I have reason to suspect that Microsoft is toning down a bit. They've gone from describing Free Software as a cancer to being "pac-man-like".
~^~~^~^^~~^
Re:I'm tired of the argument
on
Star In A Jar
·
· Score: 1
Funny, I never said Einstien was Orthodox. You should have gotten that I didn't think he was from my posts if not just the article that I referenced.
I'm sorry if I mistook you for an atheist. I've just found that atheists are the only ones that try to claim ol' Albert didn't belive in God (which is as far from the truth as saying he was an Orthodox Jew).
~^~~^~^^~~^
Re:I'm tired of the argument
on
Star In A Jar
·
· Score: 1
man, not only is it like shooting fish in a barrel but you even give me the ammunition. Maybe becuase you make it so easy I can't resist.
1) -the refutation: Whose viewpoint is he an atheist?
- the counter point: From your own post...
"You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."
That leaves it pretty clear. How in your cool intelectual atheism did you ever miss that?
2) You seem pretty wound up about it still.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Re:I'm tired of the argument
on
Star In A Jar
·
· Score: 2
Thats essentialy what I'm saying. I've concluded that Einstein had an intelectual curiosity about God (and found what he was looking for) but didn't have a need for redemption. He was against such a personal notion. At least thats how I take it.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Re:I'm tired of the argument
on
Star In A Jar
·
· Score: 1
So what exactly is the problem here?
Arguing Einstein as an athiest is like arguing if Golf is a sport or not. Every one has a different definition of what a sport is. At least you accept this when you say "...by the teachings of the religions he was claimed to hold, makes him an atheist" It holds that he is an atheist only relative to others definitions.
However if you define an atheist as someone who believes there is no grand shaper/intelligence then as you even quote Einstein calls himself an agnostic and would prefer that designation.
The problem is that he clearly and self admitedly spent his life in his own persuit to find out for himself who God is and what God is. That would warrant Atheists to say that he is not Atheist. But hey, bend the rules a little bit, it looks too good having him in the Atheistic corner.
The poster you are responding to correclty points out that you need to have faith that there is intelligence there before you look for it. Its funny how we look now for randomness since the early 20th century.
Don't get hung up on the Orthodoxy part, the article explains that well enough. It seemed more relevant than the worn out atheistic churning I see anytime someone mentions Einstein's religious beliefs.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Re:Anti-progress vs. anti-culture
on
Star In A Jar
·
· Score: 1
On a simular note, I heard once that Germany was named after the Roman General who couldn't conquer it. Wait thats not true at all becuase it is called Duetchland(sp). Wait, no thats not right either because we are talking about a country that conquered its neighbors all the way until WWII on the right that it was the self appointed capitol of the Holy Roman Empire. What strangeness is this?
More to the point, The Arabians were very good at astronomy, but so was Egypt thousands of years before as well as China and others contemporary to Aristotle if not before. (e.g. I heard that China could predict the occurance of Haley's commet in the B.C. era. Yet, and this is what ties in the stuff on top its named after Haley.)
So he is right, we owe much to the Arabians. One could also argue that although the greeks were polytheistic they believed that the world was created with intelligence and purpose.
Eh, enough spouting. I'm just bored anyway.
~^~~^~^^~~^
I'm tired of the argument
on
Star In A Jar
·
· Score: 1
Enough dispersely one-line quotes from me and I would even be called an atheist. Its evident that Einstein believed in an intelligence behind the universe and its construct. In a half-empty half-full debate one could sat that it was enough God for him, or that it *was* God for him. But not that there was no God.
This will explain that Eisteing jew connection a bit better, I think.
1) Microsoft does use Open Source yet they call it a cancer.
explanation: Misunderstanding of what Open Source defines, however it is the same misunderstanding that most people have. Thank ESR. But even from RMS's comments one isn't too sure if Open Source is a subset of Free Software, or vice versa.
2) Microsoft get their message out riding on Open Source waves.
caveat: Open Source gets their message out riding on Microsoft's waves. This is a classic brawl that attracts much publicity and media for both sides. As with most debates, not one will win with a sound bite. Nor will anyone be able to trump with the name calling and self aggrandizing that goes on with Slashdot. In fact, it most likely going to be a cool, corporate version of a political debate. Plenty of light hearted laughter mingled with frontal assaults and slippery linguistic undermining.
