If this is true, can you explain why companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to access newspaper articles as far back as the 1980s? You are looking at newspapers from only one perspective - the perspective of a person buying a single, paper copy of a newspaper. It does not reflect other aspects of the business.
No, I am not. I may have overstated it slightly in my short response, but re-selling/licensing old content represents an infinitesimal part of the revenue streams of major city and national newspapers (I doubt the picture is much different for small local papers). I am privy to certain information because a close family member of mine sits on the board of a major city paper and is also major shareholder. Nonetheless, it is common knowledge that between 80-90% of newspaper revenues come from ads (classifieds, local, national, pre-print, and internet) and the remaining 10-20% come from circulation (which, btw, rarely cover the printing costs). You can look it up the SEC filings for McClatchy, Gannett, NYTimes Holdings, etc if you don't believe me: they may not post highly detailed information, but they almost will always breakout ad, circulation, and other revenue (which is very small and contains a lot of other sources of small revenue like commercial printing operations, delivery operations, etc).
For example, suppose I am a writer or a business analyst that wants to research past brand integration efforts in the white goods industry by the likes of Whirlpool or in related industries say Black & Decker. I am very much interested in articles contemporary with when these efforts took place. If I cannot access those articles because of the licensing terms by which those older articles are made available, then I cannot use them to write new articles or do an analysis regarding a business decision.
Have you no intuition for numbers? Think, please. Although some of these subscription services are certainly pricy, the numbers just don't ad up. There are too few subscribers paying relative to the costs of the entirity of newspaper publishing (even if you ignore these services' overhead costs and profit margin). Your average city paper costs several hundred million dollars each year to operate.
Your argument is that they are not analogous both because newspapers only have value when they are current and they have a different business model. I think I have demonstrated that newspapers have value beyond their use for timely information.
No. What you are arguing is kind of like saying that a butcher shop can survive by selling scrap alone for a few pennies on the dollar. A few million in revenue doesn't even begin to cover your costs when your payroll numbers more than 3000.
You are basically using the anomoly that you can buy single issues of a newspaper, but you are ignoring the fact that newspapers make their money from subscribers.
No, they really don't. The price you pay for a paper rarely even cover the printing costs of a typical paper. They make almost all of their money by selling assorted ad space (classified, retail, internet, etc).
The only real difference between Adobe and the NYT is that the NYT has the luxury of staging the subscription costs over several years where Adobe has to get it all at once and hope for some additional upgrade revenue.
The two busineses can scarely get any more different. High marginal cost (paper) vs low marginal cost (sw). Two completely different investment timelines. Low risk vs High risk. Heavily dependent on copyright enforcement vs not so much. One customer (sw: end-users) vs Several (p: subscribers, ad, etc).... I could go on.
The analogy would be perfect if it were possible to buy one day passes to the Photoshop application - but alas, there are some difference- not enough
The problem for the current business model is one of timing. Developers don't generally work without pay, and clients don't generally pay without work. Right now, the exchange is cash-for-product, with deliverables being passed either way. It could instead be cash-for-development, with the clients funding work on future products that would then be delivered -- sort of a subscription model. A good company would continue to do good work, and it would be cost effective to continue to have them develop their product than to hire some outside developer to take over.
Nonsense, the problem is one of free-ridership more than anything else. Why pay join a group of X number of people and pay 1K dollars for a professional-quality graphic tool when you can wait an extra day or two to obtain the code for a 3rd party for free (or for some small marginal cost)? Even ignoring the free rider problem, timing presents an additional problem. How does the end-user know that said developers are producing something they want to use if their costs are to be paid upfront? How long upfront are you willing to pay for an uncertain outcome? Why would the developers work without some reasonable assurances of getting paid in full? What is the criteria?
Open source is the one without a (usually) viable business model. Many of those businesses which do produce software fundamentally depend on the ownership of software (MySQL, QT, Sleepcat, etc) to fund their development activities. While their actions might be GPL compliant, they aren't compliant with RMS' stated philosophy (non-ownership of ideas).
It's insane to sell software as a product (rather than labor) anyway. You can reproduce it for negligible cost, and it's the developers' time that needs to be paid for. Why not just pay for the developers' time in the first place?
Insane??? How is Photoshop "insane" while GIMP is "sane" when the former is so much better than the latter? How does one begin to "sell" labor on a product that must necessarily be split amongst millions of users, so as to be economically viable, if not as an owned product? Unless the developer choose to distribute the software with some exotic DRM or remote terminal solution, I fail to see how that is possible (especially not if the source code is freely usable).
Let's do a thought experiment shall we? Let's assume your rendering of his argument is correct and let's change "software" to "information" - as a concrete example, newspaper information available in sources such as the New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and free (no cost) versions available through Yahoo or other services.
Fewer people do use the WSJ versus the NYT. It costs money to get the WSJ. NYT requires registration. Now compare Yahoo and other sources that have no cost and no barriers such as registration. What gets used more? What is a more competitive product?
Huh? This is an aweful comparison. All of this information is very much owned and the publishers definitely extract profit directly from your viewership regardless of the specifics (ads, subscription, hybrid, republication rights, etc). If you were to copy their articles and repost them en masse without compensating them adequately, then you can bet your sweet a** that they would employ counter-measures and sue you if it came to it. What's more, publishing software and newspapers are completely different businesses from a financial point of view. Newspaper content is by its very nature only valuable if it is timely and any one copy only represents a fraction of their capital investment; contrast this with software, like say Adobe Photoshop, where 1 snapshot of the object code represents the bulk of the investment and the newer version (usually) offers little utility. In a few seconds, you can expropriate many millions of dollars of capital investment in R&D.
BTW-The NYTimes has gone to a partial subscription model too. Please see "Times Select" @ ~$50/year
Now, I think you can basically make many of the same arguments when you change "information" back to "software". I think your premise that proprietary software has outcompeted free software is questionable at best. Based on what metric, presence on the desktop? Code quality? Anywhere you look you don't have a particularly strong argument. I also think that you that advantages of free software are ones that are realized over time that you are not accounting for.
The level of usage by the users. Stallman himself offered usage of the program as the measure of its social benefit (or "wealth" as he put it). Compare Linux desktop to Windows. Excel to GNUMeric/etc. Photoshop to GIMP. iTunes to whatever.... The areas where open source even commands a 25% marketshare are few and far between (hell, even 5% is very rare). Open sources biggest gains have been where Microsoft has exerted its monopoly powers (Linux servers, Firefox, etc). Perhaps open sources barriers to usage (e.g., usability, lack of features, documentation, etc) are higher than the premiums charged by proprietary solutions? I think so.
The ability to reuse code mostly impacts the development cycle. Users will ultimately follow a development cycle that gives them tools that enable them to use their computer the way they want to use it.
The later two arguments, that products can be improved on and that code sharing car occur with open source, should result in an improved product that consumers allegedly want. They have not resulted in demonstrably superior products when viewed on the whole and often result in clearly inferior products. I would argue that, while there is some truth to his last two points, the incentive which is destroyed by the open source model far outweigh the theoretical benefits bestowed by them (lateral code sharing and project modification).
You can see the impact today in product releases like IE7. You think IE7 would look and work the way it does without Firefox blazing the trail?
Microsoft has used its monopoly powers to make IE dominant. They don't make money by selling IE and they have invested relatively little into it since they crushed Netscape so this arg
I think that your arguments focus on the wrong side of the point. Proprietary software is popular, true. That doesn't mean that open sourcing it would make it less popular.
To cut to the chase, this is your flawed argument, not mine. The debate truly is not whether the act of open sourcing existing software itself impacts user adoption: most users don't even know what source code is nor would they care. The debate is about whether or not open source licensing creates an environment condusive to the production of high quality software that the end-users' (not just a handful of geeks) actually want to use. To make photoshop free, for instance, would probably boost short term adoption (piracy), but it would come at the cost of future development and maintenance.
What's more, your arguments also miss the point about the status quo. The shareholders of these various software programs agreed to invest money to develop and maintain photoshop and like programs on the condition that they get high returns on their investment. Your argument is kind of like arguing that, as a car owner, it really wouldn't impact you if GM (or whomever) doesn't pay its employees for the work they performed on your car after it rolls off the assembly line and that, therefore, labor costs should not be a factored into car building.
Stallman attempted to dismiss the incentive argument as just being about how well developers eat and live (necessity vs "sushi" and "condos"). He then goes on to argue how inferior the closed-source development model is because the users can improve/tweak the programs and because code can't be shared across projects. Well, 20 some years after he established his movement, open source development has far less user-adoption than closed source code does.
One of the biggest reasons for the relative lack of adoption of open source as compared to closed source is that RMS ignores the absolute importance of capital investment in modern software development (Developing software was much more of a hobbyists activity 20 years ago because it was generally much less complex--one man could much more easily produce a product worth using for millions of people) No one wants to investment enough money to employ 10 developers for a year or two, ignoring pay rates for a minute, if they can't get a good return on their investment even if the resulting product actually takes off (there is still a chance people don't want it... more risk... more return needed). Even the personal motivation of the developers is important. If I produce 50% more than my developer co-workers because I'm smarter and work harder, then I want more than just name in the credits and perhaps a goldstar next to my name. If some large company won't pay me appropriately, then I'll take some personal risk join/start a startup that will at least give me an equity stake for my blood, sweat, and tears.
RMS also ignores the fact that many proprietary companies also go into the business of facilitating software development with the production of libraries and utilities...
But anyways-I know there are people that like to code for its own sake. I am one of those people sometimes. However, if I'm not getting paid as a developer or if I'm not likely recieve a payout as an entrepreneur (which I am now), then I'm apt to want to only work on the things that I want to work on today. These things tend to be very different than what the majority of the population, average users/companies, want and need (the applications themselves, the scope of the work, the quality, etc). Where is the fun in perfecting install and un-installation routines? Documentation/Help files? Making an easy UI for beginners? Making sure that it runs without modification on many different hardware/software configurations?....
Can you point to us the link and its location within the link?
RTFA. Or should I say, RTFD(ogma)? It was the first link listed in the article!. Surely your mighty powerful open source software has a search function built in! *HINT*
There is nothing about Free softwares that is against paying for softwares
It may not prevent it in so many words, but its very requirements drastically reduces the potential to generate revenue from software development activities. One might sell the first few copies or perhaps work out a dual-license model (which depends on copyright/ownership)...but the rest is pretty much just all prayer. The "support" idea largely hasn't been borne out by reality.
Users don't even care about proprietary versus Free softwares!
I would agree that most users are completely ignorant of the status of the code itself (which is part of the reason why RMS' second argument is flawed). However, they can certainly appreciate the difference in software availability/quality. There are only a handful of open source programs that even begin to have any kind of potential for mainstream acceptance.
Free software is a social movement. Open source is a pragmatic movement.
No, it's largely a philosophical movement. Sure, the linux kernel and a handful of other open source projects are motivated by more pragmatic concerns, but this is certainly not true of GNU and many other projects.
