading the docs and studying the architecture for a well-designed piece of software that implements it -- djbdns in this case, which I expect I'll be deploying soon.
Re:Insecurity: A Bogus Objection
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Opengroupware
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How strange; the first three items you listed seem to have nothing to do with any bugs in qmail (unless you count DoS attacks, to which all such software is susceptible).
And the fourth item points to two programs (one in C, one in Perl) that supposedly would cause my server to run out of memory by sending very long SMTP commands to my qmail-smtpd server.
I ran both programs. In both cases, my qmail-smtpd server quickly aborted the connection with status 256, according to tcpserver, and the respective programs exited at about the same time.
Even if qmail-smtpd could be exploited to the point where it consumes all available memory, I suppose that'd apply to only that one instance of qmail-smtpd (i.e. that one connection), since a new instance is spawned for each incoming SMTP connection by tcpserver (if I have my facts right). So one could limit the amount of memory consumed by qmail-smtpd processes, using native OS facilities, so that any one process can't bring down the entire machine, which is what the exploit claims happens. (Absent adequate OS control over maximum run-time allocation of heap and stack memory, one could simply rewrite programs such as qmail-smtpd in ANSI FORTRAN 77, a language which allows an implementation to guarantee no run-time allocation of memory beyond the initial program image.)
But maybe the reason qmail-smtpd works for me is that I'm using the latest, greatest version of qmail -- version 1.03 -- which came out only recently. But I don't know when "recently" is, nor do I know whether or when qmail-smtpd might have been fixed to avoid the exploit described above.
However, since the email describing the exploit you identify was written in 1997, it's not what I would call "breaking news" in terms of qmail security concerns.
If you really do know of any security flaws in qmail, by all means identify them -- I'd like to look into closing them, since I run qmail on my server, which serves three domains of mine, two of which I actually use (haven't deployed the third yet).
the Chinese supposedly had engineers riding on the planes at the stroke of midnight. Though maybe a bit harsh, such an act does bring the levity of the situation to people
s/levity/gravity/g, perhaps?
No; the planes brought the engineers up, i.e. it levitated them. Gravity would come into the picture only if there were serious Y2K bugs in the aircraft's computers.
See if you can find out whether the Christian Science Monitor makes money, loses money, or breaks even, and, if it loses money, where its funding comes from.
You might try starting at their web site, csmonitor.com,
looking for information on their financials.
And good luck. I haven't tried hard, but couldn't find any information on the Monitor's source of funding -- but and and I'm under the impression that it's long been in the red, and that the Christian Science Board of Directors essentially keeps it afloat via contributions from members and supporters of the church. (I believe there is a fund specifically for the Monitor as well, but I don't know whether all support the Board provides to the Monitor come from that fund.)
Note that support of the Monitor would include not only the cash to run the operation, but the value of space leased by the Monitor, including some fairly prime space in the Christian Science Publishing House in Boston, as well as market values of relevant trademarks (such as the name of the paper).
As someone who was raised in Christian Science and has many friends in the church, I've tended to find this situation generally acceptable.
However, given the Monitor Editors' strong stance in favor of Campaign Finance Reform (CFR), including the provisions recently found to be unconstitutional, which they base on the premise that if party A funds party B, party B is inevitably compromised...
...I find it difficult to understand how the Monitor can claim it is editorially independent from the Board of Directors of the church if it is, indeed, largely funded by it. (Perhaps they claim exemption from the general rule that funding implies influence. If they make such a claim, I'm unaware of it, or on what basis they claim such exemption.)
For example, the Monitor Editors once essentially claimed that since George W. Bush's 2000 campaign was partly financed by automakers, he had no independent, valid reason (such as his favoring free-market solutions) to resist raising the (CAFE?) standards for fuel efficiency in cars.
To me, how Mr. Bush would feel his hands were tied by an earlier, non-recurring contribution was not made immediately clear by the Monitor, nor have I seen any explanation how their apparent dependence (for their salaries, among other things) on recurring funding by a church does not render them susceptible to influence by that church.
One could, of course, compare the stance of Monitor editorials over, say, the last ten years to that of church publications (the CS Journal and Sentinel) to gauge the extent of agreement on various political issues (abortion rights, gun control, global warming, income redistribution, smaller vs. larger government, and so on).
Having kept some track of this over the past few years, I've come to my own tentative conclusions, but won't shoot from the hip just to score points, which is what the Monitor seems to have done a few times with regard to issues such as CFR.
In any case, I'd love to see issues like this addressed on the Monitor's web site.
Regardless of the appearance of hypocrisy here, there is no question the Monitor is widely respected as an important, fairly unbiased source of information, especially on international issues, and is generally independent of the agenda of the church that supports it.
Personally, no matter how much funding the Board directs to the Monitor, given what I do know about the individuals involved, I highly doubt there's any overt, or even covert, attempt at influencing the Monitor's editorial stance, nor its coverage of the news, to favor either Christian Science generally nor the Board's political views.
That does not rule out the possibility of influence via a collection of "like-minded people" finding themselves working together, as editors and
Re:What would machines do?
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AI in Sci-Fi
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A more interesting question to me is: what would humans do?
But now it's GPL, so these developers have no reason to stick around
Folks, this is a very, very important point for all software developers to understand: that proprietary software doesn't just restrict user freedom, it restricts the freedom of software developers, who create, improve, understand, and fix proprietary code, to take full advantage of their acquaintance with that code.
Yes, that's only part of the equation -- trading freedom for security is not always seen as wise, and in many cases, that'd take the form of trading career and project-choice freedom for job and financial security.
But it's a factor that developers would be wise to take more carefully into account when considering proprietary vs. open-source development.
From my own point of view, having been fully involved on both sides of the fence, there's no question that my involvement with GNU Fortran (g77), a GPL'ed project, did more to enhance my marketability and career freedom than almost any combination of proprietary projects on which I worked during my 20-year-or-so software-development career (which isn't so much over as pending my deciding whether I'm bored enough to find something to do in that field again).
People might say I "got lucky" with g77, and they're partly right. But I addressed a clear, known need using my expertise (such as it was), so luck wasn't exclusively responsible.
And, after all, such "luck" (and the willingness to properly identify and address clear, known needs) is crucial to actually maintain the kind of job and financial security many people seek in the proprietary-software industry.
So while I certainly can't assure anyone that "converting" to OSS development will be a magic bullet for their careers or lives, I can assure them that sticking with developing proprietary software for others because "you can't make money developing OSS" is not the slam-dunk-correct decision many have made it out to be over the years.
But now it's GPL, so these developers have no reason to stick around
"If you tell a lie long enough, the people will believe it. The greater the lie, the more people will believe it". Adolph Hitler, and I may be mistaken on the exact wording.
Sigh... strike two.
Look, it must be true...I've heard it so many times!
If I stand on my roof and spray an ak-47 around my head a few times, and shoot a kid 3 blocks down, I'm going to prison, even though I had no malicious intent to shoot said kid. Same thing with the/. effect.
You've got to be kidding...do you really believe that a web server set up accepting arbitrary, anonymous connections from anywhere in the world has no more responsibility in being/.'ed than does a child minding his own business a few blocks away from someone randomly firing a gun??
Is it your claim, then, that the child is merely "advertising, or serving, his presence in meatspace as an invitation to any anonymous incoming material", and therefore the situation is analogous to a web server being/.'ed?