3) Microsoft has a good point about the GPL.
explanation: A truely cunning "good point" is agreed to by both sides, yet interpreted very different by both sides. Their good point is one of those, and I'll go further in depth.
"Using Open Source will make you have to release all your Intelectual property," they say. "Good point" some say, because to them use means "use the code". However on the other side, they see Open Source portrayed licking its perverbial lips, with a napkin around their neck and a fork and knife in both hands like Wile E. Coyote watching the road runner pass by. Use means the same thing as "Using Microsoft Office 2000, a tutorial for dummies" And this restriction is obsurd and unfair. This brings us to the last point of Irony...
4) Microsoft wants freedom, the GPL is too restrictive.
caveat: Freedom is gained through sharing or by taking it from others. In some metaphysical sence, one can twist freedom to mean the right to restrict others freedom. After all, freedom means ability to act, and that is an action. But as a recurcive programer knows, you don't survive long when you refer to yourself by destroying yourself.
Conclusion:
Now Microsoft has been guilty of many things in the past. So far their battles have been corporate, and we all know that in such a dogfight we expect to see some bloody combat. Some may even excuse them of their crimes for the nature of the conflict, their enemies were no more ethical than they were. But now they are picking on something more rooted in the freedoms that we desire for ourselves. The freedom to create our own lifestyle and the pursuit of our own happiness.
They looked like they would do this for years, and now they are. And those who haven't learned the meaning of their freedom or its value will be like the one guy in the Matrix, seduced back to a world where freedom is a piece of wool being pulled over their eyes.
So, no they do not have a good point, not through Open Source or other eyes.
Note that I'm not citing recenter versions! It's pretty widely accepted that there's been little for Adobe to DO anymore to the program..
I only post on this crap becuase someone might read it and believe it. So often a lack of useability and features is heralded by some idiot on slashdot, and every time I actualy have personal experience with the product they are refering to I see past the smoke screen of strong opinion. This is one of those occasions.
Photoshop has gained useability in plenty of important areas. The selection tools are a many magnitude better than in version 3 or 4. The quality of filters, along with the application of masks and quality of alpha channeling makes the recent versions a must for people who need to get work done very fast.
Leanness on its own is *not* a competative advantage when it comes to these tools. Speed is, but its measured in useability as well as processing speed. Lean code is cool but as the Apache project puts it, "do it right first, then fast."
I would say that the GIMP needs to evolve a NATIVE Aqua version, or even a Cocoa version.
I'm calling this bluff. Fork the code or just use the advantageous API's where they can be? Which parts of the API would you like to incorporate first?
No, we go to great lengths to translate that language into language the machine reads and understands. Those get 'run'. Programs get written and read and understood by humans. It is their main purpose.
(Further down the path... on a related note and also mentioned in the argument)
Recipies are made for baking cakes? No, ingredients are. Recipies are made for humans to understand and use. Did the recipe tell my arm to add a cup of sugar? No my brain did.
(Back again, and on the mighty "might")
I suppose one might run the program by hand. They might automate a computer to do so. Their argument (as I gather) is that automation or personal execution does not add a non-speach element to expressing the instructions (or in this case expressing a reference to them). Their reasoning did continue along those lines. Whether they argue it successfuly or not is another thing.
Get this, I get paid putting together components of Microsoft products. The company I work for has been doing it for years. Nothing we do is even worthy of being copyrighted, but becuase we know how to make it work for them we get money to develop it. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a contract.
There are many companies that do this on a daily basis. Its a billion dollar industry. Is this what you say is working for free? No, its the smart "give them everything that doesn't cost you money" buisness philosophy that makes people rich all the time. And the GPL is making coding cost as little money as possible for the best product to sell people. Thats is specificaly the buisness reason why I'd rather use GPL than MS products that I do use**. Who wouldn't be in on it?
**(Btw, there is nothing we do that we couldn't do with OSS or FSS, its just takes time to create mind-share and trust.)
Where you say 'giving away' we say 'letting other people help you with, and letting others gain from for their help'.
This is in opposition to the lock-down, force fead buisness model that is very fragile and in the end hurts customers and sends companies *especialy game companies* into bankrupcy almost assuredly when there products obsoless, or a bigger company produces a competing knockoff and beats you down in marketing.
On the other end, the imposed barriers of entry that are meant to hedge people into your corner only stifle innovation and produce a nation of (easily beaten back) couch potatoes.