The idea of owning information is harmful in three different levels. Materially harmful on three different levels, and each kind of material harm has a corresponding spiritual harm.
|SNIP|
The first level is just that it discourages the use of the program, it causes fewer people to use the program, but in fact it takes no less work to make a program for fewer people to use.
|SNIP|
The second level of harm comes when people want to change the program, because no program is really right for all the people who would like to use it. Just as people like to vary recipes, putting in less salt say, or maybe they like to add some green peppers, so people also need to change programs in order to get the effects that they need.
|SNIP|
The third level of harm is in the interaction between software developers themselves. Because any field of knowledge advance most when people can build on the work of others, but ownership of information is explicitly designed to prevent anyone else to doing that.
That is it folks. In other words, his argument is closed source software is wrong on pragmatic grounds because:
A) fewer people will use the software (because it tries to prevent people from using w/o paying)
B) the software is less useful to people because they can't modify the original program
C) proprietary software is less valuable because other developers in lateral areas can't learn from it.
It seems pretty clear to me that his arguments failed on these pragmatic grounds and that he's had to shift his anti-ownership rational to far more nebulous and entirely philosophical arguments about "freedom" for its own sake.
The facts are:
A) Contrary to his "first level" of harm: proprietary software has vastly outcompeted open software despite its barriers.
B) Contrary to his "second level" of harm: that most users still prefer closed source software despite the fact that they can't tinker with it and despite the fact that it costs more/has more barriers.
C) Contrary to his "third level" of harm: that proprietary software still appeals more to its end users despite the fact that proprietary developers benefit little from the pool of open source code. This despite the fact that open source developers supposedly have a huge advantage over proprietary developers because they can exploit the GPL and other copyleft code to a level that their counterparts cannot.
In short, he's given up on his pragmatic rationale since they've been proven almost entirely wrong. I'll concede that there is something to be said for the sharing of code in some cases, but we're to choose rationally between no ownership vs choice of ownership (the status quo) that the latter is the only sensible and pragmatic choice given his own (old) arguments and the empirical evidence (or lack thereof) from his so-called copyleft movement.
"Producing a proprietary program is not the same contribution to society as producing the same program and letting it be free. Because writing the program is just a potential contribution to society. The real contribution to the wealth of society happens only when the program is used. And if you prevent the program from being used, the contribution doesn't actually happen. So, the contribution that society needs is not these proprietary programs that everyone has such an incentive to make, the contribution we really want is free software, so our society is going haywire because it gives people an incentive to do what is not very useful, and no incentive to do what is useful."
The emphasis is mine...
But if he's truly judging the value of open source vs proprietary software primarily on the pragmatic grounds of user-adoption, then he should concede that, ~20 years later, proprietary software has been far more valuable for society because it has been much more widely adopted.
Mark me as flamebait if you must, but I do think he's made a dramatic, but quiet shift, in his rationale for doing away with proprietary software. Proprietary software is no longer bad primarily because it isn't as widely used as free software is supposed to be, but because closedness itself...just is (bad). Ok, he touches briefly on code reuse and such... but those certainly weren't his primary justifications and these seem to be his supporting arguments anyways....
First, I you seem to only mention one open source project comparison with proprietary solutions: MySQL v. MS SQL and Oracle. The statement here seems to be a (perhaps hasty) generalization based on this experience.
No, I'm really referring about the trend within a whole range of areas within software development. MySQL vs proprietary products is just one comparison amongst many.
Long enough to see that waste in development staff, talent, projects, and other resources is far more prevalent in the former than the latter.
I completely agree that smaller companies tend to be vastly more efficient and better managed than larger ones (not to mention that they tend to have higher caliber employees). This is precisely why I left the big company.
The "innovative" attribute is not one that I would use to describe commerical offerings when compared to open source ones. Where was the vendor-supplied logging framework in.NET when I was happily using log4net? Where was the logging framework in Java when I was using log4j? Where was the proprietary build tool that suited my needs better than Ant? Maven? CruiseControl? What about JUnit and NUnit? Visual Studio 2005 finally got integrated unit testing, but how long has it been available in OSS tools and IDEs?
The operative word is "more" innovative. Open source can and does innovate sometimes, but these are heavily biased towards lesser innovation (especially in the area of small scale software development). By lesser I mean something which requires a relatively small amount of developer energy to bring to fruition, particularly to reach that first stage where the benefits of the innovation become immediately more useful than the alternatives and, to the extent they continue to grow, where small incremental changes can yield appreciable benefits. If you're talking about a small module/library/application to make programming or perhaps system administration a little easier, this is precisely the area where open source shines, especially in an area where it'd be difficult or impossible to sustain a business on (particularly at the outset). Most software that companies and end-users need and want are not built on small scale development alone. Contrast these small innovations with developing, say, a completely new or innovate RAD evironment, an area where a lot of development energy must be spent before it truly becomes useful. This is even more true when you're talking about areas and whole domains that most open source developers simply don't know or care about.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but by "innovative and better" do you mean "safer"?
No, I mean just what I said.
In a large corporation with much to risk, you want someone you can take to court should something bad happen.
Taking another company to court is little consolation for shareholders if your business operations are interrupted for any substantial length of time. It also doesn't offer much insulation for the employee if they irresponsibly selected a shoddy sofware package.
You also want someone who is interested in keeping your business so they're likely to incorporate a feature you want, even if they think it's a bad idea (I've been on both sides of that one)
Sometimes, but these are largely only with programs that are already customized for the business. The issue with open source is that most programs aren't even remotely appropriate in the first place.
But when software is free, you have no such control. A developer developing for fun or philosophy alone can easily tell you where to go if he thinks your feature request is stupid, and where does that lead you?
The issue is less that my specific business wants feature X, but that most
You can USE the mysql drivers as long as you don't modify them, link to them or derive from them.
So in other words, what you're saying is that developers can look at the mysql drivers and as long as they don't actually use them in any way they're OK. ROFL. You're simultaneously contradicting yourself and digging yourself in deeper and deeper.
Mysql has certain code under a GPL license. That includes drivers they have written (including the odbc and jdbc drivers they have written). If you link to, derive from, or modify their source code AND (AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND AND) distribute the binaries or source code then you must also GPL your code.
That's it. Those are the only conditions. Merely USING the code does not force you to GPL your code. Never. Ever. No matter what anybody says.
Sigh. You just can't admit you were grossly ill-informed, can you? I don't know who you are trying to fool. Anyone that reads this thread can see it.
Incidentally, when you write a statement like "If you are not writing drivers you are fine" repeatedly this implies that not writing drivers is a sufficient condition to be free and clear of the GPL's requirements (regardless of whether or not you distribute). LOGIC!
So, if you compare the ideal case for commercial software against the worst case for open source software, commercial software wins.
Big surprise there.
Neither your caricature of commercial software, nor your caricature of open source software, has much to do with reality.
No. I'm talking about 10+ years of real world experience where the decision making authority and the responsibility for its outcome, for better or worse, ultimately rested with me (CIO/Director for a mid-size private->public company and later in a similar role for a Fortune 100 company division). Try seriously comparing MySQL to MSSQL to Oracle etc (yes, MySQL has its uses, but not in most corporate settings). Integrated backup software to manage hundreds of servers/applications. OCR software. IVR systems. VoIP. EDI software. Terminal software. SPAM & Virus filtering. Network authentication (even mundane tasks like trying managing network rights or add/drop users!). Print and filesharing management. Server/task scheduling. Firewall & VPN solutions. Email and Calendering. Reporting writing/distribution tools. Hundreds of small desktop applications (e.g., screen cap, document conversion, etc). Not to mention experience as a project manager and software developer.
In my actual experience, the areas where open source was even a remote contender were few and far between (in some cases, they were better, but it was very rare). Even when my employers were cash strapped, when I was far more optimistic about the state of open source software and when I used much of it myself, I could rarely say with a straight face that it was the best or even cheapest solution when all was said and done. This is particularly true when I had to consider the time involved in maintaining the systems (esp. training/managing my department well enough so it wasn't dependent on just 1 or 2 people) and making things clear to the users.
And I've been involved in buying many closed-source libraries, and your happy-happy portrayal of closed-source software doesn't really remind me of any of those experiences.
No offense, but I read your resume. You've been out of school and working for real companies for maybe 3 actual years? In that time you've managed some web servers and done some web development work? Web server/programming is one of the few where open source is relatively strong. There is, however, a much broader world out there to consider. What's more, your level of responsibility and the duration for which you saw it through would have a huge impact on your views on cost vs. benefit.
And for the record, I'm not all "happy-happy" about closed source software. I do have my gripes, especially with some of the stuff Microsoft has put out. We, however, are comparing the relative strengths of open vs closed systems. I've experienced a wide array of software quality, however the general trend was that the proprietary alternatives were dramatically better than the open source ones (with some notable exceptions)
By far I have more trouble with the closed-source stuff just being unsupported, and sometimes it's the big vendors (as in Microsoft, Oracle, etc.) who are the worst!
Then please name some of them and tell me which open source alternative was superior and why. I think we may find a pattern here.
Bad open source basically doesn't exist for a commercial company, because they most likely won't even encounter it, and it certainly won't last long in their selection system unless it's completely broken
Huh? This doesn't make sense. I certainly sought out open source solutions when possible. I know I was not alone in that. Often times it was initially attractive because we could obtain it quickly and at an attractive price point (~$0), little/no impact on the budget and no approval necessary for big ticket alternatives,... but ultimately found them to bring more pain than it was worth.
If you are not distributing code you are not violating the GPL.
Yes, but what I said directly contradicts your previous argument, i.e., "Yes but linking in the code sense not in the "I am using this library" sense. Clearly you were trying to make a false distinction.
If you want to try to claim that your entire contention was merely that the GPL applies when something is distributed, despite getting no argument froom anyone on this matter, then you should know that this contradicts your other statements, e.g., "If you are not writing drivers you are fine" and "If you are writing code and you are using a library you did not write then you are not violating the GPL"
Please: grow up; learn to read with comprehrension; and loose the penis envy. It is unattractive. No wonder you still haven't been with a woman.
Incidentally, it is clear that your understanding of the GPL and programming in general is very poor. So for you to call real programmers, who actually do real work with the GPL, names only makes yourself look like even more of an ass.
As in you can't use the source. At all. For any purpose. Well, sure, it's certainly predictable.
Which is academic for most users, even for developers like myself, when compared to the current and potential restrictions GPL-like licenses can place on you. For instance, when MySQL switched their client-library licenses from LGPL to GPL, this forced many companies that distributed or employed proprietary software with MySQL to make some very tough choices. With GPL v3 and other changes around the corner, many more companies and end-users will be negatively impacted.
If GPL projects can switch licenses and argue that applications that make simple library calls are derivative and thus must be GPLd too, why can't GPL v10 argue that even using an open source server over a network also makes the clients' derivative/non-compliant? Why not argue that, say, anything compiled with GCC must be GPL'd or at least open source? Or that all output of GPL'd products must be public domain/GPL if distributed? I know some people may say this is absurd, but RMS and his follower's agenda is pretty extreme and I think they'll do whatever they think they can get away with.