And is it your claim that firing a gun in real life, aka meatspace, is morally equivalent to posting links to web pages in cyberspace? Seems to me the former is designed to kill, while the latter is designed to facilitate communication. Just because the technologies used by the latter can (in meatspace as well as cyberspace) be abused in the direction of violence and death does not mean that facilitating communication is morally equivalent to willfully firing a weapon designed to kill or maim, any more than one can claim that since a gun can be fired in a Morse code pattern it can be classified as merely a "means to facilitate communication".
Please, remember that cyberspace is not meatspace. Just because you can apply the same terminology to scenarios in each space does not mean those scenarios are analogous, especially if the specific terms you're using have nearly completely different meanings and weights in the respective scenarios.
Here's a sample of Mr. Mullen's "unbiased" approach to Microsoft security:
Looked pretty unbiased to me. Maybe you could post a better example? Until then, you seem to have both me and sheldon
agreeing on a closed-vs-open-source issue, as seems to be the case here, namely, that your link doesn't point to a biased view of OS security. I doubt we'd agree on much else though....
There's a (perhaps subtle, but nonetheless real) difference between cowardice in the face of evil and the active propagation of evil.
And rolling tanks into Waco, or sending men with guns to point them in Elian Gonzalez's face, counts as which case, in your opinion?
The difference being that while many Republicans and conservatives are complaining about the comparatively tiny amount of damage John Ashcroft has done since taking office, Democrats and liberals promoted, or at least ignored, Janet Reno (and Bill Clinton), in terms of their culpability in propagating evil, through Reno's nearly-successful bid for the Democrat nomination for governor in Florida.
Not that it's an easy choice, mind you (and there are more than just two choices, after all), but, personally, give me the party that arrests prematurely and possesses some degree of honest self-examination and reflection over the party the rolls in tanks, send in guns, then blames the results on Rush Limbaugh, the "Cuban mob", a lack of adequate gun control (wha??!), or whatever their excuse-du-jour happens to be.
The majority of my experiences with pro-OSS license advocates borders on being socialist propaganda.
I'm sorry to hear that. But since I have basically the same impressions of anti-SUV advocates, anti-Iraqi-war advocates, pro-abortion advocates, and so on, I don't doubt you.
The argument is that OSS license software development could (potentially, we must all wait to see how it pans out in the future) cause the downfall of software development companies (as we know them).
That's true, but bear in mind that capitalism is not the same thing as preserving the status quo. The latter could be claimed to be a goal of conservatism, although that term has come to mean something rather different.
A company going bankrupt does not mean capitalism is failing, any more than a company's stock price going down means that it is losing money.
Those are, to both naive capitalists and, sadly, most socialists and liberals, surprising or even incorrect statements. Yet they are entirely correct. What's being measured is not the success of capitalism so much as the general opinion of the marketplace, expressed in terms of where it does and does not invest capital.
So someone telling me "OSS means some companies will go bankrupt that otherwise wouldn't have" doesn't influence me much, since, on the other hand, OSS probably means many more companies will be able to continue operating at lower expenses, or be started up in the first place, since there will be less expense and fewer artificial constraints on their behavior due to the availability of OSS.
proprietary systems are largely chastized in this forum
Believe me, that's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of $$$ that proprietary-software companies are able to throw at media to push their message.
What if, on a very disturbing note, the US government decides to intervene and passes laws that no monetary gain may be made from software?
For one thing, it'd pretty much legislate the GPL and BSD licenses out of existence, since so much of what drives development of software under those licenses is the prospect of profit.
In any case, that concern, while, to me, far more remote than the ongoing actuality of the US government legislating in ways that raise the bar for OSS developers while leaving it the same (or lower) for CSS companies, is partly why I don't simply rant and rave as a pro-OSS advocate, and choose instead to present my arguments as clearly and succinctly as possible, so I'm less likely to be interpreted as supporting some kind of socialistic-utopian view of software development.
if I can create a business from doing something I would be anti-capitalist for not doing so
Please rethink that opinion as you formulate it. It really does not make any sense, though maybe my perspective is different, being a very creative person.
From my perspective, there are about a billion different products and services around which I could create a profitable business.
Choosing just the right product and service, thinking in the long term, thinking about how I want to live my life, and deciding to not go the short-term, high-profit route, cannot be said to be anti-capitalist, else everyone would be, unless everyone but me (and maybe a handful of other people) cannot come up with more than a handful of good ideas for businesses their entire lives.
(I don't mean to sound arrogant or anything, because either is a distinct possibility. A friend, years ago, started taking piano lessons, not long after he graciously helped me come up to speed on "classical music" by lending me LPs of Beethoven, etc. We both are passionate about music. One day while talking about his progress as a beginning pianist, I asked whether he'd gotten to the point that he could pick out songs he made up in his head -- something I'd tried, via lessons, to accomplish, but which eluded me and still does to some extent. He said "I don't make up songs in my head". It was totally amazing to me to think that anybody didn't just create new music in their own minds, whether little melodies or full-blown orchestrations. But he was being perfectly honest, and I think he probably does not represent a tiny minority.)
I always gain a new understanding of issues when I debate them.
That's wise, and that relates quite strongly to the whole OSS-vs-CSS debate as well.
Specifically, to OSS advocates, the widespread, free circulation of source code is like a vast debate over software design, architecture, implementation, and maintenance.
Another question:/. user "Nocoward", the other person in this debate, essentially claims that creating OSS hurts people who'd otherwise be able to sell CSS because it reduces the artificial scarcity.
Does not his very choice to debate his point of view publically contribute to a decline in the artificial scarcity of opinion on appropriate software development models, for which paid consultants would otherwise be hired to express?
In other words, do technology consultants lose money because corporate types can more easily research the issues, thanks not just to forums like/. but to those who, like Nocoward, express their opinion that developing "free software" is illogical because of the harm it does?
They probably do, just as the widespread availability of free tutorials on Windows, Linux, the Macintosh, and so on, hurts the market for consultants and teachers.
Maybe people like Nocoward should think before they contribute to the free data base of opinion that is/.?
;-)
I have enjoyed our interchanges very much, cburley, and have learned much from them!
It DOES offend me that those choosing to do so look down upon others trying to profit from their software and then time they spend developing it. I've heard all too much talk on this forum of how all companies are evil. That must make all of their employees evil too.
I won't disagree with you there. One of the reasons I haven't been a particularly active "defender" of OSS over the past few years is that I got tired of seeing OSS advocacy hijacked, or used as a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing cloak, for anti-capitalist advocacy.
It's that sort of advocacy to which you are, presumably, actually responding in your response to my post -- I doubt you'll find any such advocacy in what I actually wrote.
What I was focusing on was your statement that a person, like myself, choosing to work on OSS as a labor of love rather than for profit was somehow being "anti-capitalist". Such a statement betrays a lack of understanding of what capitalism actually is.
In particular, it is not the constant, continual creation and maintenance of artificial scarcity; rather, a means by which real scarcity can be better managed by a population is what capitalism provides (or is claimed to provide).
Certainly, capitalism isn't the denial of freedom of individuals to choose to distribute goods and services (e.g. software they write) only under circumstances from which they'll personally profit, either.