FlightGear is really good, the terrain mapping is excelent, and haze and clouds are looking great. You even see the correct positions of Stars and phase of the moon. They are going for FAA approval, adding support for map overlay and are network multiplayable. All they need is someone to add weapons for a combat simulator.
Search and Rescue is pretty good also as a helicopter game, but I wish it used more of the FlightGear world generation engine.
So open source the technology but protect artwork/game specifics.
Exactly! However, the GPL is about the protection of artwork/specifics even more so than BSD. In fact the only difference in BSD and GPL in this case would be a company that wants to improve the engine but not repay the people that brought them the engine in the first place?
If by protecting, you mean protecting your right to impose a "pay or don't play; here-today, where is the revenue in two years when your game is obsolete kind of buisness model" you can still do that on a LGPL'ed game engine. You're even encouraged to do so. How much money does a FlightGear distro CD cost again?
Sorry, your oversight was obvious to most and like shooting fish in a barrel but its a common misconception. Its communicating it effectively and succinctly that the community needs to work on. I'm practicing how to explain this kind of thing to my boss so I thought I'd try on you first. Please answer the following questions on a scale of 1-5, one being very poor and 5 being very well.
1) How well did you understand that the GPL protects rather than harms?
2) How well did you understand that BSD is a very generous liscence and is gets along very happily with the GPL (and vice versa) even though Mundie pitches conflict among them.
As a friendly aside, your all over the map, flyboy. But then my spelling and grammer isn't pretty. Here's an effort to interpolate a point from your post and respond to it. If I missed, feel free to let me know.
1 and 2) Cygnus had revenue from supporting gcc and other tools they bundled with gcc, but they made their money from gcc none the less. Where you have them pointed in different directions, this is the same as O'Reilley and RedHat.
Many suggest this kind of model for OpenSource gaming where the engine is free and the artwork/etc you own. This is all perfectly acceptible in the Open Source way for all but the most greedy communists. Everyone wins, and so do individuals who acctualy innovate and contribute technicaly rather than politicaly.
3) You missed that Mandrake and at least 10 other distros makes money off of repackaging RedHat. Individualy and accumulatively their support to the community is larger than you estimate. They are large and powerful without losing their agility and ability to innovate. Thats how they've caught up on Microsoft so fast, so soon. It may or may not be superior but it is definately competitive.
4) Even moreso than simple support extensions, the contribution of making technology accessible to people is a valuable commodity. I'd pay money to save hours of work (that they did) to figure out how to work something. People pay me to save them time in a simular fashion. This buisness model feeds on the instantaneous increase of efficiency at the moment increases. Since there is a lot of inefficiency out there to trim, this model will survive for a long, long time.
RMS probably does hate O'Reilly for being a parasite. The beuty of open source is that we are more intelligent collectively than individualy. MS's buisness model is even moreso dependent on them individualy being the smartest, which is why I don't have faith in MS's monopoly or stock for the next 20 years.
LWN.net has a list of companies that are successful with open source, meaning profitable on this weeks front page.
"Sleepycat Software has been doing nicely with the Berkeley DB for years.
Digital Creations has built a solid business on Zope, and was briefly profitable before taking a new investment and launching into another expansion phase.
Prosa srl was doing well before its acquisition by Linuxcare, and is now reborn from the ashes of that mess.
Cygnus Software was an open source company way back before most people had heard of free software, and did very well.
Red Hat, which bought Cygnus, is closing in on profitability.
Cybersource has been doing well in the support business for years (see this week's Letters to the Editor Page).
It is not much of a stretch to include O'Reilly & Associates on this list.
Let us express our apologies right now to all of the profitable companies that we left out. "
Wow. i wish I could mod that up as most insightful.
True, Slashdot acts like a forum of managers and marketers more than a forum of hackers and coders. And bad ones at that. Collectively in my opinion their ideas would in general alienate more than anialate, oppress more than impress, and stifle more than rifle (another way of saying disable rather than enable.)
In general, it shows them as being the very beasts they proport to fight (in an Animal Farm kind of way.) Its a good thing those that really direct the course of Open Source aren't this dumb.
Oh that Slashdot could learn this one lesson, told by one of the smarter people on slashdot...
"[Customers] are used to being catered to, not lectured."
I'm sure you can provide some lawsuit, or other legal maneuver to show precidence to your claim. Otherwise your basing it on conjecture and it doesn't add up.