The problem is that you, the end-user, are not the customer for most of these GPL projects. For most GPL projects, their egos and their philosophy is their primary and often only concern. That you may benefit from their work is perhaps a secondary concern, at best. If you don't like their direction, the retort is basically "tough luck". Well, it may be their prerogative, but that does not mean I'd ever want to place myself in a situation where my livelyhood is at stake with those people. It is an unnecessary risk.
Oh, and, btw you overstate your case. The source code for many proprietary software packages can be had, as insurance, if you're willing to pay for it and sign an agreement not to disclose it. Other companies will also do something-like source code escrow...
New to the industry, eh?
No, far from it.
Even if you ignore the fact that products will be altered beyond recognition and eventually discontinued, with or without the company surviving, the fact is very few companies in the proprietary software business appear to have any particular long term staying power. If they dont go belly up, they get bought up, their products cancelled, and customers forcefully migrated.
Name some major proprietary applications, that wasn't already highly obsolete, that was simply discontinued or where the business went belly up. There aren't too many. Sure, you'll have the rare monopolist that forces an upgrade after several years and there may be some grumbles about annoying features and what not, but they'll usually at least provide a relatively clear upgrade/conversion path (which is more than I can say for most open source projects). Sure some niche vendors have gone out of business, but these are areas where open source is a total non-entity.
And most proprietary projects are half-assed and under-staffed. It's endemic to the entire industry.
Some are, but there is little comparison. Most areas offer several good commercial alternatives (along with several mediocre/cheap ones) whereas there is generally no acceptable open source alternative. Even a highly successful project like MySQL (which truly depends on its hybrid model) is still half-assed for many customers when it comes to competing against the likes of MSSQL, Oracle, and others.
Someone did a study a few years ago of the most popular projects on SourceForge and found that, of the 100 most popular projects, the median number of developers on each project was 4 and the mode was 1. This is even more devasting when you consider that most of these developers are doing this on their spare-time for sh*ts and grins.
Can you explain to me why exactly it's an advantage for commercial software?
I'm not the OP, but...
A) Because most mainstream commercial/proprietary software tends to be more innovative and better. Yes, there are some exceptions, but they are very few in number and tend to be in areas where the demand is so small that it would be difficult to sustain a business on (the Windows monopoly vs Linux, perhaps being an exception in some ways).
B) Because its licensing terms are far more predictable and understandable than GPL-based software. I'd far rather trust one top-down group motivated by money (selfish, perhaps, but pragmatic), especially if I have a contract with them, than the bulk of GPL community based projects which are motivated by several different philosophies, a constantly evolving licenses, and which has too many self-promoting zealots which can spoil the works (e.g., RMS). Witness licenses going from LGPL -> GPLv2, GPLv2 -> GPLv3, and god knows where else. Even if the projects which you're immediately dependent are managed entirely by pragmatic people and has acceptable terms at present, all it takes is a few zealots changing licenses at a lower level (like its libraries, OS, etc) to force a license change and/or splinter the community.
C) Because the company that is maintaining the product is far more likely to stay in business and motivate itself to the kinds of support that you need. A company based on GPL v2 with an equally popular product is likely to only have, say, 5% of the revenue that the proprietary company nets and that company must answer to several camps with hugely divergent interests. Even with the dual-licensed business model companies, like MySQL, you are heavily dependent on them staying in business. If they go belly up, then so does the copyright assignment that allows them to dual-license... the odds of another company making this work by trying to provide support alone is highly unlikely.
D) Because most open source projects are simply half-assed and under-staffed. There are only a handful of open source projects have a critical mass of developers or a viable company behind it to make it acceptable today let alone provide any kind of assurance for the future.
Yes, I know the open source dogma answer to all these is "but you have the source!". I just don't think it means much in practice for most companies and individuals as they cannot afford the time and technical resources in practice to maintain said software themselves. Yes, some of you will say that it can be forked, but this often does not work out this way as there is often not enough people behind it on aggregate (never mind behind any one specific project organizer). When MySQL changed their client-libraries from LGPL to GPL, where did the LGPL fork go? No where.
If you are writing code and you are using a library you did not write then you are not violating the GPL.
Sigh. You are as wrong as you are ignorant. MySQL converted their client-library licenses to GPLv2 (from LGPL) several years ago. Both the GNU zealots and MySQL believe that any applications which use libraries licensed under the GPL are derivative and thus must be wholly licensed under the GPL. This is not an academic point either as this dual-licensing model is where MySQL has derived most of their revenues from (which, depends, on the GPL's force over client libraries).
From the GPL v2:
"If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License"
Previously, the MySQL client libraries were licensed under the LGPL (the Lesser General Public License) and now they use the GPL (the General Public License). What prompted this change? MySQL's goal is to provide all its software under a free software/open source license. The change from the LGPL to the GPL for the client libraries was made in 2001 during the development of MySQL 4.0 to help MySQL AB more easily differentiate between a proprietary user who should buy a commercial license and a free software user who should use the GPL license. Previously there were people that were misusing the GPL by distributing the MySQL server tightly coupled with their applications and claiming that the GPL doesn't affect them because the client libraries were free to use.
This change has allowed MySQL to support its dual licensing model by better identifying when someone is using MySQL software in a closed source fashion without commitment to the open source philosophy. While MySQL supports the open source ideals, we also believe in the notion of "Quid Pro Quo" or fair exchange. For developers building open source applications using MySQL, the change in the client licensing policy has no effect.
Based on feedback from our users, MySQL has introduced an exception that makes it possible to combine the MySQL client libraries with software that uses various Free and Open Source software ("FOSS") licenses. This is known as the FOSS License Exception.
"If you include one or more of the MySQL drivers in your non-GPL application (so that your application can run with MySQL), you need a commercial license for the driver(s) in question. The MySQL drivers currently include an ODBC driver, a JDBC driver and the C language library."
"If you develop and distribute a commercial application and as part of utilizing your application, the end-user must download a copy of MySQL; for each derivative work, you (or, in some cases, your end-user) need a commercial license for the MySQL server and/or MySQL client libraries."
SO if you are using JDBC, ruby, python, php, ocaml, haskell, rebol, or brainfuck to write your program that access your mysql server you are safe.
Wrong. The GPL affords no such protections. PHP and other open source projects were at risk when they made the change. MySQL had to create a special special exception for these FLOSS programs. A MySQL client-library derivative work (e.g., PHP) is OK as long as the source code is released (under one of the enumerated FLOSS licenses or GPL). MySQL, however, still claims that if you write an application on top of one of these other FLOSS programs, e.g., PHP, and is considered derivative, i.e., connects to MySQL with their libraries, then you must release your source code with your distribution. In other
If you participate in an "or later" project, then you are ceding control to the FSF which, for all we know, may well come down to anything Stallman says goes. For instance, GPL v4 could say that the only people that may enjoy the modifications to this code are people that have signed the "Anti-Ownership Pledge" or some other craziness.
That's right. Under our laws whoever writes the code gets to say how it's used.
Not according to some open source zealots who believe that any GPL project, especially Linux, was automatically "or later" even though it said no such thing.
He is subject to the same copyright laws all other human beings are.
No, the FSF and only the FSF can re-write the GPL. The only limits they place on themselves are vague at best and any anyone that places their code under such vague terms is taking considerable risk.
If you get to make up goofy evil shit you think people will do I also get to the same thing.
How is it "goofy evil shit"? The GPL v2 restricted itself to "I share my code and if you use my code, you share your changes". The GPL v3 has crossed into entirely new territory by trying to define the very rights of its end-users (patents, privacy, etc) and DRM. If it's crossing into new territory, what boundries does it have? "The spirit" of the license seems to mean anything Stallman says it does.
Your beef is not with the GPL. It's with the copyright law which states that people who write code get to determine how other people use it.
Wrong. I recognize the legal authority for them to do this precisely because I believe so strongly in copyright. That, however, does not mean that anything they do with those rights is good for society or even good for their stated aims.
Nope. You never have to accept any license. If you accept it then it must have been because you get something from the deal. It says so right in the GPL. You don't have to accept this license.
I don't disagree. It is fair when the user has a choice to agree to a set of terms or not use it at all. This, however, is very ironic and hypocritical coming from people that disagree with DRM rights, Tivoization, DCMA, and even copyright itself.
Honestly after all this conversation we finally get to the point. You are pissed because people who write the code get to decide how that code is used and you don't like their decisions.
Sigh, you still don't get it. The GPL appeals to people to reject the hording of source code and rights in favor of the open source concept of community, that everyone works towards the same goal of code sharing and a reasonably well understood set of rules. The zealots in the community, a relative minority, have changed those terms several times on people who have already adopted and made contributions, without the contributors and end-users appreciating that they can pull the rug out from under them like that. Many people have been burned by this and, I suspect, many more will with GPL v3 and its coming craziness.
It may be their legal right (although co-opting code without permission is definitely not), but that does not mean that people should not be wary of zealots that would or legal rights that empower them to do that. If Microsoft were to suddenly withdraw all support/patches for Windows XP tomorrow to compel people to go with Vista that would probably be legal and even "their right" (unless they made legal commitments to maintain support) but consumers would be justified to avoid them in the future and be wary that they may exercise such rights. What Stallman and his zealots are doing isn't that dissimilar.
I'm not the only one that feels this way, even the
If you want to dedicate a work to the public such that the public is at liberty to enjoy and build upon that work and all published derivatives of it, then you need a license such as the GPL.
If you simply neutralise copyright's restrictions for the licensee, then the licensee can once again use copyright to suspend the public's liberty to their published derivatives.
With a more permissive license, i.e., non-GPL, the public is entitled to build upon your work and any deritive work released to the public (with source). The primary difference (before V3) is that the GPL forces every developer that distribute derivative works to also make their source code freely available.
My points are:
1) Many works distributed under artistic/public domain type licenses are distributed without substantial improvements being robbed from the public. The practical difference to public domain end-users and public-domain oriented developers quite is small.
2) GPL's marginal difference is only a relative one. In other words, it may assure that 100% of the improvements are released back to the public (instead of, say, 80%), but the GPL's requirements also prevent many improvements from being made in the first place because many businesses and individuals cannot even cover their development costs as a consequence of its provisions. It may well be that it actually enjoys fewer public domain contributions in absolute terms than more permissive licenses.
3) The GPL is not just the removal of downstream copyright rights. Such a license may be better described as "all derivatives must be freeware/copyright-free" instead of "everything must be opensource"
4) GPL version 3 is a major departure from its prior two versions. It is now actually prescribing what kind of derivative software may be written, how its end-users might use it ("privacy"), and even how that software must be written.
Similarly, the term 'copyright' sounds like it might be a human right because it has the word 'right' in it, however it is not a right, but a state granted privilege.
