FSF holds the copyright to all it's GPL'ed software, since developers write their own copyrights back to the FSF. But that doesn't mean it's proprietary. The licence is the important part.
What this does mean is that FSF can change the licensing terms on new versions of the software, but they can never change the licence on distributed software.
No, I fear you're misunderstanding a few things. Having had the pleasure of hearing both Richard M. Stallman and Eric S. Raymond (both at my university in the middle of nowhere-land, go figure), I feel somewhat competent to reply to this.
The first thing to understand, in my opinion, is that the Free Software Foundation, which RMS started have never really claimed any inherent superiority of Open Source programs. RMS's beef is with the philosophy. Free Software is morally superior to proprietary software. To put it bluntly, RMS would use free software (as always, note the ideological schism between Free Software and Open Source. Free Software comes with an ethical theory (one I personally think has a lot going for it), whereas Open Source is far more pragmatic.)
Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Even if RMS broke with the proprietary model of software development, he kept the model of software development normally found in computer science. And I don't really see that he had any reason not to. The first version of UNIX was basically made by two people (Thompson and Ritchie), the C programming language was developed initially by two (K&R). Whereas the predecessor to UNIX, Multics, a large project with heaps of developers failed miserably and never produced a working system. Not that I'm saying that these had any effect on RMS and the FSF, actually RMS said he had several hesitations about the UNIX system, but in the lack of an alternative he made due with it (the model the FSF strove for was to replace each component of the UNIX system one by one. But note the underlying assumption, that once a component was made, it was basically done, though I should give a disclaimer that that's my interpretation of it, RMS didn't say that explicitly).
So, now we get to Emacs. You said:
Emacs is not an open source project? It does not invite patches from everybody? It does not incorporate contributions from an army of individual hackers? It has not made all its bugs shallow by offering its source code to millions of eyeballs?
To which the answer would be, not really, no.
Emacs was an editor made by RMS before he founded the FSF. (And in my opinion it's only fair to call it a Free Software project rather than an Open Source.) As to its developments after it was licensed under the GPL, make no mistake, it was very much a cathedral style project. It's developers were an elitist group, and most certainly did not accept patches from anyone. Nobody really thought like that in those days. ERS too said that when he heard about Linux, his first thought was that an OS hacked by several hundred developers (or whoever many it was back in those days) might be fun to play with and look at, but it could not possibly be any good. It would have to be an incredible patchwork which chief success was if it worked at all. To his surprise it not only worked, it was "good!
So in summation. RMS founded the Free Software theory of ethics (which he should have wholly credit for), but the development process ESR describes as the Bazaar style is new and something completely different from what the GNU project ever envisioned. Linus didn't invent this, I know he said once(I wish I remembered where so I could give the source like a good journalist, but I'm afraid I'll have to leave it at: some interview I read somewhere) that he was surprised when people started turning in patches, his only ambition he'd only expected people to say good or bad. The development style came from nowhere, but make no mistake, it was new.
Granted that M$ has done bad things to the industry, does this really warrent all and any action?
I don't mean this to be a flame, but coming as I do from a firm social-democratic background, I guess I might view things differently. Microsoft shouldn't have been allowed to exert monopoly power in the way they have, but there really must be more to the issue. Okay, I'm no expert on American anti-trust law, but basically my understanding is that there are acts that are legal if you don't have monopoly power, and illegal if you are. Okay, I know that M$ is a monopoly, you know it, but isn't there something about innocent until proven guilty?
Now please bear with me, I think M$ is every bit as bad as everyone else and then some, but does their actions warrent beating the crap out of them? (Forgive the language). There is certainly some of the "destroy them and grind them so thoroughly to the floor that they can never rise again."
Even the rich and mighty have rights, although we may often wish otherwise. Breaking up M$, will be one hell of a task, with unknowable consequences. Is it enough of a justification that it will make us feel good? My personal opinion is that M$ has suffered a major wound to its reputation. No matter what happens, settlement or no settlement, it will be a different M$ in the eyes of the public. M$ will be sued for its wrongdoings, and their actions will be under an intensive light now. Other companies won't take the crap from M$ anymore, because they can complain to the media and get the goodwill of the world.
In short, we can get a more accountable M$. Isn't that better than shouting: "Off with their heads!"