But like I said here or somewhere else, the most informative piece of information I ever learned on slashdot was from a small post about a year and a half ago. GPL != freedom, its guild socialism. BSD does mean more freedom to do what I want with code but I don't think it makes better software.
As Mr Katz, others on slashdot and many of my libertarian counterparts) fail to understand is that freedom does not mean you can do anything you want. Freedom means more and usualy comes as a direct byproduct of adherance to laws rather than the attempt to ignore them or make them go away.
Example is that you do have the freedom to drive on the wrong side of the road, but you don't have the freedom to say your chevy sprint won't be turned into a pancake by the oncoming semi. Only staying on the right side of the road (while everyone else does also) gives you the freedom to arrive safely at your destination. Restraint here means freedom.
Its not trading one freedom for another either. Freedom only has an accumulative effect. To continue the analogy, some would argue that my example is trading the freedom to drive on the wrong side of the road for the freedom to arrive safely. I say this is obviously false since even after you arrive you have the freedom to be stupid and die. However the person who already was stupid and die doesn't have the freedom to do it again.
WinNT? Even with its lack of games and drivers? Why Adobe products don't cut and paste to the clipboard even on NT.
2000 is a little better.
Win98 with its crash early crash often policy? NO thank you. I like a real pre-emptive, memory protected OS that when one program crashes it won't bring down the whole box. Besides, i like running the same OS on a LART as well as a ALPHA 36 processor supermachine.
Also, as is not brought up enough, WINE brings terminal service to windows programs. Yep, run multiple copies on the server and pipe the X display to your particular computer.
These things help the establishment of Linux as the desktop OS, along with customizability, speed, security and a very considerate and community minded group of developers. (Outside of the posers on slashdot that is.)
The lack of running existing software that people like (really just games and browser stuff now) is the only thing keeping people back. Its unlikely that OS can keep up on that bleeding edge of games and browser coolness anyway. So far it hasn't.
Slashdot Mirror
Only #2 ever gets to see #1. What I want to know where is #6 in all this?
~^~~^~^^~~^
That was a show
TRANZOR- ZEEEEEEE!
definately the ancestor to Voltron, Robotech, and many many more. Anyone remember the pink girl robot's name?
~^~~^~^^~~^
I have reason to suspect that Microsoft is toning down a bit. They've gone from describing Free Software as a cancer to being "pac-man-like".
~^~~^~^^~~^
Funny, I never said Einstien was Orthodox. You should have gotten that I didn't think he was from my posts if not just the article that I referenced.
I'm sorry if I mistook you for an atheist. I've just found that atheists are the only ones that try to claim ol' Albert didn't belive in God (which is as far from the truth as saying he was an Orthodox Jew).
~^~~^~^^~~^
1) -the refutation: Whose viewpoint is he an atheist?
- the counter point: From your own post...
"You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."
That leaves it pretty clear. How in your cool intelectual atheism did you ever miss that?
2) You seem pretty wound up about it still.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Thats essentialy what I'm saying. I've concluded that Einstein had an intelectual curiosity about God (and found what he was looking for) but didn't have a need for redemption. He was against such a personal notion. At least thats how I take it.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Arguing Einstein as an athiest is like arguing if Golf is a sport or not. Every one has a different definition of what a sport is. At least you accept this when you say "...by the teachings of the religions he was claimed to hold, makes him an atheist" It holds that he is an atheist only relative to others definitions. However if you define an atheist as someone who believes there is no grand shaper/intelligence then as you even quote Einstein calls himself an agnostic and would prefer that designation. The problem is that he clearly and self admitedly spent his life in his own persuit to find out for himself who God is and what God is. That would warrant Atheists to say that he is not Atheist. But hey, bend the rules a little bit, it looks too good having him in the Atheistic corner. The poster you are responding to correclty points out that you need to have faith that there is intelligence there before you look for it. Its funny how we look now for randomness since the early 20th century. Don't get hung up on the Orthodoxy part, the article explains that well enough. It seemed more relevant than the worn out atheistic churning I see anytime someone mentions Einstein's religious beliefs.
~^~~^~^^~~^
On a simular note, I heard once that Germany was named after the Roman General who couldn't conquer it. Wait thats not true at all becuase it is called Duetchland(sp). Wait, no thats not right either because we are talking about a country that conquered its neighbors all the way until WWII on the right that it was the self appointed capitol of the Holy Roman Empire. What strangeness is this?