The same argument can be made for property rights, privacy rights, and other "human rights".
The term 'social contract' sounds like it might be a contract, because it has the word 'contract' in it, however simply because some scholars use it to describe copyright does not actually make copyright a contract.
I don't wish to argue semantics endlessly. However, you should consider that the producers, at the very least, are following precisely this contract. They are creating with the express understanding that they will control their work and thus be able to make money. Likewise, the purchasers or users do not have to use it if they aren't given the "rights" they like.
Copyright remains a state granted monopoly to publishers
Wrong. The right is not granted to publishers and has not for a long time. The right is granted to the authors (for 200-300 years in US and England) and the authors can and do, in some cases, assign their rights to others.
"and since we're all now publishers this has the effect of suspending the public's liberty."
We can all theoretically forge currency too. Just because we can doesn't make it a liberty. Nor does it mean it is right for society.
Human rights are not granted or created by the state, but protected by the state.
This is a semantic argument, but there is considerable disagreement about human rights amongst civilized nations even. For instance, "privacy" is a very nebulous and much contested term.
The point about a contract is that it is willingly agreed to.
You do have a choice. You don't have to buy or download a copyrighted work if you don't like
In order to nullify copyright restricting the public, a publisher must provide a license that restores the liberties copyright suspends, and in order that these liberties are preserved for all licensees must require that each licensee provide the same license. This is because copyright can otherwise be re-applied to once again suspend the public's liberty (as permitted by the BSD).
What sophistry! An individual absolutely cannot copyright something that has been placed in the public domain (or similar license) by a 3rd party. They can only copyright their own derivative work. That copyright does not remove anything from the public that would not be there had said derivative work not been created in the first place. Nor would the lack of copyright compel anyone to share their source code (or other new things) as the GPL insists under copyright.
No slight of hand or turn of phrase is going to change the fact that you're misrepresenting this basic fact.
Copyright is not a contract. A contract is an agreement entered into willingly by both parties. If copyright were abolished tomorrow you'd still be able to contract a purchaser of a copy of your work to an NDA.
Copyright is social contract, just like physical property and many of the rights its owners are entitled to are. The voters of each country define its laws, by choosing to live in the country you are obliged to live with any such reasonable laws for as long as they are on the books. You can try to vote against it and protest, but that doesn't make it any less real.
In any event, are you seriously suggesting that you would respect a downstream contract agreements? If I give my binary/code to party A and make them sign a NDA/non-copy/non-reverse-engineering agreement, would you at least admit that I have the right to do this? Would you also admit that conditions imposed by the first party also apply to 3rd parties (even if said parties say they did not partake in the original violation and did not know of the contract)? If so how does this difer from copyright today in practice given that this is precisely what the great majority of copyright holders would insist on?
Liberty is that which remains after human rights, i.e. the rights to life, privacy, and truth. That means that liberty does not trump the right to privacy.
So the government is imposing on my liberty to sell anything I want? Crack? Untested pills (which is suggested cure cancer)? The right to drive at 200 mph down a public road? The right to keep all my money to myself, i.e., not pay taxes? The "right" to carry a loaded weapon on my person? The right to form monopoly and fix prices? The right to forge currency and other official documents? The right to teach religion in school? The right not to wear clothes in public?
Does the governmen not have the right to regulate any of these so-called liberties? And if you say they're not liberties, then are they human rights?
That is a very sophomoric position and does not hold up to scrutiny.
The GPL restores the liberty suspended by copyright/DMCA and patents, and does not impose upon anyone's rights to truth, privacy, or life.
It does impose on my right to privacy and my freedom of action. It takes from my freedom to do whatever I want (i.e., keep my code private, use DRM,...and god knows what else is coming) with what would presumably otherwise be in the public domain.
Until copyright is abolished, one cannot ignore it as it applies by default. One therefore has to utilise a license that nullifies copyright, that grants the licensee liberty on condition they preserve that liberty.
One need merely say that they waive their rights or afix any number of public domain type licenses. It takes a few seconds and one can also retroactively waive their rights should they choose to. The GPL simply adds restrictions and decreases ones "freedom" (if you accept this definition) unnecessarily.
Your 'additional legal tool' in the form of copyright and patents constitutes the suspension of the public's liberty to enjoy and build upon published works - and in the case of patents, even to create works that coincidentally involve reinvention.
This implies that the public should have the right to violate contract. Real freedom includes the right to contract. Copyright is just a form of contract - albeit with society at large. Patents are different insofar as they are broad enough to create a collision of rights, but this is not necessarily so and, to some extent, allowing for the potential for conflict is better than the alternative: no rights and thus little meaningful investment in innovate efforts.
Liberty is not a right to suspend someone else's liberty. The tautology is thinking otherwise.
Nonsense. You would certainly restrict my freedom to enter your apartment at will, yet I'm sure you would say that this is your liberty and not mine. It is only a "liberty" if have a right to it in the first place; you have no right to product of my own mind unless I explicitly grant you that right. The fact that I give a product to another person does not mean that you then have the right to copy at will from that person, especially when I explicitly make it a condition of the exchange that no copying is to occur. Your act of copying would be a violation of the right of two people to contract and a violation of social contract.
Under your silly definition, the GPL unquestionably violates liberty. You might make greater good arguments, but it's highly hypocritical.
If that's the case then you are erecting a straw man. The license says GPLV2 OR (again OR, OR, OR, OR) later. If you wrote or used code under V2 then you can continue to do so.
If I take a project under GPL v2 which does not say "or later" and make a (major) contribution under GPL v2 without saying "or later", you do not have the legal right to incorporate my changes into a GPL v3 project (or any version other than v2) without my permission.
What does "or later" even mean? Does it mean anything Stallman says it does? Is he even restricted by those things that might violate the prior version of the license? If he is just restricted to those things, do you have any idea how much further he can legally go? Why cede so much authority to any one person (especially someone whose agenda is far-out idealistic and not pragmatic)? If you want to say this is merely the "FSF", not RMS personally, I'm not so sure it matters (and RMS may be able to simply restructure the FSF at his will).
Bullshit. How many times has the license for MS media player has been updated in the last five years? I'll give you a clue every update and some service packs.
If the users don't care, then it's really not an issue. That said, I think you're exxagerating. What's more, any license changes associated with automatic updates would almost certainly be legally unenforcable if the user did not consent to the change (even many terms of shrinkwrap licenses can be considered unenforcable).
What if you decided to rape nine year girls in the ass while force feeing them your shit?
You obviously have sexual and emotional issues to resolve as you keep on repeating this.
You also seem to be unable to answer my question as you keep on avoiding it. About the only restriction the FSF puts on "or later" GPL changes is that it "will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns." This, however, is awefully vague in practice (especially for those that merely stumble upon the license and do not RMS' absurd philosophy) and gives a great deal of presumed (though not necessarily enforcable) leeway to the FSF. Almost everything they say about the spirit of the license relates to software and especially the freedom of the user to use the code however they wish as long as they disclose it. Trying to limit how other people use other non-derivative software programs, patents, encryption, DRM, and more simply does not follow from any reasonable reading of the GPL. Since Stallman violates a reasonable reading and fails to really clarify what the "spirit" of the license is exactly -- I would simply never trust him and thus any project that doesn't practically restrict itself to GPL v2 (none of this "or later" crap).
If you wrote or used code under V2 then you can continue to do so.
To come back to my original point: While this may be technically true, it is not always true in practice. If, say, Linux were to suddenly go to V3 tomorrow (presuming every copyright holder signed off on this), this would mean that the burden would suddenly fall on me to fix every problem in the old code independently (or pray for a group of like-minded people). This is a real risk if these sorts of changes are allowed. If you make commitments to an open source project or platform, you are not just dependent on the conditions of the current code, but also on future support. Thus you may be essentially compelled to accept terms you disagree with.
That's true. Many people don't. Radical ideas are not usually embraced by the masses till they become mainstream. What's amusing to me is that linus still doesn't get it even after he got humiliated by bitkeeper. Well maybe he gets it a little because he released git under the GPL.
Any fringe group can make such a claim. I'd hardly describe Linus Torvalds and most productive kernel developers to be merely amongst the middle of the herd of the population. They have been aware of the arguments for a long time. They simply disagree. I'd argue that they're more savvy and pragmatic; it is mainly only the zealots that don't have better things to do, like actually contributing lots of code, that worry about extending the GPL even further. It seems to me that most of the key developers on the most important GPL projects are also the least likely to agree with these GPL extensions (more than just Linux kernel developers)
Why would they contribute under the GPL if they didn't agree?
Several reasons:
1) They may have signed up for completely pragmatic reasons. In other words, they found the existing code or platform (Linux, MySQL, etc) to offer enough value to accept to requirements imposed by the GPL at the time they made their initial decision and/or on the date of their last contribution.
2) They may have started on a GPL project because they agreed with the existing requirements of the existing GPL license for their specific project. For instance, Linus may have felt that getting back any code modifications to the kernel important, given the fundamental nature of operating systems, to be important enough to justify its impositions. That does not mean, however, that he agrees with the extremist direction Stallman and others are trying to take it in. He does, in fact, disagree with trying to place any limits on the freedom of the end-user as the GPL v3 is trying to do.
3) They may have been essentially forced into it. If I develop an (open source) application that depends on another set of code that was developed under a different license (e.g., artistic) when I made the choice, I may be essentially forced to adopt the new license (GPL v2) to get the updates I need (or try to maintain it alone). Likewise, one project switching to GPL v3 may force anything associated with it to as well.
4) They may simply have been ignorant of the recent changes in the GPL or they may have inadvertantly included (new) GPL (v X) code in and thus been compelled to go along. This is becoming increasingly likely as Stallman seems to be wanting to make more and more changes to the licensing and re-defining what is and is-not compatible. Linux may not adopt the GPL v3, but if some modules are included with that license, it starts to become a burden on the user to keep track of all the different licenses and their implications.
The reason you don't want to write your own is that nothing you write will be able to compete with mysql. You know this so you want to use their code but you don't want to play by their rules. You just wish they would let you use their code any way you want and you are frustrated when you realize that they are not going to work for you for free.
The point is not that I can't accept "the rules". I accept in principle that someone can set whatever rules they want on their own copyrighted work. The problem I have is that I may make commitments based on Version X of "the rules" with the understanding that this is the basic framework underwhich everyone has agreed to operate, only to find out later that Version X+1 (or +10) is so extreme that I'm screwed. What's more, I may make contributions based on Version X with the tacit understanding that the community is in fundamental agreement and will move along accordingly, only to find that now some zealot has modified my c
-1, Incoherent. You're first blaming non-profits for only plowing 26% of their budget into research, but then laud Pfizer, which probably only uses 15% (if I take the average number across all of Pharma) of its budget for research?
Sheesh, there's plenty of reasons why non-profits aren't as awesome as they're sometimes made out to be, but at least focus your blame properly. Everyone has to eat, including non-profits. Don't label them sinners just because they aren't saints.