Actually this isn't such an implausible scenario, if ESR is correct. I heard him give his piece on "The seven bullets M$ has to avoid to survive the next eighteen months" when he was in Norway a couple of weeks ago.
According to him The DoJ trial was the *least* of M$ problems. I haven't seen a write-up of this, apart from a story in the Irish Times some days ago, but it was pretty hot stuff.
A short summary might be in order, I guess... Keep in mind that I'm just rehashing what ESR said, and don't have the sources for these numbers.
1)The US vs. M$ Trial 2)Private anti-monopoly lawsuits 3)Change in law making stock options an expence (turning a 4 billion profit to a 18 billion defecit) 4)A separate trial for illegal book keeping 5)W2K is in trouble, not only because it's late already, but because many of the Fortune 500 companies have given sentiments that they won't touch it before Service Pack 1 in early 2001. 6)Linux
In all of this the problem is that M$ needs to keep it stockprice rising. My interpretation of what that is (please note that this is my interpretation, I'm no economist, and I can't give ESR's piece verbatim) was that M$ has built their empire on this effect. As long as the stock prices are rising, people will see the stocks as desirable, hence increasing their value. Once that self-perpetuating cycle ends, you get a different dynamics. Those with stock options won't have the incentive of seeing their stocks grow, so they'll start to cash in. Which in turn will mean that M$ stock will become less desirable (being overpriced), and the effect would be similar to a stockmarket crash.
7) M$ is pricing themselves out of the market. This, according to ESR is the big one, as he said, even if M$ dodges all the other bullets, this is the one that will get them in the end, what they simply cannot avoid.
Hardware prices are dropping, whereas M$ needs to constantly increase their profits. Before much of this could come from the exponentially growing market for new computers, while now it has to come from higher prices for their OS. Simply put, you can't run a $500 OS on top of $250 hardware.
Please also note that these are *NOT* ESR's opinions, only my understanding of them. I hope he'll write up this piece himself, but until then I'd like to share this
So, in summation, if these predictions are anywhere near the spot, it is not really necessary to do more, M$ has made its own grave, and now it has to lie in it.
Just a little over a year ago, Netscape invested in Red Hat. Now Red Hat is investing in the Mozilla browser. Boy things are sure move fast in this day and age. But on a related thread, skimming through the the post to see if my post was redundant and the point had been made n times already, it occured to me as it has many times before the the scare of Red Hat growing to M$ proportions. But instead of being destructive about it, spreading Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, doesn't anyone have constructive thoughts on what is necessary for this not to happen?
After all, even if RedHat won't what's to prevent other companies from doing this?
Slashdot Mirror
FSF holds the copyright to all it's GPL'ed software, since developers write their own copyrights back to the FSF. But that doesn't mean it's proprietary. The licence is the important part.
What this does mean is that FSF can change the licensing terms on new versions of the software, but they can never change the licence on distributed software.
Eythain
The first thing to understand, in my opinion, is that the Free Software Foundation, which RMS started have never really claimed any inherent superiority of Open Source programs. RMS's beef is with the philosophy. Free Software is morally superior to proprietary software. To put it bluntly, RMS would use free software (as always, note the ideological schism between Free Software and Open Source. Free Software comes with an ethical theory (one I personally think has a lot going for it), whereas Open Source is far more pragmatic.)
Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Even if RMS broke with the proprietary model of software development, he kept the model of software development normally found in computer science. And I don't really see that he had any reason not to. The first version of UNIX was basically made by two people (Thompson and Ritchie), the C programming language was developed initially by two (K&R). Whereas the predecessor to UNIX, Multics, a large project with heaps of developers failed miserably and never produced a working system. Not that I'm saying that these had any effect on RMS and the FSF, actually RMS said he had several hesitations about the UNIX system, but in the lack of an alternative he made due with it (the model the FSF strove for was to replace each component of the UNIX system one by one. But note the underlying assumption, that once a component was made, it was basically done, though I should give a disclaimer that that's my interpretation of it, RMS didn't say that explicitly).
So, now we get to Emacs. You said:
Emacs is not an open source project? It does not invite patches from everybody? It does not incorporate contributions from an army of individual hackers? It has not made all its bugs shallow by offering its source code to millions of eyeballs?
To which the answer would be, not really, no.