More to the point, The Arabians were very good at astronomy, but so was Egypt thousands of years before as well as China and others contemporary to Aristotle if not before. (e.g. I heard that China could predict the occurance of Haley's commet in the B.C. era. Yet, and this is what ties in the stuff on top its named after Haley.)
So he is right, we owe much to the Arabians. One could also argue that although the greeks were polytheistic they believed that the world was created with intelligence and purpose.
Eh, enough spouting. I'm just bored anyway.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Enough dispersely one-line quotes from me and I would even be called an atheist. Its evident that Einstein believed in an intelligence behind the universe and its construct. In a half-empty half-full debate one could sat that it was enough God for him, or that it *was* God for him. But not that there was no God.
This will explain that Eisteing jew connection a bit better, I think.
~^~~^~^^~~^
heh, Irony list..
1) Microsoft does use Open Source yet they call it a cancer.
explanation: Misunderstanding of what Open Source defines, however it is the same misunderstanding that most people have. Thank ESR. But even from RMS's comments one isn't too sure if Open Source is a subset of Free Software, or vice versa.
2) Microsoft get their message out riding on Open Source waves.
caveat: Open Source gets their message out riding on Microsoft's waves. This is a classic brawl that attracts much publicity and media for both sides. As with most debates, not one will win with a sound bite. Nor will anyone be able to trump with the name calling and self aggrandizing that goes on with Slashdot. In fact, it most likely going to be a cool, corporate version of a political debate. Plenty of light hearted laughter mingled with frontal assaults and slippery linguistic undermining.
3) Microsoft has a good point about the GPL.
explanation: A truely cunning "good point" is agreed to by both sides, yet interpreted very different by both sides. Their good point is one of those, and I'll go further in depth.
"Using Open Source will make you have to release all your Intelectual property," they say. "Good point" some say, because to them use means "use the code". However on the other side, they see Open Source portrayed licking its perverbial lips, with a napkin around their neck and a fork and knife in both hands like Wile E. Coyote watching the road runner pass by. Use means the same thing as "Using Microsoft Office 2000, a tutorial for dummies" And this restriction is obsurd and unfair. This brings us to the last point of Irony...
4) Microsoft wants freedom, the GPL is too restrictive.
caveat: Freedom is gained through sharing or by taking it from others. In some metaphysical sence, one can twist freedom to mean the right to restrict others freedom. After all, freedom means ability to act, and that is an action. But as a recurcive programer knows, you don't survive long when you refer to yourself by destroying yourself.
Conclusion:
Now Microsoft has been guilty of many things in the past. So far their battles have been corporate, and we all know that in such a dogfight we expect to see some bloody combat. Some may even excuse them of their crimes for the nature of the conflict, their enemies were no more ethical than they were. But now they are picking on something more rooted in the freedoms that we desire for ourselves. The freedom to create our own lifestyle and the pursuit of our own happiness.
They looked like they would do this for years, and now they are. And those who haven't learned the meaning of their freedom or its value will be like the one guy in the Matrix, seduced back to a world where freedom is a piece of wool being pulled over their eyes.
So, no they do not have a good point, not through Open Source or other eyes.
~^~~^~^^~~^
I only post on this crap becuase someone might read it and believe it. So often a lack of useability and features is heralded by some idiot on slashdot, and every time I actualy have personal experience with the product they are refering to I see past the smoke screen of strong opinion. This is one of those occasions.
Photoshop has gained useability in plenty of important areas. The selection tools are a many magnitude better than in version 3 or 4. The quality of filters, along with the application of masks and quality of alpha channeling makes the recent versions a must for people who need to get work done very fast.
Leanness on its own is *not* a competative advantage when it comes to these tools. Speed is, but its measured in useability as well as processing speed. Lean code is cool but as the Apache project puts it, "do it right first, then fast."
I would say that the GIMP needs to evolve a NATIVE Aqua version, or even a Cocoa version.
I'm calling this bluff. Fork the code or just use the advantageous API's where they can be? Which parts of the API would you like to incorporate first?
~^~~^~^^~~^
I thought about this a second, follow me.
Does a machine run C code? Does it run Perl Code?
No, we go to great lengths to translate that language into language the machine reads and understands. Those get 'run'. Programs get written and read and understood by humans. It is their main purpose.