You miss the point. I don't begrudge non-profit employees their right to earn a living. I even understand that they have to spend money to make money (fundraising -- although many are grossly inefficient)--just like drug companies need to spend money to make money. However, I find people that simultaneously lambast the fundamental business proposition of drug companies while extolling the virtues of non-profits to be more than a little hypocritical (or, at least, ignorant). To the extent that one tries to suggest that for-profit industry is a fundamentally bad method of producing drugs, they must seriously examine the cost structures and empirical history of the so-called non-profits.
Yes, Pfizer only spent about 14% of their revenues on recurring R&D last year. However, they also spent:
- More than 16% of revenue to manufacture those drugs (COGS) - More than 3% of revenues in non-recurring R&D (i.e., acquiring and developing external IP). - More than 6% of revenue paying their corporate income taxes (given directly back to tax payers) - More than 2% of revenue to pay for costs associated with suspending a drug (Bextra)
So, before we even touch on their overhead (legal, IT, mgmt, etc) and promotional costs, we easily account for 41% of their revenue relating to the development and manufacture of drugs (plus income taxes--to make it comparable to a non-profit).
The two organization types are, of course, completely different and it is hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Most of these non-profits are not engaged in much in the way of actual operations: they exist purely to transfer funds to other individuals or entities (which, in turn, have their own costs). So another way you might want to consider it is to compare the amount they spend on promotional/marketing/fund-raising activities as these are the essential activities that allow them to engage in R&D and production (which, ironically, most slashdotters casually regard as waste)...
Pfizer spent an estimated 16% of their revenue (based on industry avg of 50% of their SG&A) on promotional costs (sales and marketing activities). Compare this with the fact that most charities spend at least 25% (some much more) of their revenues on pure fund-raising activities. Even if we add in the 15% in dividend and stock buy-back (in a relatively flush year) this comes out to about 31% (promotional + profit paid out) for Pfizer versus perhaps a rather conservative 25% for charities (and charities, of course, don't have to pay volunteers...). And, of course, more than 50% of the promotional costs of big pharma goes to free samples (which are given to doctors...which are given to patients).... which is arguably a net benefit since many people save prescription costs this way and are allowed to try crucial drugs that they otherwise might not (due to inefficiencies in managed care)...
Looking at the overhead costs themselves may not be very fair, but I suspect that most corporations are a lot leaner on average than the average charity since they are driven by profit-motive and are not encumbered with the same kind of effective restrictions on hiring, firing, and re-structuring. None of these comparisons may be very fair and some of numbers may be open to some interpretation... but they should at least provide some food for thought.
I personally believe that they both types of entities have their role in society. I just think that people that advocate destroying these profit driven corporations are not doing their research and have not really turned a critical eye towards the so-called alternatives.
And your point is? A non-profit needs to pay competitive salaries or they won't attract good employees. Whether or not a CEO is worth $10,000,000+ is another debate but the mere fact that the CEO makes good money doesn't mean they are in the business of "making money".
The non-profit organization may claim that their business is mission X and that they return no profits. This, however, does not mean that the organization as a whole or individuals within that organization are not pursuing their own selfish interests (their compensation structure isn't much different). For instance, the hundreds of employees that work for a non-profit whose stated mission is the cure for a disease would likely be hurt if that disease was ever found. Likewise, their jobs depend on bringing in revenue (contributions) and not spending too much on external things that might reduce their salaries. Most charities spend more than half of their revenue on fund-raising year after year after year. The American Cancer Society, for instance, only spent 26% of their budget on medical research. In other words, 74% was wasted. There are many many more examples of this waste in charities.
Another thing you might want to consider is that certain charities may be competing against other charities in ways that are net harmful to society. It may very well be harmful to society if I give 90% of my charitable contributions to, say, breast cancer instead of to things that would return a greater benefit with less dollars and bring them much sooner (like, say, treating malaria in the 3rd world).
A non-profit exists to meet whatever need or provide whatever services that they have outlined in their charter. They don't exist to pay dividends to shareholders. That is the difference between a for-profit and a not-for-profit.
The primary difference is in their stated missions. This, however, does not mean that the non-profits actually do more with the money they make. By the time you add up all the money wasted to raise more money and maintain the relatively inefficienct overhead structure of the typical charity, they may well be far less efficient with their resources than, say, the typical pharma company. Compare the ~15% "wasted" to dividend payouts and stock buybacks in 05 at Pfizer to the ++50% of revenue wasted to simply raise money at most charities (the dividends of pharma serve as their own sales pitch and they're much cheaper).
I know that this study was done by an academy, but still...trust me. The healthcare industry does not give a shit about health. It is money, plain and simple.
Nonsense. Medical technology companies are not charities. This, however, does not mean that the investors, managers and the many thousands of employees do not care about improving public health while they're at it. I know many powerful people in the industry that care deeply. There can be little doubt that, on the whole, public health has benefited greatly because of these companies. Even if you assume the companies are motivated purely by profit, to the exclusion of any direct concern for society, most medtech companies will usually profit by investing in a known cure, because most companies do not have monopoly on treating any one disease and they certainly do not have 100% marketshare (especially when there exists only marginally useful palliative treatments)
If this were NOT the case, all healthcare companies and pharmeceutical companies would be registered non-profit.
This is completely illogical. Profit and public benefit are not mutually exclusive. Thousands of years of capitalism has proven this. In order to secure investment so that you can spend billions of dollars in R&D, you need to return a healthy profit to the investors.
How much money have you given to medical research charities? I bet it is something close to zero. Compare this to healthcare investment. NIH and other grants do not usually even begin to cover the expenses to take technology to market.
you quite obviously do not work in the healthcare industry...I've worked in the healthcare industry for years.
I have. I'm not sure what you regard as "healthcare" though. I have worked for medical device companies for many years and worked with, and even for, big pharma. I have also been involved with early stage/VC investment in many biotech and medical device companies. Through these experiences I have come to known many entrepreneurs and executives in bio-tech/pharma and medical devices, not to mention many doctors and industry and academic researchers. I'd wager my understanding of the business of medical technology, especially with the financial, IP, technical, and regulatory aspects, is a good bit more informed than your own.
In the absence of copyright and the GPL, source code can be obtained via purchase. Because liberty has been restored, the purchasers of this source code are free to reproduce it and resell it, or even to build upon. it.
You still haven't explained yourself. I can just as easily say:
In the presence of copyright and without GPL, source code can be obtain via purchase (or for free: see BSD projects). Because liberty has been created, the purchasers of this source code are free to reproduce it and resell it, or even build upon it.
The difference copyright itself makes is that if the author actually does want to release his code, he has an additional legal tool to set conditions for its release (like with the GPL) or he can choose to set no conditions at all (see artistic license). Even without copyright, however, the author can make its release contingent on signing a license which restricts your rights and would also give the author legal tools against 3rd parties that might interfere with that contract (like someone that wants to copy your copy). In other words, the GPL stripped of copyright is no different than the BSD license in the world of copyright.
The author is entitled to exploit these privately, offer them for sale, or rental, and even disclose them subject to NDA.
You call it an entitlement. Yet the GPL removes from any 3rd party the right to do whatever they want with GPL code and they ironically call the removal of this right more "liberty" and you threaten to "force" them with the law if they're doing something they don't like. I find it rather ironic. Somehow its most vociverous advocates construe an awkward greater good scenario, yet they utterly fail to recognize the greater good arguments of society to have any other kind of license.
If the GPL advocates are truly courageous and believe in this copyright free world, they would release under the BSD today because that's effectively what their license would be without copyright.
Liberty is the removal of unethical forces imposed on the public by copyright and patents
This is a tautological argument. Liberty is the right of people to do as they please with their own creative work. Libery also works towards the greater good by removing unethical forces (pirates and unauthorized free-loaders) that would rob society of their creative engines.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I am not. I may have overstated it slightly in my short response, but re-selling/licensing old content represents an infinitesimal part of the revenue streams of major city and national newspapers (I doubt the picture is much different for small local papers). I am privy to certain information because a close family member of mine sits on the board of a major city paper and is also major shareholder. Nonetheless, it is common knowledge that between 80-90% of newspaper revenues come from ads (classifieds, local, national, pre-print, and internet) and the remaining 10-20% come from circulation (which, btw, rarely cover the printing costs). You can look it up the SEC filings for McClatchy, Gannett, NYTimes Holdings, etc if you don't believe me: they may not post highly detailed information, but they almost will always breakout ad, circulation, and other revenue (which is very small and contains a lot of other sources of small revenue like commercial printing operations, delivery operations, etc).
Have you no intuition for numbers? Think, please. Although some of these subscription services are certainly pricy, the numbers just don't ad up. There are too few subscribers paying relative to the costs of the entirity of newspaper publishing (even if you ignore these services' overhead costs and profit margin). Your average city paper costs several hundred million dollars each year to operate.
No. What you are arguing is kind of like saying that a butcher shop can survive by selling scrap alone for a few pennies on the dollar. A few million in revenue doesn't even begin to cover your costs when your payroll numbers more than 3000.
No, they really don't. The price you pay for a paper rarely even cover the printing costs of a typical paper. They make almost all of their money by selling assorted ad space (classified, retail, internet, etc).
The two busineses can scarely get any more different. High marginal cost (paper) vs low marginal cost (sw). Two completely different investment timelines. Low risk vs High risk. Heavily dependent on copyright enforcement vs not so much. One customer (sw: end-users) vs Several (p: subscribers, ad, etc).... I could go on.
Nonsense, the problem is one of free-ridership more than anything else. Why pay join a group of X number of people and pay 1K dollars for a professional-quality graphic tool when you can wait an extra day or two to obtain the code for a 3rd party for free (or for some small marginal cost)? Even ignoring the free rider problem, timing presents an additional problem. How does the end-user know that said developers are producing something they want to use if their costs are to be paid upfront? How long upfront are you willing to pay for an uncertain outcome? Why would the developers work without some reasonable assurances of getting paid in full? What is the criteria?
Open source is the one without a (usually) viable business model. Many of those businesses which do produce software fundamentally depend on the ownership of software (MySQL, QT, Sleepcat, etc) to fund their development activities. While their actions might be GPL compliant, they aren't compliant with RMS' stated philosophy (non-ownership of ideas).
Insane??? How is Photoshop "insane" while GIMP is "sane" when the former is so much better than the latter? How does one begin to "sell" labor on a product that must necessarily be split amongst millions of users, so as to be economically viable, if not as an owned product? Unless the developer choose to distribute the software with some exotic DRM or remote terminal solution, I fail to see how that is possible (especially not if the source code is freely usable).
Huh? This is an aweful comparison. All of this information is very much owned and the publishers definitely extract profit directly from your viewership regardless of the specifics (ads, subscription, hybrid, republication rights, etc). If you were to copy their articles and repost them en masse without compensating them adequately, then you can bet your sweet a** that they would employ counter-measures and sue you if it came to it. What's more, publishing software and newspapers are completely different businesses from a financial point of view. Newspaper content is by its very nature only valuable if it is timely and any one copy only represents a fraction of their capital investment; contrast this with software, like say Adobe Photoshop, where 1 snapshot of the object code represents the bulk of the investment and the newer version (usually) offers little utility. In a few seconds, you can expropriate many millions of dollars of capital investment in R&D.