Emacs was an editor made by RMS before he founded the FSF. (And in my opinion it's only fair to call it a Free Software project rather than an Open Source.) As to its developments after it was licensed under the GPL, make no mistake, it was very much a cathedral style project. It's developers were an elitist group, and most certainly did not accept patches from anyone. Nobody really thought like that in those days. ERS too said that when he heard about Linux, his first thought was that an OS hacked by several hundred developers (or whoever many it was back in those days) might be fun to play with and look at, but it could not possibly be any good. It would have to be an incredible patchwork which chief success was if it worked at all. To his surprise it not only worked, it was " good!
So in summation. RMS founded the Free Software theory of ethics (which he should have wholly credit for), but the development process ESR describes as the Bazaar style is new and something completely different from what the GNU project ever envisioned. Linus didn't invent this, I know he said once(I wish I remembered where so I could give the source like a good journalist, but I'm afraid I'll have to leave it at: some interview I read somewhere) that he was surprised when people started turning in patches, his only ambition he'd only expected people to say good or bad. The development style came from nowhere, but make no mistake, it was new.
Eythain
I don't mean this to be a flame, but coming as I do from a firm social-democratic background, I guess I might view things differently. Microsoft shouldn't have been allowed to exert monopoly power in the way they have, but there really must be more to the issue. Okay, I'm no expert on American anti-trust law, but basically my understanding is that there are acts that are legal if you don't have monopoly power, and illegal if you are. Okay, I know that M$ is a monopoly, you know it, but isn't there something about innocent until proven guilty?
Now please bear with me, I think M$ is every bit as bad as everyone else and then some, but does their actions warrent beating the crap out of them? (Forgive the language). There is certainly some of the "destroy them and grind them so thoroughly to the floor that they can never rise again."
Even the rich and mighty have rights, although we may often wish otherwise. Breaking up M$, will be one hell of a task, with unknowable consequences. Is it enough of a justification that it will make us feel good? My personal opinion is that M$ has suffered a major wound to its reputation. No matter what happens, settlement or no settlement, it will be a different M$ in the eyes of the public. M$ will be sued for its wrongdoings, and their actions will be under an intensive light now. Other companies won't take the crap from M$ anymore, because they can complain to the media and get the goodwill of the world.
In short, we can get a more accountable M$. Isn't that better than shouting: "Off with their heads!"
Eythain
According to him The DoJ trial was the *least* of M$ problems. I haven't seen a write-up of this, apart from a story in the Irish Times some days ago, but it was pretty hot stuff.
A short summary might be in order, I guess... Keep in mind that I'm just rehashing what ESR said, and don't have the sources for these numbers.
1)The US vs. M$ Trial
2)Private anti-monopoly lawsuits
3)Change in law making stock options an expence (turning a 4 billion profit to a 18 billion defecit)
4)A separate trial for illegal book keeping
5)W2K is in trouble, not only because it's late already, but because many of the Fortune 500 companies have given sentiments that they won't touch it before Service Pack 1 in early 2001.
6)Linux
In all of this the problem is that M$ needs to keep it stockprice rising. My interpretation of what that is (please note that this is my interpretation, I'm no economist, and I can't give ESR's piece verbatim) was that M$ has built their empire on this effect. As long as the stock prices are rising, people will see the stocks as desirable, hence increasing their value. Once that self-perpetuating cycle ends, you get a different dynamics. Those with stock options won't have the incentive of seeing their stocks grow, so they'll start to cash in. Which in turn will mean that M$ stock will become less desirable (being overpriced), and the effect would be similar to a stockmarket crash.
7) M$ is pricing themselves out of the market. This, according to ESR is the big one, as he said, even if M$ dodges all the other bullets, this is the one that will get them in the end, what they simply cannot avoid.
Hardware prices are dropping, whereas M$ needs to constantly increase their profits. Before much of this could come from the exponentially growing market for new computers, while now it has to come from higher prices for their OS. Simply put, you can't run a $500 OS on top of $250 hardware.
Please also note that these are *NOT* ESR's opinions, only my understanding of them. I hope he'll write up this piece himself, but until then I'd like to share this
So, in summation, if these predictions are anywhere near the spot, it is not really necessary to do more, M$ has made its own grave, and now it has to lie in it.
Eythain
After all, even if RedHat won't what's to prevent other companies from doing this?
Food for thought... Eythain