Apologies if I didn't manage to make that last part sufficiently clear in the first place.
More sociopolitically, here is a quick-and-dirty summary of my views and interests regarding OSS vs. CSS:
OSS advocates include those who believe communism and socialism -- pro-government institutions responsible for the murders of nearly 100 million people in the 20th Century alone -- represent humanity's path to enlightenment, and they see OSS as a "proof" that freely sharing goods and services can be the basis of an enlightened society.
So when those particular advocates promote OSS and counter anti-OSS propaganda, they tend to resort to arguments about the "greater social good" based on anti-capitalist, anti-corporate mythology -- the sort of mythology that is taught in Western colleges, which view any minor ethical violation by a corporation as indicative of the whole, while overlooking mass-murder done under the guise of socialism, communism, etc. (You'll recognize the type of person who holds this view; they were far more upset by what Enron did than by what Janet Reno did.)
OSS advocates like myself, however, look at the situation quite differently. We see OSS as a proof of the belief that, even in a theoretically "pure" capitalist society -- the sort of society pushed by certain strains of libertarianism, for example -- people who are free to act in their own self-interest can, and in some cases will, actually act for the "good of the whole" because they see their "selves" as including not only the present population, but generations to come.
We are more aware of, and grateful for, the positive contributions to society made by capitalists, corporations, and other free private entities, even the much-hated "robber barons" who, unlike most wealthy socialists, left us with museums and other great public works.
And since OSS is largely an underground phenomenon -- not one outlined by any national or state government, rather, by a small group of individuals (including RMS) who, regardless of their views on these sociopolitical issues, were able to participate in creating OSS projects like GNU largely because of their valued participation in the free market -- we see OSS as justifying not more governmental interference in the free market (which is advocated not only by socialists but by anti-free-market corporations such as Microsoft), but less.
There is hardly a perfect record here, since, as pro-capitalist-yet-anti-OSS people often point out, a not-insubstantial portion of OSS development is done by students at university, sometimes funded by government in some form or another (e.g. Linus Torvalds).
But, on the whole, OSS is, to me, persuasive evidence that the role of government, throughout the world, in governing the daily economic choices of mankind, should be scaled back, so as to allow more people more freedom and more choice to live their lives as they see fit, allowing for more opportunity for them to freely contribute to society however they can, by writing OSS, by volunteering in their community, by spending more time with and raising their children, and so on.
So when anti-OSS people claim OSS development is anti-capitalist, we'll occasionally pipe up and denounce such claims.
But that denunciation emphatically does not constitute a claim that people wishing to profit from writing software are anti-capitalist!
Finally, an interesting aspect to the CSS-vs-OSS debate is the fact that, as I pointed out in another comment, CSS development tends to be pointed towards large, monolithic, opaque systems, while OSS development favors small, dispersed, transparent systems consisting of small components interconnected via well-defined interfaces.
That actually describes the difference between central government a la socialism and decentralized, citizen-based government a la theoretical democratic republics such as the USA circa the early 1800's.
Since the issues boil down, in both contrasts, to the same -- specifically, the fundamental need to manage complexity -- pro-freedom OSS advocates take special note of OSS successes, such as qmail, that embody the very spirit of open, transparent, simplicity, as compared to closed, opaque, complexity, in a product such as MS Exchange Server.
In short: if CSS a la Microsoft succeeds in defeating OSS a la GNU/Linux, regardless of how it does so (by legislation or by constantly making superior products), that will serve as a very persuasive argument that, just as a highly complex software system is best developed by a highly centralized organization that keeps its methods secret, so would a highly complex economic system, like the human race, be best served by a highly centralized world government that keeps much of its internal workings secret.
Therefore, anyone who really believes that people writing OSS for no profit are doing injury to others because they are failing to support the artificial scarcity of software will find themselves hard-pressed to explain why the same cannot be said for individual self-government, to wit:
Is it not true that anyone deciding for themselves what kind of car to buy, how big a house to live in, and so on, is doing injury to others because they are failing to support the
artificial scarcity of economic government?
As a simple example: the very real scarcity that a highly complicated US tax code creates, in terms of resources expended to not only deal with it as taxpayers but to create and maintain it as lawmakers and enforce it as IRS agents and the federal judiciary, could be easily mitigated by, e.g., a Presidential executive order that the income tax would henceforth be x% on income above $Y per year, no exemptions, no exceptions.
In contrast to the great freeing of real resources such a decree would offer, there'd be some serious damage done to the comparatively small industry that serves to mitigate somewhat the artificial scarcity the complex tax code creates -- scarcity in the form of people sufficiently knowledgeable to navigate the code, willing to tackle it as a lawmaker, willing to enforce it, etc., and artificial in the sense that it's imposed exclusively as a result of human whim, not as the result of anything found in nature.
How do you think those who object to OSS development on the artificial-scarcity basis would view such a Presidential decree? As anti-capitalist, because while it would free up maybe trillions of dollars in capital over a period of years, a comparative minority would see its precious artificial scarcity dry up?
That's essentially the issue with OSS. CSS largely depends on a government-sanctioned artificial scarcity (software patents and copyright on software; note that copyright was not originally intended for functional expressions, rather artistic ones), one that is government-enforced as well.
And OSS, unlike a Presidential decree, exists not as a legal instrument of force, but merely swims alongside CSS in the same legal and ethical environment, offering a vast sea of users fewer legal and ethical impediments to their using OSS vs. CSS -- not to mention the monetary advantages that can be gained.
So, no, this is not just about "evil corporations", and OSS advocates who claim it is are doing the whole debate a disservice, in my opinion.
The above statement should read "The open source model does not work for the vast majority of those involved in the production of software"
Thanks for the clarification.
However, it's still incorrect. The vast majority of those involved in the production of software work on software that is never distributed outside the organization that employs them.
To them, OSS doesn't "work" in the same sense proprietary software doesn't -- it's simply a non-issue, or nearly so.
So your statement must be refined yet further to have any hope of being correct:
The Open Source model does not work for the vast majority of those involved in the production of software that is distributed to others.
I doubt that's correct either. Certainly I won't trust your assertions; you don't seem to be able to do math well.;-)
It actually doesn't work for consumers of OSS software in the long run, but that is another topic entirely.
Funny, I get the exact opposite impression: users of OSS tell me how happy they are to, e.g. not be locked into proprietary data formats, be able to hire whomever they want to fix bugs, and so on.
Meanwhile, when users of CSS ask me for help, it oftens ends up being problems relating directly to the whole attitude of CSS distributors.
E.g. my wife could't pull up one of my web pages (which I created specifically for her to print off, since I don't happen to have a printer myself) using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, because it apparently gratuitously decided she wasn't "allowed" to read it because the directory containing it (on my GNU/Linux system running Apache) was protected against reading it.
Note carefully that IE did successfully read the page -- Apache's server logs confirmed it -- but IE decided to pretend it couldn't.
After fighting with it off and on for a day or so, she got it to work somehow (forget how), at which point she could see the document I wanted her to print, but IE, in its infinite wisdom, decided to not let her edit it before printing!
That's right, MS decided IE should act not in her best interests as a user of the software, but in someone else's best interests (ultimately Microsoft's, but for the moment supposedly the web-site owner's, i.e. mine, even though I gave explicit permission via my server setup for her to retrieve the page)!