BTW-The NYTimes has gone to a partial subscription model too. Please see "Times Select" @ ~$50/year
The level of usage by the users. Stallman himself offered usage of the program as the measure of its social benefit (or "wealth" as he put it). Compare Linux desktop to Windows. Excel to GNUMeric/etc. Photoshop to GIMP. iTunes to whatever.... The areas where open source even commands a 25% marketshare are few and far between (hell, even 5% is very rare). Open sources biggest gains have been where Microsoft has exerted its monopoly powers (Linux servers, Firefox, etc). Perhaps open sources barriers to usage (e.g., usability, lack of features, documentation, etc) are higher than the premiums charged by proprietary solutions? I think so.
The later two arguments, that products can be improved on and that code sharing car occur with open source, should result in an improved product that consumers allegedly want. They have not resulted in demonstrably superior products when viewed on the whole and often result in clearly inferior products. I would argue that, while there is some truth to his last two points, the incentive which is destroyed by the open source model far outweigh the theoretical benefits bestowed by them (lateral code sharing and project modification).
Microsoft has used its monopoly powers to make IE dominant. They don't make money by selling IE and they have invested relatively little into it since they crushed Netscape so this arg
What's more, your arguments also miss the point about the status quo. The shareholders of these various software programs agreed to invest money to develop and maintain photoshop and like programs on the condition that they get high returns on their investment. Your argument is kind of like arguing that, as a car owner, it really wouldn't impact you if GM (or whomever) doesn't pay its employees for the work they performed on your car after it rolls off the assembly line and that, therefore, labor costs should not be a factored into car building.
Stallman attempted to dismiss the incentive argument as just being about how well developers eat and live (necessity vs "sushi" and "condos"). He then goes on to argue how inferior the closed-source development model is because the users can improve/tweak the programs and because code can't be shared across projects. Well, 20 some years after he established his movement, open source development has far less user-adoption than closed source code does.
One of the biggest reasons for the relative lack of adoption of open source as compared to closed source is that RMS ignores the absolute importance of capital investment in modern software development (Developing software was much more of a hobbyists activity 20 years ago because it was generally much less complex--one man could much more easily produce a product worth using for millions of people) No one wants to investment enough money to employ 10 developers for a year or two, ignoring pay rates for a minute, if they can't get a good return on their investment even if the resulting product actually takes off (there is still a chance people don't want it... more risk... more return needed). Even the personal motivation of the developers is important. If I produce 50% more than my developer co-workers because I'm smarter and work harder, then I want more than just name in the credits and perhaps a goldstar next to my name. If some large company won't pay me appropriately, then I'll take some personal risk join/start a startup that will at least give me an equity stake for my blood, sweat, and tears.
RMS also ignores the fact that many proprietary companies also go into the business of facilitating software development with the production of libraries and utilities...
But anyways-I know there are people that like to code for its own sake. I am one of those people sometimes. However, if I'm not getting paid as a developer or if I'm not likely recieve a payout as an entrepreneur (which I am now), then I'm apt to want to only work on the things that I want to work on today. These things tend to be very different than what the majority of the population, average users/companies, want and need (the applications themselves, the scope of the work, the quality, etc). Where is the fun in perfecting install and un-installation routines? Documentation/Help files? Making an easy UI for beginners? Making sure that it runs without modification on many different hardware/software configurations?....
It may not prevent it in so many words, but its very requirements drastically reduces the potential to generate revenue from software development activities. One might sell the first few copies or perhaps work out a dual-license model (which depends on copyright/ownership)...but the rest is pretty much just all prayer. The "support" idea largely hasn't been borne out by reality.
I would agree that most users are completely ignorant of the status of the code itself (which is part of the reason why RMS' second argument is flawed). However, they can certainly appreciate the difference in software availability/quality. There are only a handful of open source programs that even begin to have any kind of potential for mainstream acceptance.
No, it's largely a philosophical movement. Sure, the linux kernel and a handful of other open source projects are motivated by more pragmatic concerns, but this is certainly not true of GNU and many other projects.
A) fewer people will use the software (because it tries to prevent people from using w/o paying)
B) the software is less useful to people because they can't modify the original program
C) proprietary software is less valuable because other developers in lateral areas can't learn from it.
It seems pretty clear to me that his arguments failed on these pragmatic grounds and that he's had to shift his anti-ownership rational to far more nebulous and entirely philosophical arguments about "freedom" for its own sake.
The facts are:
A) Contrary to his "first level" of harm: proprietary software has vastly outcompeted open software despite its barriers.
B) Contrary to his "second level" of harm: that most users still prefer closed source software despite the fact that they can't tinker with it and despite the fact that it costs more/has more barriers.
C) Contrary to his "third level" of harm: that proprietary software still appeals more to its end users despite the fact that proprietary developers benefit little from the pool of open source code. This despite the fact that open source developers supposedly have a huge advantage over proprietary developers because they can exploit the GPL and other copyleft code to a level that their counterparts cannot.
In short, he's given up on his pragmatic rationale since they've been proven almost entirely wrong. I'll concede that there is something to be said for the sharing of code in some cases, but we're to choose rationally between no ownership vs choice of ownership (the status quo) that the latter is the only sensible and pragmatic choice given his own (old) arguments and the empirical evidence (or lack thereof) from his so-called copyleft movement.
But if he's truly judging the value of open source vs proprietary software primarily on the pragmatic grounds of user-adoption, then he should concede that, ~20 years later, proprietary software has been far more valuable for society because it has been much more widely adopted.
Mark me as flamebait if you must, but I do think he's made a dramatic, but quiet shift, in his rationale for doing away with proprietary software. Proprietary software is no longer bad primarily because it isn't as widely used as free software is supposed to be, but because closedness itself...just is (bad). Ok, he touches briefly on code reuse and such... but those certainly weren't his primary justifications and these seem to be his supporting arguments anyways....
-5 Troll (Dogma Violation)
No, I'm really referring about the trend within a whole range of areas within software development. MySQL vs proprietary products is just one comparison amongst many.
I completely agree that smaller companies tend to be vastly more efficient and better managed than larger ones (not to mention that they tend to have higher caliber employees). This is precisely why I left the big company.
The operative word is "more" innovative. Open source can and does innovate sometimes, but these are heavily biased towards lesser innovation (especially in the area of small scale software development). By lesser I mean something which requires a relatively small amount of developer energy to bring to fruition, particularly to reach that first stage where the benefits of the innovation become immediately more useful than the alternatives and, to the extent they continue to grow, where small incremental changes can yield appreciable benefits. If you're talking about a small module/library/application to make programming or perhaps system administration a little easier, this is precisely the area where open source shines, especially in an area where it'd be difficult or impossible to sustain a business on (particularly at the outset). Most software that companies and end-users need and want are not built on small scale development alone. Contrast these small innovations with developing, say, a completely new or innovate RAD evironment, an area where a lot of development energy must be spent before it truly becomes useful. This is even more true when you're talking about areas and whole domains that most open source developers simply don't know or care about.
No, I mean just what I said.
Taking another company to court is little consolation for shareholders if your business operations are interrupted for any substantial length of time. It also doesn't offer much insulation for the employee if they irresponsibly selected a shoddy sofware package.
Sometimes, but these are largely only with programs that are already customized for the business. The issue with open source is that most programs aren't even remotely appropriate in the first place.
The issue is less that my specific business wants feature X, but that most
Is it really that hard to admit: "I was wrong"?
Incidentally, when you write a statement like "If you are not writing drivers you are fine" repeatedly this implies that not writing drivers is a sufficient condition to be free and clear of the GPL's requirements (regardless of whether or not you distribute). LOGIC!
In my actual experience, the areas where open source was even a remote contender were few and far between (in some cases, they were better, but it was very rare). Even when my employers were cash strapped, when I was far more optimistic about the state of open source software and when I used much of it myself, I could rarely say with a straight face that it was the best or even cheapest solution when all was said and done. This is particularly true when I had to consider the time involved in maintaining the systems (esp. training/managing my department well enough so it wasn't dependent on just 1 or 2 people) and making things clear to the users.
No offense, but I read your resume. You've been out of school and working for real companies for maybe 3 actual years? In that time you've managed some web servers and done some web development work? Web server/programming is one of the few where open source is relatively strong. There is, however, a much broader world out there to consider. What's more, your level of responsibility and the duration for which you saw it through would have a huge impact on your views on cost vs. benefit.
And for the record, I'm not all "happy-happy" about closed source software. I do have my gripes, especially with some of the stuff Microsoft has put out. We, however, are comparing the relative strengths of open vs closed systems. I've experienced a wide array of software quality, however the general trend was that the proprietary alternatives were dramatically better than the open source ones (with some notable exceptions)
Then please name some of them and tell me which open source alternative was superior and why. I think we may find a pattern here.
Huh? This doesn't make sense. I certainly sought out open source solutions when possible. I know I was not alone in that. Often times it was initially attractive because we could obtain it quickly and at an attractive price point (~$0), little/no impact on the budget and no approval necessary for big ticket alternatives,
If you want to try to claim that your entire contention was merely that the GPL applies when something is distributed, despite getting no argument froom anyone on this matter, then you should know that this contradicts your other statements, e.g., "If you are not writing drivers you are fine" and "If you are writing code and you are using a library you did not write then you are not violating the GPL"
Please: grow up; learn to read with comprehrension; and loose the penis envy. It is unattractive. No wonder you still haven't been with a woman.
Incidentally, it is clear that your understanding of the GPL and programming in general is very poor. So for you to call real programmers, who actually do real work with the GPL, names only makes yourself look like even more of an ass.
Which is academic for most users, even for developers like myself, when compared to the current and potential restrictions GPL-like licenses can place on you. For instance, when MySQL switched their client-library licenses from LGPL to GPL, this forced many companies that distributed or employed proprietary software with MySQL to make some very tough choices. With GPL v3 and other changes around the corner, many more companies and end-users will be negatively impacted.
If GPL projects can switch licenses and argue that applications that make simple library calls are derivative and thus must be GPLd too, why can't GPL v10 argue that even using an open source server over a network also makes the clients' derivative/non-compliant? Why not argue that, say, anything compiled with GCC must be GPL'd or at least open source? Or that all output of GPL'd products must be public domain/GPL if distributed? I know some people may say this is absurd, but RMS and his follower's agenda is pretty extreme and I think they'll do whatever they think they can get away with.
The problem is that you, the end-user, are not the customer for most of these GPL projects. For most GPL projects, their egos and their philosophy is their primary and often only concern. That you may benefit from their work is perhaps a secondary concern, at best. If you don't like their direction, the retort is basically "tough luck". Well, it may be their prerogative, but that does not mean I'd ever want to place myself in a situation where my livelyhood is at stake with those people. It is an unnecessary risk.