(Further down the path... on a related note and also mentioned in the argument)
Recipies are made for baking cakes? No, ingredients are. Recipies are made for humans to understand and use. Did the recipe tell my arm to add a cup of sugar? No my brain did.
(Back again, and on the mighty "might")
I suppose one might run the program by hand. They might automate a computer to do so. Their argument (as I gather) is that automation or personal execution does not add a non-speach element to expressing the instructions (or in this case expressing a reference to them). Their reasoning did continue along those lines. Whether they argue it successfuly or not is another thing.
~^~~^~^^~~^
He was talking to you, are you his CEO?
~^~~^~^^~~^
and your sig is what?
If astro-turf is fake grassroots efforts this is either very poorly done or satiricaly fake astroturf. Its +4 Funny either way!
~^~~^~^^~~^
flightgear.org still works but they are (like everyone else) moving to SourceForge.
flightgear.sourceforge.net
They have good screenshots, a good manual and everything.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Get this, I get paid putting together components of Microsoft products. The company I work for has been doing it for years. Nothing we do is even worthy of being copyrighted, but becuase we know how to make it work for them we get money to develop it. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a contract.
There are many companies that do this on a daily basis. Its a billion dollar industry. Is this what you say is working for free? No, its the smart "give them everything that doesn't cost you money" buisness philosophy that makes people rich all the time. And the GPL is making coding cost as little money as possible for the best product to sell people. Thats is specificaly the buisness reason why I'd rather use GPL than MS products that I do use**. Who wouldn't be in on it?
**(Btw, there is nothing we do that we couldn't do with OSS or FSS, its just takes time to create mind-share and trust.)
~^~~^~^^~~^
Where you say 'giving away' we say 'letting other people help you with, and letting others gain from for their help'.
This is in opposition to the lock-down, force fead buisness model that is very fragile and in the end hurts customers and sends companies *especialy game companies* into bankrupcy almost assuredly when there products obsoless, or a bigger company produces a competing knockoff and beats you down in marketing.
On the other end, the imposed barriers of entry that are meant to hedge people into your corner only stifle innovation and produce a nation of (easily beaten back) couch potatoes.
~^~~^~^^~~^
FlightGear is really good, the terrain mapping is excelent, and haze and clouds are looking great. You even see the correct positions of Stars and phase of the moon. They are going for FAA approval, adding support for map overlay and are network multiplayable. All they need is someone to add weapons for a combat simulator.
Search and Rescue is pretty good also as a helicopter game, but I wish it used more of the FlightGear world generation engine.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Exactly! However, the GPL is about the protection of artwork/specifics even more so than BSD. In fact the only difference in BSD and GPL in this case would be a company that wants to improve the engine but not repay the people that brought them the engine in the first place?
If by protecting, you mean protecting your right to impose a "pay or don't play; here-today, where is the revenue in two years when your game is obsolete kind of buisness model" you can still do that on a LGPL'ed game engine. You're even encouraged to do so. How much money does a FlightGear distro CD cost again?
Sorry, your oversight was obvious to most and like shooting fish in a barrel but its a common misconception. Its communicating it effectively and succinctly that the community needs to work on. I'm practicing how to explain this kind of thing to my boss so I thought I'd try on you first. Please answer the following questions on a scale of 1-5, one being very poor and 5 being very well.
1) How well did you understand that the GPL protects rather than harms?
2) How well did you understand that BSD is a very generous liscence and is gets along very happily with the GPL (and vice versa) even though Mundie pitches conflict among them.
~^~~^~^^~~^
costco has pallet fulls, Best Buy has a plethora, even during christmas Target had them.
~^~~^~^^~~^
As a friendly aside, your all over the map, flyboy. But then my spelling and grammer isn't pretty. Here's an effort to interpolate a point from your post and respond to it. If I missed, feel free to let me know.
1 and 2) Cygnus had revenue from supporting gcc and other tools they bundled with gcc, but they made their money from gcc none the less. Where you have them pointed in different directions, this is the same as O'Reilley and RedHat.
Many suggest this kind of model for OpenSource gaming where the engine is free and the artwork/etc you own. This is all perfectly acceptible in the Open Source way for all but the most greedy communists. Everyone wins, and so do individuals who acctualy innovate and contribute technicaly rather than politicaly.