So she couldn't copy and paste text from the page she was staring at because MS, as is often the case with CSS, was acting not in her best interests, but in someone else's. She had to retype it from scratch (there wasn't much), and then had to futz around and finally reboot her machine to delete her local copy of my web pages.
Another friend had me over to help figure out why Encarta (another CSS MS product) wouldn't let him print a picture of a whale, but would let him print a picture of something else. Turned out MS decided to not let him do something that might conceivably contribute to a copyright violation, even though he was perfectly within his rights to do so.
And how many complaints have you seen or heard about copy-protection systems breaking down, or license-agreement-click-throughs not making sense, for OSS software?
This is the mind-set behind CSS, and the OSS world simply doesn't even go there, because it is written (sometimes badly, I admit) with the best interests of the user in mind.
Further, CSS developers naturally (as can be confirmed by reading other anti-OSS posts in this thread) tend to develop overly-monolithic, complex applications precisely because those can't be as easily cloned by competitors (OSS or otherwise), leading to buggier software.
(Compare MS's Exchange server history, in terms of reliability, speed of recovery due to viruses, and sane design to, e.g., qmail, which is practically OSS due to DJB's views on licensing.)
I'm not saying there aren't cases of OSS users switching back to CSS software -- I'm sure there are -- just that I don't see much of that going on compared to those switching in the opposite direction.
And aren't you grateful to know you can make $$$ hiring yourself as a consultant and explaining how companies can do so much better for themselves getting off the cheap and free Linux upgrade bandwagon and back onto the reliable, safe, and comfy MS Windows platform?
"well, how do scientists protect their IP when they publish their results anyway?"
The method used are called PATENTS and COPYRIGHTS. Scientists frequently are granted patents and authors and musicians use COPYRIGHTS.
Hmm, thought you covered that case with "inventors" already.
Anyway, your point isn't clear to me, since software developers also use patents as well as copyrights -- theirs is one of the few businesses that make widespread use of both, I believe.
Heck, the GPL totally depends on copyright for its success as an OSS license.
So the "OSS model" is hardly against copyrights, though there is strong sentiment among many of its adherents against software patents -- a statement that holds true for many CSS vendors as well, given the minefield they're becoming.
And the existence of OSS is no more of an artificial-scarcity-deadening phenomenon in the software world than is the existence of massive amounts of beautiful, well-known, public domain music and well-written books in the art world, or the existence of widely distributed, highly respected scientific journals in the world of invention.
In fact, one could argue that OSS serves an especially useful purpose in creating a practical, useful sort of "history" for the computing world that didn't exist, but which can serve the same purpose for it as centuries-old music, books, and scientific research serve for the relevant communities.
From that point of view, the existence of GCC might be to a software developer as the existence of Handel's Messiah is to a contemporary rock musician or the existence of Einstein's theories to a contemporary inventor: something from which to draw inspiration, perhaps to borrow from, or to experiment with. All of which is perfectly legal for most developers of software, who aren't worrying about distribution-rights issues, and for whom CSS is almost always useless, since it doesn't come with viewable, or usable, source code.
Exactly how is that "not good", or "not successful for the vast majority of" any group?
As for for your paranoid assumption that I am going to legislate your "freedoms" away, don't worry. I am simply trying to inject some rational thought into the illogical OSS world. I want all existing and upcoming software engineers to think about how much value they are producing by streamlining the business processes of corporations. Isn't that worth fair compensation?
First, I didn't make any such assumption -- I said that was your most viable alternative.
Second, almost everyone starting out what culminates in a campaign of evil (such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot) makes statements much like yours -- "I just want to inject some rational thought"; "I want all [people] to think about"; "[the OSS world is illogical]".
Third, as can be confirmed by looking at, e.g. President Bush's imposing high tariffs on steel, government is almost trivially convinced to legislate away freedom and economy to earn political points with a comparative minority -- one that starts the process by writing tomes such as yours.
So, while I'm not worried about you, specifically, there's no denying that a) people who think like you do are "out to get me", in the sense that they want to shut down my ability to either create, or practically distribute, OSS, and b) you're helping them make their case.
Now that you've been informed of the latter, you have no excuse should worse come to worse.
It's time to leave the Dark Side, and come into the Light, where the only things we click through are links to where to get more source code.
I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!
I don't think you know what the word "capitalist" means.
Or else maybe you can explain exactly how those multimillionaireI would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!s and billionaires who gave us non-profit organizations like the Ford Foundation, art museums, universities, from which they profited not a dime and yet which were great ideas, were "anti-capitalist".
Maybe this will help enlighten you: the free market, capitalism, etc., revolve around the idea of self-interest motivating people.
The definition of "self" and "interest" varies from person to person. It cannot be legislated, planned, or even reliably discerned for even one individual. Given a few billion individuals, some trends emerge that can be modestly-well predicted, but still not reliably.
Some of us choose to identify with "self" those who have banged their heads against the wall too many times trying to coax proprietary software into doing the right thing when we knew we could fix it easily if only we had the source.
And some of us choose to identify with "interest" those who enjoy sharing what we've learned without first figuring out exactly who and under what circumstances each person should be allowed to share in our experience.
That these choices offend you is plain.
But they are our choices, and short of threatening violence (that is, proposing legislation to restrict us and/or our customers), you really can't do much about our making them as we see fit.
"Why should you keep reaping the rewards of one occurance over and over?"
Why SHOULDN'T I? Authors do, musicians do, inventors do, scientists do, anyone who produces IP does!
But are you missing the point here? Your original post said:
The open source model does not work for the vast majority of those involved
Do the math...how can that possibly be true if there is anywhere near the same ratio between populations of software producers and software users as between authors and readers, inventors and users, scientists and...well, how do scientists protect their IP when they publish their results anyway?
Answer: it can't. In fact, at least a majority, and probably a vast majority, of "those involved" with OSS find it to be quite successful: they use OSS and are happy with it. Some of them successfully create, modify, and/or redistribute it, under a variety of business models, which is the main focus of your arguments, but either they're a tiny minority or OSS is the most successful single concept in the history of mankind (which I don't think is the case), given how many people and organizations are involved with OSS simply by using it.
So you've made the same case, as of 1999, that
people were making on gnu.misc.discuss years earlier, that Open Source Is Bad because it reduces the artificial scarcity upon which a comparatively small number of people and businesses depend.
What's the point? I mean, do you just stop using OSS, yourself? Probably not...after all, even Microsoft both uses and distributes GPL'ed software (the sine qua non of OSS;-), so why shouldn't you?
So maybe you don't write OSS yourself. So what? What are you going to do about those of us who have done, are doing, and continue to do so?
After all, we have an audience -- not only the small number of software distributors willing to redistribute our GPL'ed software (as MS does with my own g77, or did last I checked), but the vast audience of customers who have no positive financial interest in having the software they acquire from outside vendors come with restrictive licenses.
In other words, the end users ultimately will make the choice, as is hopefully the case in any free market. (Again, all points made on gnu.misc.discuss back in the mid-90s, at least by me.)
And since people like myself, who have had success writing both OSS and CSS, learned how much more quickly our consulting rate$ went up after our OSS projects became recognized successes, we're not about to bow down to your statement from On High that OSS is somehow "bad".