Oh, and, btw you overstate your case. The source code for many proprietary software packages can be had, as insurance, if you're willing to pay for it and sign an agreement not to disclose it. Other companies will also do something-like source code escrow...
No, far from it.
Name some major proprietary applications, that wasn't already highly obsolete, that was simply discontinued or where the business went belly up. There aren't too many. Sure, you'll have the rare monopolist that forces an upgrade after several years and there may be some grumbles about annoying features and what not, but they'll usually at least provide a relatively clear upgrade/conversion path (which is more than I can say for most open source projects). Sure some niche vendors have gone out of business, but these are areas where open source is a total non-entity.
Some are, but there is little comparison. Most areas offer several good commercial alternatives (along with several mediocre/cheap ones) whereas there is generally no acceptable open source alternative. Even a highly successful project like MySQL (which truly depends on its hybrid model) is still half-assed for many customers when it comes to competing against the likes of MSSQL, Oracle, and others.
Someone did a study a few years ago of the most popular projects on SourceForge and found that, of the 100 most popular projects, the median number of developers on each project was 4 and the mode was 1. This is even more devasting when you consider that most of these developers are doing this on their spare-time for sh*ts and grins.
A) Because most mainstream commercial/proprietary software tends to be more innovative and better. Yes, there are some exceptions, but they are very few in number and tend to be in areas where the demand is so small that it would be difficult to sustain a business on (the Windows monopoly vs Linux, perhaps being an exception in some ways).
B) Because its licensing terms are far more predictable and understandable than GPL-based software. I'd far rather trust one top-down group motivated by money (selfish, perhaps, but pragmatic), especially if I have a contract with them, than the bulk of GPL community based projects which are motivated by several different philosophies, a constantly evolving licenses, and which has too many self-promoting zealots which can spoil the works (e.g., RMS). Witness licenses going from LGPL -> GPLv2, GPLv2 -> GPLv3, and god knows where else. Even if the projects which you're immediately dependent are managed entirely by pragmatic people and has acceptable terms at present, all it takes is a few zealots changing licenses at a lower level (like its libraries, OS, etc) to force a license change and/or splinter the community.
C) Because the company that is maintaining the product is far more likely to stay in business and motivate itself to the kinds of support that you need. A company based on GPL v2 with an equally popular product is likely to only have, say, 5% of the revenue that the proprietary company nets and that company must answer to several camps with hugely divergent interests. Even with the dual-licensed business model companies, like MySQL, you are heavily dependent on them staying in business. If they go belly up, then so does the copyright assignment that allows them to dual-license... the odds of another company making this work by trying to provide support alone is highly unlikely.
D) Because most open source projects are simply half-assed and under-staffed. There are only a handful of open source projects have a critical mass of developers or a viable company behind it to make it acceptable today let alone provide any kind of assurance for the future.
Yes, I know the open source dogma answer to all these is "but you have the source!". I just don't think it means much in practice for most companies and individuals as they cannot afford the time and technical resources in practice to maintain said software themselves. Yes, some of you will say that it can be forked, but this often does not work out this way as there is often not enough people behind it on aggregate (never mind behind any one specific project organizer). When MySQL changed their client-libraries from LGPL to GPL, where did the LGPL fork go? No where.
Sigh. You are as wrong as you are ignorant. MySQL converted their client-library licenses to GPLv2 (from LGPL) several years ago. Both the GNU zealots and MySQL believe that any applications which use libraries licensed under the GPL are derivative and thus must be wholly licensed under the GPL. This is not an academic point either as this dual-licensing model is where MySQL has derived most of their revenues from (which, depends, on the GPL's force over client libraries).
From the GPL v2:
"If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License"
From MySQL:
Previously, the MySQL client libraries were licensed under the LGPL (the Lesser General Public License) and now they use the GPL (the General Public License). What prompted this change?
MySQL's goal is to provide all its software under a free software/open source license. The change from the LGPL to the GPL for the client libraries was made in 2001 during the development of MySQL 4.0 to help MySQL AB more easily differentiate between a proprietary user who should buy a commercial license and a free software user who should use the GPL license. Previously there were people that were misusing the GPL by distributing the MySQL server tightly coupled with their applications and claiming that the GPL doesn't affect them because the client libraries were free to use.
This change has allowed MySQL to support its dual licensing model by better identifying when someone is using MySQL software in a closed source fashion without commitment to the open source philosophy. While MySQL supports the open source ideals, we also believe in the notion of "Quid Pro Quo" or fair exchange. For developers building open source applications using MySQL, the change in the client licensing policy has no effect.
Based on feedback from our users, MySQL has introduced an exception that makes it possible to combine the MySQL client libraries with software that uses various Free and Open Source software ("FOSS") licenses. This is known as the FOSS License Exception.
Also from MySQL:
"If you include one or more of the MySQL drivers in your non-GPL application (so that your application can run with MySQL), you need a commercial license for the driver(s) in question. The MySQL drivers currently include an ODBC driver, a JDBC driver and the C language library."
"If you develop and distribute a commercial application and as part of utilizing your application, the end-user must download a copy of MySQL; for each derivative work, you (or, in some cases, your end-user) need a commercial license for the MySQL server and/or MySQL client libraries."
Wrong. The GPL affords no such protections. PHP and other open source projects were at risk when they made the change. MySQL had to create a special special exception for these FLOSS programs. A MySQL client-library derivative work (e.g., PHP) is OK as long as the source code is released (under one of the enumerated FLOSS licenses or GPL). MySQL, however, still claims that if you write an application on top of one of these other FLOSS programs, e.g., PHP, and is considered derivative, i.e., connects to MySQL with their libraries, then you must release your source code with your distribution. In other
If you participate in an "or later" project, then you are ceding control to the FSF which, for all we know, may well come down to anything Stallman says goes. For instance, GPL v4 could say that the only people that may enjoy the modifications to this code are people that have signed the "Anti-Ownership Pledge" or some other craziness.
Not according to some open source zealots who believe that any GPL project, especially Linux, was automatically "or later" even though it said no such thing.
No, the FSF and only the FSF can re-write the GPL. The only limits they place on themselves are vague at best and any anyone that places their code under such vague terms is taking considerable risk.
How is it "goofy evil shit"? The GPL v2 restricted itself to "I share my code and if you use my code, you share your changes". The GPL v3 has crossed into entirely new territory by trying to define the very rights of its end-users (patents, privacy, etc) and DRM. If it's crossing into new territory, what boundries does it have? "The spirit" of the license seems to mean anything Stallman says it does.
Wrong. I recognize the legal authority for them to do this precisely because I believe so strongly in copyright. That, however, does not mean that anything they do with those rights is good for society or even good for their stated aims.
I don't disagree. It is fair when the user has a choice to agree to a set of terms or not use it at all. This, however, is very ironic and hypocritical coming from people that disagree with DRM rights, Tivoization, DCMA, and even copyright itself.
Sigh, you still don't get it. The GPL appeals to people to reject the hording of source code and rights in favor of the open source concept of community, that everyone works towards the same goal of code sharing and a reasonably well understood set of rules. The zealots in the community, a relative minority, have changed those terms several times on people who have already adopted and made contributions, without the contributors and end-users appreciating that they can pull the rug out from under them like that. Many people have been burned by this and, I suspect, many more will with GPL v3 and its coming craziness.
It may be their legal right (although co-opting code without permission is definitely not), but that does not mean that people should not be wary of zealots that would or legal rights that empower them to do that. If Microsoft were to suddenly withdraw all support/patches for Windows XP tomorrow to compel people to go with Vista that would probably be legal and even "their right" (unless they made legal commitments to maintain support) but consumers would be justified to avoid them in the future and be wary that they may exercise such rights. What Stallman and his zealots are doing isn't that dissimilar.
I'm not the only one that feels this way, even the
With a more permissive license, i.e., non-GPL, the public is entitled to build upon your work and any deritive work released to the public (with source). The primary difference (before V3) is that the GPL forces every developer that distribute derivative works to also make their source code freely available.
My points are:
1) Many works distributed under artistic/public domain type licenses are distributed without substantial improvements being robbed from the public. The practical difference to public domain end-users and public-domain oriented developers quite is small.
2) GPL's marginal difference is only a relative one. In other words, it may assure that 100% of the improvements are released back to the public (instead of, say, 80%), but the GPL's requirements also prevent many improvements from being made in the first place because many businesses and individuals cannot even cover their development costs as a consequence of its provisions. It may well be that it actually enjoys fewer public domain contributions in absolute terms than more permissive licenses.
3) The GPL is not just the removal of downstream copyright rights. Such a license may be better described as "all derivatives must be freeware/copyright-free" instead of "everything must be opensource"
4) GPL version 3 is a major departure from its prior two versions. It is now actually prescribing what kind of derivative software may be written, how its end-users might use it ("privacy"), and even how that software must be written.
The same argument can be made for property rights, privacy rights, and other "human rights".
I don't wish to argue semantics endlessly. However, you should consider that the producers, at the very least, are following precisely this contract. They are creating with the express understanding that they will control their work and thus be able to make money. Likewise, the purchasers or users do not have to use it if they aren't given the "rights" they like.
Wrong. The right is not granted to publishers and has not for a long time. The right is granted to the authors (for 200-300 years in US and England) and the authors can and do, in some cases, assign their rights to others.
We can all theoretically forge currency too. Just because we can doesn't make it a liberty. Nor does it mean it is right for society.
This is a semantic argument, but there is considerable disagreement about human rights amongst civilized nations even. For instance, "privacy" is a very nebulous and much contested term.
You do have a choice. You don't have to buy or download a copyrighted work if you don't like
What sophistry! An individual absolutely cannot copyright something that has been placed in the public domain (or similar license) by a 3rd party. They can only copyright their own derivative work. That copyright does not remove anything from the public that would not be there had said derivative work not been created in the first place. Nor would the lack of copyright compel anyone to share their source code (or other new things) as the GPL insists under copyright.
No slight of hand or turn of phrase is going to change the fact that you're misrepresenting this basic fact.
Copyright is social contract, just like physical property and many of the rights its owners are entitled to are. The voters of each country define its laws, by choosing to live in the country you are obliged to live with any such reasonable laws for as long as they are on the books. You can try to vote against it and protest, but that doesn't make it any less real.
In any event, are you seriously suggesting that you would respect a downstream contract agreements? If I give my binary/code to party A and make them sign a NDA/non-copy/non-reverse-engineering agreement, would you at least admit that I have the right to do this? Would you also admit that conditions imposed by the first party also apply to 3rd parties (even if said parties say they did not partake in the original violation and did not know of the contract)? If so how does this difer from copyright today in practice given that this is precisely what the great majority of copyright holders would insist on?