3) You missed that Mandrake and at least 10 other distros makes money off of repackaging RedHat. Individualy and accumulatively their support to the community is larger than you estimate. They are large and powerful without losing their agility and ability to innovate. Thats how they've caught up on Microsoft so fast, so soon. It may or may not be superior but it is definately competitive.
4) Even moreso than simple support extensions, the contribution of making technology accessible to people is a valuable commodity. I'd pay money to save hours of work (that they did) to figure out how to work something. People pay me to save them time in a simular fashion. This buisness model feeds on the instantaneous increase of efficiency at the moment increases. Since there is a lot of inefficiency out there to trim, this model will survive for a long, long time.
RMS probably does hate O'Reilly for being a parasite. The beuty of open source is that we are more intelligent collectively than individualy. MS's buisness model is even moreso dependent on them individualy being the smartest, which is why I don't have faith in MS's monopoly or stock for the next 20 years.
~^~~^~^^~~^
LWN.net has a list of companies that are successful with open source, meaning profitable on this weeks front page.
"Sleepycat Software has been doing nicely with the Berkeley DB for years.
Digital Creations has built a solid business on Zope, and was briefly profitable before taking a new investment and launching into another expansion phase.
Prosa srl was doing well before its acquisition by Linuxcare, and is now reborn from the ashes of that mess.
Cygnus Software was an open source company way back before most people had heard of free software, and did very well.
Red Hat, which bought Cygnus, is closing in on profitability.
Cybersource has been doing well in the support business for years (see this week's Letters to the Editor Page).
It is not much of a stretch to include O'Reilly & Associates on this list.
Let us express our apologies right now to all of the profitable companies that we left out. "
And yeah, it is like shooting fish in a barrel.
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Wow. i wish I could mod that up as most insightful.
True, Slashdot acts like a forum of managers and marketers more than a forum of hackers and coders. And bad ones at that. Collectively in my opinion their ideas would in general alienate more than anialate, oppress more than impress, and stifle more than rifle (another way of saying disable rather than enable.)
In general, it shows them as being the very beasts they proport to fight (in an Animal Farm kind of way.) Its a good thing those that really direct the course of Open Source aren't this dumb.
Oh that Slashdot could learn this one lesson, told by one of the smarter people on slashdot...
"[Customers] are used to being catered to, not lectured."
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I'm sure you can provide some lawsuit, or other legal maneuver to show precidence to your claim. Otherwise your basing it on conjecture and it doesn't add up.
But like I said here or somewhere else, the most informative piece of information I ever learned on slashdot was from a small post about a year and a half ago. GPL != freedom, its guild socialism. BSD does mean more freedom to do what I want with code but I don't think it makes better software.
As Mr Katz, others on slashdot and many of my libertarian counterparts) fail to understand is that freedom does not mean you can do anything you want. Freedom means more and usualy comes as a direct byproduct of adherance to laws rather than the attempt to ignore them or make them go away.
Example is that you do have the freedom to drive on the wrong side of the road, but you don't have the freedom to say your chevy sprint won't be turned into a pancake by the oncoming semi. Only staying on the right side of the road (while everyone else does also) gives you the freedom to arrive safely at your destination. Restraint here means freedom.
Its not trading one freedom for another either. Freedom only has an accumulative effect. To continue the analogy, some would argue that my example is trading the freedom to drive on the wrong side of the road for the freedom to arrive safely. I say this is obviously false since even after you arrive you have the freedom to be stupid and die. However the person who already was stupid and die doesn't have the freedom to do it again.
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WinNT? Even with its lack of games and drivers? Why Adobe products don't cut and paste to the clipboard even on NT.
2000 is a little better.
Win98 with its crash early crash often policy? NO thank you. I like a real pre-emptive, memory protected OS that when one program crashes it won't bring down the whole box. Besides, i like running the same OS on a LART as well as a ALPHA 36 processor supermachine.
Also, as is not brought up enough, WINE brings terminal service to windows programs. Yep, run multiple copies on the server and pipe the X display to your particular computer.
These things help the establishment of Linux as the desktop OS, along with customizability, speed, security and a very considerate and community minded group of developers. (Outside of the posers on slashdot that is.)
The lack of running existing software that people like (really just games and browser stuff now) is the only thing keeping people back. Its unlikely that OS can keep up on that bleeding edge of games and browser coolness anyway. So far it hasn't.
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