Your most viable means for shutting down the OSS community is, therefore, convincing lawmakers to legislate away the free market for software so that end users of software don't have the choice of acquiring, developing, or distributing OSS.
Do you see your paper as laying the groundwork for such an effort?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm curious, then: where do you get the patches you apply to close the vulnerabilities of which you are not aware?
You mean, like Microsoft? (They've been distributing modified GPL software for a few years now. "Interix", I think it's called, was the company they bought up that was doing that, and they continued to do it -- distribute modified GPL software -- long after they bought up Interix. They might still be doing it now; haven't checked for awhile.)
Okay, but my qmail installation is circa June 2001, about two years old. I haven't had to keep mucking with it to keep it from being vulnerable; It Just Works. And updating the configuration to handle my third domain name, instead of leaving it to a redirecter and/or my old dialup ISP, was trivial and didn't in any way make it more vulnerable.
So, of all the links you posted, only one pertained to anything that could be called a "vulnerability" in qmail; that post was six years old; the other links pertained either to other products or to vulnerabilities inherent in the technology; and even that one vulnerability could, AFAIK, not be exploited in the sense one might think (it was not a security vulnerability, didn't break down the walls between different users' emails, etc.).
In the future, be careful to avoid "equivalence via terminology". In this case, just because qmail could be said to have once had a "vulnerability" and Exchange can be said to have a "vulnerability" does not mean both products are equivalent from the point of view of vulnerabilities.
qmail, unlike most any other email software, was designed from the ground up to be inherently invulnerable to common security problems, by someone who has demonstrated a track record of knowing what he's doing under such circumstances. Its source code is fully available for peer review, and it is so small and compartmentalized that vulnerabilities, should they exist, are much easier to spot.
(In fact, the one vulnerability you pointed to was found not by it being exposed in the field, but by someone studying the source code. We can all give that a whirl when it comes to qmail, GNU software, the Linux and *BSD kernels; how many of us can try that with Exchange, Outlook, and so on?)
Personally, I haven't mucked around with sysadmin/netadmin tasks for awhile now and am just getting back into it, so I've been renewing my acquaintance with qmail, learning djbdns, so I've rediscovered the joys of being able to grok a technology (such as DNS) not by reading a book (O'Reilly's "DNS and BIND" left me totally confused years ago, though I find O'Reilly books usually work well for me), but by reading the docs and studying the architecture for a well-designed piece of software that implements it -- djbdns in this case, which I expect I'll be deploying soon.
And the fourth item points to two programs (one in C, one in Perl) that supposedly would cause my server to run out of memory by sending very long SMTP commands to my qmail-smtpd server.
I ran both programs. In both cases, my qmail-smtpd server quickly aborted the connection with status 256, according to tcpserver, and the respective programs exited at about the same time.
Even if qmail-smtpd could be exploited to the point where it consumes all available memory, I suppose that'd apply to only that one instance of qmail-smtpd (i.e. that one connection), since a new instance is spawned for each incoming SMTP connection by tcpserver (if I have my facts right). So one could limit the amount of memory consumed by qmail-smtpd processes, using native OS facilities, so that any one process can't bring down the entire machine, which is what the exploit claims happens. (Absent adequate OS control over maximum run-time allocation of heap and stack memory, one could simply rewrite programs such as qmail-smtpd in ANSI FORTRAN 77, a language which allows an implementation to guarantee no run-time allocation of memory beyond the initial program image.)
But maybe the reason qmail-smtpd works for me is that I'm using the latest, greatest version of qmail -- version 1.03 -- which came out only recently. But I don't know when "recently" is, nor do I know whether or when qmail-smtpd might have been fixed to avoid the exploit described above.
However, since the email describing the exploit you identify was written in 1997, it's not what I would call "breaking news" in terms of qmail security concerns.
If you really do know of any security flaws in qmail, by all means identify them -- I'd like to look into closing them, since I run qmail on my server, which serves three domains of mine, two of which I actually use (haven't deployed the third yet).
No; the planes brought the engineers up, i.e. it levitated them. Gravity would come into the picture only if there were serious Y2K bugs in the aircraft's computers.
See if you can find out whether the Christian Science Monitor makes money, loses money, or breaks even, and, if it loses money, where its funding comes from.
You might try starting at their web site, csmonitor.com , looking for information on their financials.
And good luck. I haven't tried hard, but couldn't find any information on the Monitor's source of funding -- but and and I'm under the impression that it's long been in the red, and that the Christian Science Board of Directors essentially keeps it afloat via contributions from members and supporters of the church. (I believe there is a fund specifically for the Monitor as well, but I don't know whether all support the Board provides to the Monitor come from that fund.)
Note that support of the Monitor would include not only the cash to run the operation, but the value of space leased by the Monitor, including some fairly prime space in the Christian Science Publishing House in Boston, as well as market values of relevant trademarks (such as the name of the paper).
As someone who was raised in Christian Science and has many friends in the church, I've tended to find this situation generally acceptable.
However, given the Monitor Editors' strong stance in favor of Campaign Finance Reform (CFR), including the provisions recently found to be unconstitutional, which they base on the premise that if party A funds party B, party B is inevitably compromised...
For example, the Monitor Editors once essentially claimed that since George W. Bush's 2000 campaign was partly financed by automakers, he had no independent, valid reason (such as his favoring free-market solutions) to resist raising the (CAFE?) standards for fuel efficiency in cars.
To me, how Mr. Bush would feel his hands were tied by an earlier, non-recurring contribution was not made immediately clear by the Monitor, nor have I seen any explanation how their apparent dependence (for their salaries, among other things) on recurring funding by a church does not render them susceptible to influence by that church.
One could, of course, compare the stance of Monitor editorials over, say, the last ten years to that of church publications (the CS Journal and Sentinel) to gauge the extent of agreement on various political issues (abortion rights, gun control, global warming, income redistribution, smaller vs. larger government, and so on).
Having kept some track of this over the past few years, I've come to my own tentative conclusions, but won't shoot from the hip just to score points, which is what the Monitor seems to have done a few times with regard to issues such as CFR.
In any case, I'd love to see issues like this addressed on the Monitor's web site.
Regardless of the appearance of hypocrisy here, there is no question the Monitor is widely respected as an important, fairly unbiased source of information, especially on international issues, and is generally independent of the agenda of the church that supports it.
Personally, no matter how much funding the Board directs to the Monitor, given what I do know about the individuals involved, I highly doubt there's any overt, or even covert, attempt at influencing the Monitor's editorial stance, nor its coverage of the news, to favor either Christian Science generally nor the Board's political views.
That does not rule out the possibility of influence via a collection of "like-minded people" finding themselves working together, as editors and
Better yet: What would Brian Boitano do?
Folks, this is a very, very important point for all software developers to understand: that proprietary software doesn't just restrict user freedom, it restricts the freedom of software developers, who create, improve, understand, and fix proprietary code, to take full advantage of their acquaintance with that code.
Yes, that's only part of the equation -- trading freedom for security is not always seen as wise, and in many cases, that'd take the form of trading career and project-choice freedom for job and financial security.
But it's a factor that developers would be wise to take more carefully into account when considering proprietary vs. open-source development.