So the government is imposing on my liberty to sell anything I want? Crack? Untested pills (which is suggested cure cancer)? The right to drive at 200 mph down a public road? The right to keep all my money to myself, i.e., not pay taxes? The "right" to carry a loaded weapon on my person? The right to form monopoly and fix prices? The right to forge currency and other official documents? The right to teach religion in school? The right not to wear clothes in public?
Does the governmen not have the right to regulate any of these so-called liberties? And if you say they're not liberties, then are they human rights?
That is a very sophomoric position and does not hold up to scrutiny.
It does impose on my right to privacy and my freedom of action. It takes from my freedom to do whatever I want (i.e., keep my code private, use DRM,
This implies that the public should have the right to violate contract. Real freedom includes the right to contract. Copyright is just a form of contract - albeit with society at large. Patents are different insofar as they are broad enough to create a collision of rights, but this is not necessarily so and, to some extent, allowing for the potential for conflict is better than the alternative: no rights and thus little meaningful investment in innovate efforts.
Nonsense. You would certainly restrict my freedom to enter your apartment at will, yet I'm sure you would say that this is your liberty and not mine. It is only a "liberty" if have a right to it in the first place; you have no right to product of my own mind unless I explicitly grant you that right. The fact that I give a product to another person does not mean that you then have the right to copy at will from that person, especially when I explicitly make it a condition of the exchange that no copying is to occur. Your act of copying would be a violation of the right of two people to contract and a violation of social contract.
Under your silly definition, the GPL unquestionably violates liberty. You might make greater good arguments, but it's highly hypocritical.
If I take a project under GPL v2 which does not say "or later" and make a (major) contribution under GPL v2 without saying "or later", you do not have the legal right to incorporate my changes into a GPL v3 project (or any version other than v2) without my permission.
What does "or later" even mean? Does it mean anything Stallman says it does? Is he even restricted by those things that might violate the prior version of the license? If he is just restricted to those things, do you have any idea how much further he can legally go? Why cede so much authority to any one person (especially someone whose agenda is far-out idealistic and not pragmatic)? If you want to say this is merely the "FSF", not RMS personally, I'm not so sure it matters (and RMS may be able to simply restructure the FSF at his will).
If the users don't care, then it's really not an issue. That said, I think you're exxagerating. What's more, any license changes associated with automatic updates would almost certainly be legally unenforcable if the user did not consent to the change (even many terms of shrinkwrap licenses can be considered unenforcable).
You obviously have sexual and emotional issues to resolve as you keep on repeating this.
You also seem to be unable to answer my question as you keep on avoiding it. About the only restriction the FSF puts on "or later" GPL changes is that it "will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns." This, however, is awefully vague in practice (especially for those that merely stumble upon the license and do not RMS' absurd philosophy) and gives a great deal of presumed (though not necessarily enforcable) leeway to the FSF. Almost everything they say about the spirit of the license relates to software and especially the freedom of the user to use the code however they wish as long as they disclose it. Trying to limit how other people use other non-derivative software programs, patents, encryption, DRM, and more simply does not follow from any reasonable reading of the GPL. Since Stallman violates a reasonable reading and fails to really clarify what the "spirit" of the license is exactly -- I would simply never trust him and thus any project that doesn't practically restrict itself to GPL v2 (none of this "or later" crap).
To come back to my original point: While this may be technically true, it is not always true in practice. If, say, Linux were to suddenly go to V3 tomorrow (presuming every copyright holder signed off on this), this would mean that the burden would suddenly fall on me to fix every problem in the old code independently (or pray for a group of like-minded people). This is a real risk if these sorts of changes are allowed. If you make commitments to an open source project or platform, you are not just dependent on the conditions of the current code, but also on future support. Thus you may be essentially compelled to accept terms you disagree with.
Any fringe group can make such a claim. I'd hardly describe Linus Torvalds and most productive kernel developers to be merely amongst the middle of the herd of the population. They have been aware of the arguments for a long time. They simply disagree. I'd argue that they're more savvy and pragmatic; it is mainly only the zealots that don't have better things to do, like actually contributing lots of code, that worry about extending the GPL even further. It seems to me that most of the key developers on the most important GPL projects are also the least likely to agree with these GPL extensions (more than just Linux kernel developers)
Several reasons:
1) They may have signed up for completely pragmatic reasons. In other words, they found the existing code or platform (Linux, MySQL, etc) to offer enough value to accept to requirements imposed by the GPL at the time they made their initial decision and/or on the date of their last contribution.
2) They may have started on a GPL project because they agreed with the existing requirements of the existing GPL license for their specific project. For instance, Linus may have felt that getting back any code modifications to the kernel important, given the fundamental nature of operating systems, to be important enough to justify its impositions. That does not mean, however, that he agrees with the extremist direction Stallman and others are trying to take it in. He does, in fact, disagree with trying to place any limits on the freedom of the end-user as the GPL v3 is trying to do.
3) They may have been essentially forced into it. If I develop an (open source) application that depends on another set of code that was developed under a different license (e.g., artistic) when I made the choice, I may be essentially forced to adopt the new license (GPL v2) to get the updates I need (or try to maintain it alone). Likewise, one project switching to GPL v3 may force anything associated with it to as well.
4) They may simply have been ignorant of the recent changes in the GPL or they may have inadvertantly included (new) GPL (v X) code in and thus been compelled to go along. This is becoming increasingly likely as Stallman seems to be wanting to make more and more changes to the licensing and re-defining what is and is-not compatible. Linux may not adopt the GPL v3, but if some modules are included with that license, it starts to become a burden on the user to keep track of all the different licenses and their implications.
The point is not that I can't accept "the rules". I accept in principle that someone can set whatever rules they want on their own copyrighted work. The problem I have is that I may make commitments based on Version X of "the rules" with the understanding that this is the basic framework underwhich everyone has agreed to operate, only to find out later that Version X+1 (or +10) is so extreme that I'm screwed. What's more, I may make contributions based on Version X with the tacit understanding that the community is in fundamental agreement and will move along accordingly, only to find that now some zealot has modified my c
Yes, Pfizer only spent about 14% of their revenues on recurring R&D last year. However, they also spent:
- More than 16% of revenue to manufacture those drugs (COGS)
- More than 3% of revenues in non-recurring R&D (i.e., acquiring and developing external IP).
- More than 6% of revenue paying their corporate income taxes (given directly back to tax payers)
- More than 2% of revenue to pay for costs associated with suspending a drug (Bextra)
So, before we even touch on their overhead (legal, IT, mgmt, etc) and promotional costs, we easily account for 41% of their revenue relating to the development and manufacture of drugs (plus income taxes--to make it comparable to a non-profit).
The two organization types are, of course, completely different and it is hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Most of these non-profits are not engaged in much in the way of actual operations: they exist purely to transfer funds to other individuals or entities (which, in turn, have their own costs). So another way you might want to consider it is to compare the amount they spend on promotional/marketing/fund-raising activities as these are the essential activities that allow them to engage in R&D and production (which, ironically, most slashdotters casually regard as waste)...
Pfizer spent an estimated 16% of their revenue (based on industry avg of 50% of their SG&A) on promotional costs (sales and marketing activities). Compare this with the fact that most charities spend at least 25% (some much more) of their revenues on pure fund-raising activities. Even if we add in the 15% in dividend and stock buy-back (in a relatively flush year) this comes out to about 31% (promotional + profit paid out) for Pfizer versus perhaps a rather conservative 25% for charities (and charities, of course, don't have to pay volunteers...). And, of course, more than 50% of the promotional costs of big pharma goes to free samples (which are given to doctors...which are given to patients).... which is arguably a net benefit since many people save prescription costs this way and are allowed to try crucial drugs that they otherwise might not (due to inefficiencies in managed care)...
Looking at the overhead costs themselves may not be very fair, but I suspect that most corporations are a lot leaner on average than the average charity since they are driven by profit-motive and are not encumbered with the same kind of effective restrictions on hiring, firing, and re-structuring. None of these comparisons may be very fair and some of numbers may be open to some interpretation... but they should at least provide some food for thought.
I personally believe that they both types of entities have their role in society. I just think that people that advocate destroying these profit driven corporations are not doing their research and have not really turned a critical eye towards the so-called alternatives.
Another thing you might want to consider is that certain charities may be competing against other charities in ways that are net harmful to society. It may very well be harmful to society if I give 90% of my charitable contributions to, say, breast cancer instead of to things that would return a greater benefit with less dollars and bring them much sooner (like, say, treating malaria in the 3rd world).
The primary difference is in their stated missions. This, however, does not mean that the non-profits actually do more with the money they make. By the time you add up all the money wasted to raise more money and maintain the relatively inefficienct overhead structure of the typical charity, they may well be far less efficient with their resources than, say, the typical pharma company. Compare the ~15% "wasted" to dividend payouts and stock buybacks in 05 at Pfizer to the ++50% of revenue wasted to simply raise money at most charities (the dividends of pharma serve as their own sales pitch and they're much cheaper).
This is completely illogical. Profit and public benefit are not mutually exclusive. Thousands of years of capitalism has proven this. In order to secure investment so that you can spend billions of dollars in R&D, you need to return a healthy profit to the investors.
How much money have you given to medical research charities? I bet it is something close to zero. Compare this to healthcare investment. NIH and other grants do not usually even begin to cover the expenses to take technology to market.
I have. I'm not sure what you regard as "healthcare" though. I have worked for medical device companies for many years and worked with, and even for, big pharma. I have also been involved with early stage/VC investment in many biotech and medical device companies. Through these experiences I have come to known many entrepreneurs and executives in bio-tech/pharma and medical devices, not to mention many doctors and industry and academic researchers. I'd wager my understanding of the business of medical technology, especially with the financial, IP, technical, and regulatory aspects, is a good bit more informed than your own.
In the presence of copyright and without GPL, source code can be obtain via purchase (or for free: see BSD projects). Because liberty has been created, the purchasers of this source code are free to reproduce it and resell it, or even build upon it.
The difference copyright itself makes is that if the author actually does want to release his code, he has an additional legal tool to set conditions for its release (like with the GPL) or he can choose to set no conditions at all (see artistic license). Even without copyright, however, the author can make its release contingent on signing a license which restricts your rights and would also give the author legal tools against 3rd parties that might interfere with that contract (like someone that wants to copy your copy). In other words, the GPL stripped of copyright is no different than the BSD license in the world of copyright.
You call it an entitlement. Yet the GPL removes from any 3rd party the right to do whatever they want with GPL code and they ironically call the removal of this right more "liberty" and you threaten to "force" them with the law if they're doing something they don't like. I find it rather ironic. Somehow its most vociverous advocates construe an awkward greater good scenario, yet they utterly fail to recognize the greater good arguments of society to have any other kind of license.
If the GPL advocates are truly courageous and believe in this copyright free world, they would release under the BSD today because that's effectively what their license would be without copyright.
This is a tautological argument. Liberty is the right of people to do as they please with their own creative work. Libery also works towards the greater good by removing unethical forces (pirates and unauthorized free-loaders) that would rob society of their creative engines.