From my own point of view, having been fully involved on both sides of the fence, there's no question that my involvement with GNU Fortran (g77), a GPL'ed project, did more to enhance my marketability and career freedom than almost any combination of proprietary projects on which I worked during my 20-year-or-so software-development career (which isn't so much over as pending my deciding whether I'm bored enough to find something to do in that field again).
People might say I "got lucky" with g77, and they're partly right. But I addressed a clear, known need using my expertise (such as it was), so luck wasn't exclusively responsible.
And, after all, such "luck" (and the willingness to properly identify and address clear, known needs) is crucial to actually maintain the kind of job and financial security many people seek in the proprietary-software industry.
So while I certainly can't assure anyone that "converting" to OSS development will be a magic bullet for their careers or lives, I can assure them that sticking with developing proprietary software for others because "you can't make money developing OSS" is not the slam-dunk-correct decision many have made it out to be over the years.
But now it's GPL, so these developers have no reason to stick around
Look, it must be true...I've heard it so many times!
With MS, there should be more griping about the need to RTFL (...License).
So, you're saying that being the 42nd President of the United States would be worse than being a porn star?
Hmmm...worth thinking about.
You've got to be kidding...do you really believe that a web server set up accepting arbitrary, anonymous connections from anywhere in the world has no more responsibility in being /.'ed than does a child minding his own business a few blocks away from someone randomly firing a gun??
Is it your claim, then, that the child is merely "advertising, or serving, his presence in meatspace as an invitation to any anonymous incoming material", and therefore the situation is analogous to a web server being /.'ed?
And is it your claim that firing a gun in real life, aka meatspace, is morally equivalent to posting links to web pages in cyberspace? Seems to me the former is designed to kill, while the latter is designed to facilitate communication. Just because the technologies used by the latter can (in meatspace as well as cyberspace) be abused in the direction of violence and death does not mean that facilitating communication is morally equivalent to willfully firing a weapon designed to kill or maim, any more than one can claim that since a gun can be fired in a Morse code pattern it can be classified as merely a "means to facilitate communication".
Please, remember that cyberspace is not meatspace. Just because you can apply the same terminology to scenarios in each space does not mean those scenarios are analogous, especially if the specific terms you're using have nearly completely different meanings and weights in the respective scenarios.
Looked pretty unbiased to me. Maybe you could post a better example? Until then, you seem to have both me and sheldon agreeing on a closed-vs-open-source issue, as seems to be the case here, namely, that your link doesn't point to a biased view of OS security. I doubt we'd agree on much else though....
And rolling tanks into Waco, or sending men with guns to point them in Elian Gonzalez's face, counts as which case, in your opinion?
The difference being that while many Republicans and conservatives are complaining about the comparatively tiny amount of damage John Ashcroft has done since taking office, Democrats and liberals promoted, or at least ignored, Janet Reno (and Bill Clinton), in terms of their culpability in propagating evil, through Reno's nearly-successful bid for the Democrat nomination for governor in Florida.
Not that it's an easy choice, mind you (and there are more than just two choices, after all), but, personally, give me the party that arrests prematurely and possesses some degree of honest self-examination and reflection over the party the rolls in tanks, send in guns, then blames the results on Rush Limbaugh, the "Cuban mob", a lack of adequate gun control (wha??!), or whatever their excuse-du-jour happens to be.
I'm curious -- do you consider the Prophet Muhammad to be a fictional character of the Muslim religion as well?
Never Trust a Sheep!
I'm sorry to hear that. But since I have basically the same impressions of anti-SUV advocates, anti-Iraqi-war advocates, pro-abortion advocates, and so on, I don't doubt you.
That's true, but bear in mind that capitalism is not the same thing as preserving the status quo. The latter could be claimed to be a goal of conservatism, although that term has come to mean something rather different.
A company going bankrupt does not mean capitalism is failing, any more than a company's stock price going down means that it is losing money.
Those are, to both naive capitalists and, sadly, most socialists and liberals, surprising or even incorrect statements. Yet they are entirely correct. What's being measured is not the success of capitalism so much as the general opinion of the marketplace, expressed in terms of where it does and does not invest capital.
So someone telling me "OSS means some companies will go bankrupt that otherwise wouldn't have" doesn't influence me much, since, on the other hand, OSS probably means many more companies will be able to continue operating at lower expenses, or be started up in the first place, since there will be less expense and fewer artificial constraints on their behavior due to the availability of OSS.
Believe me, that's a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of $$$ that proprietary-software companies are able to throw at media to push their message.
For one thing, it'd pretty much legislate the GPL and BSD licenses out of existence, since so much of what drives development of software under those licenses is the prospect of profit.
In any case, that concern, while, to me, far more remote than the ongoing actuality of the US government legislating in ways that raise the bar for OSS developers while leaving it the same (or lower) for CSS companies, is partly why I don't simply rant and rave as a pro-OSS advocate, and choose instead to present my arguments as clearly and succinctly as possible, so I'm less likely to be interpreted as supporting some kind of socialistic-utopian view of software development.
Please rethink that opinion as you formulate it. It really does not make any sense, though maybe my perspective is different, being a very creative person.
From my perspective, there are about a billion different products and services around which I could create a profitable business.
Choosing just the right product and service, thinking in the long term, thinking about how I want to live my life, and deciding to not go the short-term, high-profit route, cannot be said to be anti-capitalist, else everyone would be, unless everyone but me (and maybe a handful of other people) cannot come up with more than a handful of good ideas for businesses their entire lives.
(I don't mean to sound arrogant or anything, because either is a distinct possibility. A friend, years ago, started taking piano lessons, not long after he graciously helped me come up to speed on "classical music" by lending me LPs of Beethoven, etc. We both are passionate about music. One day while talking about his progress as a beginning pianist, I asked whether he'd gotten to the point that he could pick out songs he made up in his head -- something I'd tried, via lessons, to accomplish, but which eluded me and still does to some extent. He said "I don't make up songs in my head". It was totally amazing to me to think that anybody didn't just create new music in their own minds, whether little melodies or full-blown orchestrations. But he was being perfectly honest, and I think he probably does not represent a tiny minority.)
That's wise, and that relates quite strongly to the whole OSS-vs-CSS debate as well.
Specifically, to OSS advocates, the widespread, free circulation of source code is like a vast debate over software design, architecture, implementation, and maintenance.
Another question: /. user "Nocoward", the other person in this debate, essentially claims that creating OSS hurts people who'd otherwise be able to sell CSS because it reduces the artificial scarcity.
Does not his very choice to debate his point of view publically contribute to a decline in the artificial scarcity of opinion on appropriate software development models, for which paid consultants would otherwise be hired to express?
In other words, do technology consultants lose money because corporate types can more easily research the issues, thanks not just to forums like /. but to those who, like Nocoward, express their opinion that developing "free software" is illogical because of the harm it does?
They probably do, just as the widespread availability of free tutorials on Windows, Linux, the Macintosh, and so on, hurts the market for consultants and teachers.
Maybe people like Nocoward should think before they contribute to the free data base of opinion that is /.?
Ditto!
I won't disagree with you there. One of the reasons I haven't been a particularly active "defender" of OSS over the past few years is that I got tired of seeing OSS advocacy hijacked, or used as a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing cloak, for anti-capitalist advocacy.
It's that sort of advocacy to which you are, presumably, actually responding in your response to my post -- I doubt you'll find any such advocacy in what I actually wrote.
What I was focusing on was your statement that a person, like myself, choosing to work on OSS as a labor of love rather than for profit was somehow being "anti-capitalist". Such a statement betrays a lack of understanding of what capitalism actually is.
In particular, it is not the constant, continual creation and maintenance of artificial scarcity; rather, a means by which real scarcity can be better managed by a population is what capitalism provides (or is claimed to provide).
Certainly, capitalism isn't the denial of freedom of individuals to choose to distribute goods and services (e.g. software they write) only under circumstances from which they'll personally profit, either.
Apologies if I didn't manage to make that last part sufficiently clear in the first place.
More sociopolitically, here is a quick-and-dirty summary of my views and interests regarding OSS vs. CSS:
OSS advocates include those who believe communism and socialism -- pro-government institutions responsible for the murders of nearly 100 million people in the 20th Century alone -- represent humanity's path to enlightenment, and they see OSS as a "proof" that freely sharing goods and services can be the basis of an enlightened society.
So when those particular advocates promote OSS and counter anti-OSS propaganda, they tend to resort to arguments about the "greater social good" based on anti-capitalist, anti-corporate mythology -- the sort of mythology that is taught in Western colleges, which view any minor ethical violation by a corporation as indicative of the whole, while overlooking mass-murder done under the guise of socialism, communism, etc. (You'll recognize the type of person who holds this view; they were far more upset by what Enron did than by what Janet Reno did.)
OSS advocates like myself, however, look at the situation quite differently. We see OSS as a proof of the belief that, even in a theoretically "pure" capitalist society -- the sort of society pushed by certain strains of libertarianism, for example -- people who are free to act in their own self-interest can, and in some cases will, actually act for the "good of the whole" because they see their "selves" as including not only the present population, but generations to come.
We are more aware of, and grateful for, the positive contributions to society made by capitalists, corporations, and other free private entities, even the much-hated "robber barons" who, unlike most wealthy socialists, left us with museums and other great public works.
And since OSS is largely an underground phenomenon -- not one outlined by any national or state government, rather, by a small group of individuals (including RMS) who, regardless of their views on these sociopolitical issues, were able to participate in creating OSS projects like GNU largely because of their valued participation in the free market -- we see OSS as justifying not more governmental interference in the free market (which is advocated not only by socialists but by anti-free-market corporations such as Microsoft), but less.
There is hardly a perfect record here, since, as pro-capitalist-yet-anti-OSS people often point out, a not-insubstantial portion of OSS development is done by students at university, sometimes funded by government in some form or another (e.g. Linus Torvalds).
But, on the whole, OSS is, to me, persuasive evidence that the role of government, throughout the world, in governing the daily economic choices of mankind, should be scaled back, so as to allow more people more freedom and more choice to live their lives as they see fit, allowing for more opportunity for them to freely contribute to society however they can, by writing OSS, by volunteering in their community, by spending more time with and raising their children, and so on.
So when anti-OSS people claim OSS development is anti-capitalist, we'll occasionally pipe up and denounce such claims.
But that denunciation emphatically does not constitute a claim that people wishing to profit from writing software are anti-capitalist!
Finally, an interesting aspect to the CSS-vs-OSS debate is the fact that, as I pointed out in another comment, CSS development tends to be pointed towards large, monolithic, opaque systems, while OSS development favors small, dispersed, transparent systems consisting of small components interconnected via well-defined interfaces.
That actually describes the difference between central government a la socialism and decentralized, citizen-based government a la theoretical democratic republics such as the USA circa the early 1800's.
Since the issues boil down, in both contrasts, to the same -- specifically, the fundamental need to manage complexity -- pro-freedom OSS advocates take special note of OSS successes, such as qmail, that embody the very spirit of open, transparent, simplicity, as compared to closed, opaque, complexity, in a product such as MS Exchange Server.
In short: if CSS a la Microsoft succeeds in defeating OSS a la GNU/Linux, regardless of how it does so (by legislation or by constantly making superior products), that will serve as a very persuasive argument that, just as a highly complex software system is best developed by a highly centralized organization that keeps its methods secret, so would a highly complex economic system, like the human race, be best served by a highly centralized world government that keeps much of its internal workings secret.
Therefore, anyone who really believes that people writing OSS for no profit are doing injury to others because they are failing to support the artificial scarcity of software will find themselves hard-pressed to explain why the same cannot be said for individual self-government, to wit:
As a simple example: the very real scarcity that a highly complicated US tax code creates, in terms of resources expended to not only deal with it as taxpayers but to create and maintain it as lawmakers and enforce it as IRS agents and the federal judiciary, could be easily mitigated by, e.g., a Presidential executive order that the income tax would henceforth be x% on income above $Y per year, no exemptions, no exceptions.
In contrast to the great freeing of real resources such a decree would offer, there'd be some serious damage done to the comparatively small industry that serves to mitigate somewhat the artificial scarcity the complex tax code creates -- scarcity in the form of people sufficiently knowledgeable to navigate the code, willing to tackle it as a lawmaker, willing to enforce it, etc., and artificial in the sense that it's imposed exclusively as a result of human whim, not as the result of anything found in nature.
How do you think those who object to OSS development on the artificial-scarcity basis would view such a Presidential decree? As anti-capitalist, because while it would free up maybe trillions of dollars in capital over a period of years, a comparative minority would see its precious artificial scarcity dry up?
That's essentially the issue with OSS. CSS largely depends on a government-sanctioned artificial scarcity (software patents and copyright on software; note that copyright was not originally intended for functional expressions, rather artistic ones), one that is government-enforced as well.
And OSS, unlike a Presidential decree, exists not as a legal instrument of force, but merely swims alongside CSS in the same legal and ethical environment, offering a vast sea of users fewer legal and ethical impediments to their using OSS vs. CSS -- not to mention the monetary advantages that can be gained.
So, no, this is not just about "evil corporations", and OSS advocates who claim it is are doing the whole debate a disservice, in my opinion.
However, it's still incorrect. The vast majority of those involved in the production of software work on software that is never distributed outside the organization that employs them.
To them, OSS doesn't "work" in the same sense proprietary software doesn't -- it's simply a non-issue, or nearly so.
So your statement must be refined yet further to have any hope of being correct:
I doubt that's correct either. Certainly I won't trust your assertions; you don't seem to be able to do math well. ;-)
Funny, I get the exact opposite impression: users of OSS tell me how happy they are to, e.g. not be locked into proprietary data formats, be able to hire whomever they want to fix bugs, and so on.
Meanwhile, when users of CSS ask me for help, it oftens ends up being problems relating directly to the whole attitude of CSS distributors.
E.g. my wife could't pull up one of my web pages (which I created specifically for her to print off, since I don't happen to have a printer myself) using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, because it apparently gratuitously decided she wasn't "allowed" to read it because the directory containing it (on my GNU/Linux system running Apache) was protected against reading it.
Note carefully that IE did successfully read the page -- Apache's server logs confirmed it -- but IE decided to pretend it couldn't.
After fighting with it off and on for a day or so, she got it to work somehow (forget how), at which point she could see the document I wanted her to print, but IE, in its infinite wisdom, decided to not let her edit it before printing!
That's right, MS decided IE should act not in her best interests as a user of the software, but in someone else's best interests (ultimately Microsoft's, but for the moment supposedly the web-site owner's, i.e. mine, even though I gave explicit permission via my server setup for her to retrieve the page)!
So she couldn't copy and paste text from the page she was staring at because MS, as is often the case with CSS, was acting not in her best interests, but in someone else's. She had to retype it from scratch (there wasn't much), and then had to futz around and finally reboot her machine to delete her local copy of my web pages.
Another friend had me over to help figure out why Encarta (another CSS MS product) wouldn't let him print a picture of a whale, but would let him print a picture of something else. Turned out MS decided to not let him do something that might conceivably contribute to a copyright violation, even though he was perfectly within his rights to do so.
And how many complaints have you seen or heard about copy-protection systems breaking down, or license-agreement-click-throughs not making sense, for OSS software?
This is the mind-set behind CSS, and the OSS world simply doesn't even go there, because it is written (sometimes badly, I admit) with the best interests of the user in mind.
Further, CSS developers naturally (as can be confirmed by reading other anti-OSS posts in this thread) tend to develop overly-monolithic, complex applications precisely because those can't be as easily cloned by competitors (OSS or otherwise), leading to buggier software.
(Compare MS's Exchange server history, in terms of reliability, speed of recovery due to viruses, and sane design to, e.g., qmail, which is practically OSS due to DJB's views on licensing.)
I'm not saying there aren't cases of OSS users switching back to CSS software -- I'm sure there are -- just that I don't see much of that going on compared to those switching in the opposite direction.
And aren't you grateful to know you can make $$$ hiring yourself as a consultant and explaining how companies can do so much better for themselves getting off the cheap and free Linux upgrade bandwagon and back onto the reliable, safe, and comfy MS Windows platform?
Hmm, thought you covered that case with "inventors" already.
Anyway, your point isn't clear to me, since software developers also use patents as well as copyrights -- theirs is one of the few businesses that make widespread use of both, I believe.
Heck, the GPL totally depends on copyright for its success as an OSS license.
So the "OSS model" is hardly against copyrights, though there is strong sentiment among many of its adherents against software patents -- a statement that holds true for many CSS vendors as well, given the minefield they're becoming.
And the existence of OSS is no more of an artificial-scarcity-deadening phenomenon in the software world than is the existence of massive amounts of beautiful, well-known, public domain music and well-written books in the art world, or the existence of widely distributed, highly respected scientific journals in the world of invention.
In fact, one could argue that OSS serves an especially useful purpose in creating a practical, useful sort of "history" for the computing world that didn't exist, but which can serve the same purpose for it as centuries-old music, books, and scientific research serve for the relevant communities.
From that point of view, the existence of GCC might be to a software developer as the existence of Handel's Messiah is to a contemporary rock musician or the existence of Einstein's theories to a contemporary inventor: something from which to draw inspiration, perhaps to borrow from, or to experiment with. All of which is perfectly legal for most developers of software, who aren't worrying about distribution-rights issues, and for whom CSS is almost always useless, since it doesn't come with viewable, or usable, source code.
Exactly how is that "not good", or "not successful for the vast majority of" any group?
First, I didn't make any such assumption -- I said that was your most viable alternative.Second, almost everyone starting out what culminates in a campaign of evil (such as Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot) makes statements much like yours -- "I just want to inject some rational thought"; "I want all [people] to think about"; "[the OSS world is illogical]".
Third, as can be confirmed by looking at, e.g. President Bush's imposing high tariffs on steel, government is almost trivially convinced to legislate away freedom and economy to earn political points with a comparative minority -- one that starts the process by writing tomes such as yours.
So, while I'm not worried about you, specifically, there's no denying that a) people who think like you do are "out to get me", in the sense that they want to shut down my ability to either create, or practically distribute, OSS, and b) you're helping them make their case.
Now that you've been informed of the latter, you have no excuse should worse come to worse.
It's time to leave the Dark Side, and come into the Light, where the only things we click through are links to where to get more source code.
I don't think you know what the word "capitalist" means.
Or else maybe you can explain exactly how those multimillionaireI would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!I would be INSANE not to try to profit for it! It's downright anti-capitalist not to!s and billionaires who gave us non-profit organizations like the Ford Foundation, art museums, universities, from which they profited not a dime and yet which were great ideas, were "anti-capitalist".
Maybe this will help enlighten you: the free market, capitalism, etc., revolve around the idea of self-interest motivating people.
The definition of "self" and "interest" varies from person to person. It cannot be legislated, planned, or even reliably discerned for even one individual. Given a few billion individuals, some trends emerge that can be modestly-well predicted, but still not reliably.
Some of us choose to identify with "self" those who have banged their heads against the wall too many times trying to coax proprietary software into doing the right thing when we knew we could fix it easily if only we had the source.
And some of us choose to identify with "interest" those who enjoy sharing what we've learned without first figuring out exactly who and under what circumstances each person should be allowed to share in our experience.
That these choices offend you is plain.
But they are our choices, and short of threatening violence (that is, proposing legislation to restrict us and/or our customers), you really can't do much about our making them as we see fit.
Do the math...how can that possibly be true if there is anywhere near the same ratio between populations of software producers and software users as between authors and readers, inventors and users, scientists and...well, how do scientists protect their IP when they publish their results anyway?
Answer: it can't. In fact, at least a majority, and probably a vast majority, of "those involved" with OSS find it to be quite successful: they use OSS and are happy with it. Some of them successfully create, modify, and/or redistribute it, under a variety of business models, which is the main focus of your arguments, but either they're a tiny minority or OSS is the most successful single concept in the history of mankind (which I don't think is the case), given how many people and organizations are involved with OSS simply by using it.
So you've made the same case, as of 1999, that people were making on gnu.misc.discuss years earlier, that Open Source Is Bad because it reduces the artificial scarcity upon which a comparatively small number of people and businesses depend.
What's the point? I mean, do you just stop using OSS, yourself? Probably not...after all, even Microsoft both uses and distributes GPL'ed software (the sine qua non of OSS ;-), so why shouldn't you?
So maybe you don't write OSS yourself. So what? What are you going to do about those of us who have done, are doing, and continue to do so?
After all, we have an audience -- not only the small number of software distributors willing to redistribute our GPL'ed software (as MS does with my own g77, or did last I checked), but the vast audience of customers who have no positive financial interest in having the software they acquire from outside vendors come with restrictive licenses.
In other words, the end users ultimately will make the choice, as is hopefully the case in any free market. (Again, all points made on gnu.misc.discuss back in the mid-90s, at least by me.)
And since people like myself, who have had success writing both OSS and CSS, learned how much more quickly our consulting rate$ went up after our OSS projects became recognized successes, we're not about to bow down to your statement from On High that OSS is somehow "bad".
Your most viable means for shutting down the OSS community is, therefore, convincing lawmakers to legislate away the free market for software so that end users of software don't have the choice of acquiring, developing, or distributing OSS.
Do you see your paper as laying the groundwork for such an effort?
I dunno; sing a few verses of "Old MAC Hacker" ("Old MAC hacker had an '8, EAE IO...") and you've evened the odds, I'd say....
What the heck kinda language is "pretty basic"?
Oh come on, everybody knows that if you want help with your computer, you gotta ask a man!
Hmm, if they'd committed to doing things the other way 'round early enough, would we be discussing all this stuff on seecolon.org ?