This is no different from american 'affirmative action' or gay anti-discrimination laws -- they may be needed under the current circumstances, but they do not address the REAL problem, which is social inequality and prejudice. Those laws, just like current copyright and patent system, are crutches -- they treat the syptoms rather than the cause.
There's a reason they treat the symptoms rather than the cause - most civilized societies recognize that in order to get to and treat the "cause" would mean implementing Orwellian-like policies about what is and isn't acceptable thought.
Remember, innocent until proven guilty... and you must act in order to be proven guilty; otherwise, your condemnation is based on the predicate that your accuser understands what you might do - and that you should be punished not for what you have done, but what you might do.
Patent law and IP law fall into the same baliwick - they are an imperfect attempt, by an imperfect society, to ensure that the rights of some people are protected in an enforceable way.
Fundamentally, these are answers to the ethical problem concerning ownership of information. The problem does exist, and simply ignoring it (and treating information no differently from other forms of property) is not an answer.
Hmmm? I think I agree with the statement "ownership of information is unethical".
The problem I have is classifying source code as "information". The algorithms used within that code are information, for example; the way those algorithms are implemented are not.
If you need an analogy, think of a screenwriter - that industry has some fairly rigid rules about the format and content of a screenplay; that's the algorithm. Copyrighting or protecting that algorithm is unethical. Copyrighting or protecting the pieces of work that was created using that algorithm, IMHO, is a just being civil.
Lastly, with farmer, there is no similarity at all. When a farmer gives out their crop, they can no longer use it -- material property is that way. if you give out source, YOUR copy of the source is still usable to you. But the time I have spent creating that source is gone, lost to me. Those minutes, hours, days and weeks spent designing, debugging, and coding the final item are the cost of that item - not the few cents needed to make a printed or electronic copy.
> The GPL protects Linux in that if Microsoft makes changes to anything licensed under the GPL, they have > to release the source code of their changes.
Correct - but that doesn't answer the question: *will* the Linux community accept patches to the kernel from MS when those patches are offered in order to "improve" Linux so that it will run MS apps better (or at all?)
For example, if MS offers a patch that adds Win32-like registry support to the kernel. They've made the source available, it's under the GPL, and hell! - you can download the latest version direct from the MSLinux DevTeam CVS repository, if you want it...
...and *all* MSLinux products *require* that this patch be installed in the OS, otherwise they can't run, period.
Lather, rinse, repeat with MS patches for networking support, filesystems, etc., each of which is *required* for closed-source MS apps to work at all. They'd be giving away the source, all right - and slooooowly forcing people who want to use MSLinux products to use *their* version of the OS.
And when 51% of the kernel is source contributd by MS, how long do you think it will take MS to find a way to claim ownership? Even if they *can't* claim that, legally... what's to keep them from doing so anyways, over and over again in various different ways, and dragging out a lengthy court case that ends with "Whoops! Sorry! We must have misunderstood the GPL!"
Chances are, they wouldn't even end up paying damages - who would they pay, themselves (after all, *they* were the ones who released their code under the GPL), other developers, who? "Let's see, the judgement was for $100 million... and while we had the source tied up in legal battles, we were able to make over a billion off of it."
> gcc, on the other hand, supports every architecture under the sun. gcc also compiles and runs on > every architecture under the sun. Finally, it optimizes on all of those architectures, in most cases only > slightly worst than the best compilers out there.
NOW. I have little experience with gcc, but you can't expect me to believe that the first public release had all these capabilities.
gcc has (obviously) grown and matured over the years. No doubt the first version was a decent compiler, but people (largely folks outside the FSF, I'd wager) have spent a lot of hours and a lot of sweat improving it.
So, let me get this staight: You think MS, Apple, Sun, etc. have the right to claim part ownership of any software I created\compiled with one of their compilers, or link to their libraries?
VHS and audio CD? C'mon, take it to it's logical conclusion. TCP/IP, NNTP, MIME, HTTP, HTML... why, they're all dead protocols! Why in the world would *anyone* think they had an economic incentive to keep these non-proprietary protocols around?
But stereotypes don't come from nowhere! No, they don't. Be careful, though - there's always the danger is that people outside the group come to expect the stereotype, instead of people, and that people inside the group start to act like the stereotype, instead of individuals.... not too surprising when it's in your best interest for people to fight. Good point - laywyers, like police, or soldiers, or various other agents, exist to fight (court cases, crime, battles) and win. Most of my experience with lawyers has been seeing them in their "off" time. Someone who had to face a lawyer (or group of lawyers) day in, day out, as their central opponent in some conflict would no doubt have a different view.
Well, for one, they (and the courts) are pretty much what keeps MS, Oracle, Intel, and other folks from just grabbing GPL'd software and ignoring the license requirements.
My father is a lawyer, as is my brother. Believe it or not, they're human beings, and good people (took me years to realize my brother was OK, of course.) Both of 'em like lawyer jokes, even.
Keep that in mind, will you, when you're posting about how all the idiot lawyers suck and they should be forced to live in stinking garbage heaps? I'm not saying all lawyers are saints - but c'mon, folks, most of 'em are just regular people.
If they have any fault as a group, it's that they tend to live in their own little world, use terms that baffle outsiders, argue among themselves over things as simple as the definition and syntax, and spend long hours deciphering arcane and confusing language in an effort to try and produce something that approaches a working program... er, court case.
In my case - and a few others, I'm sure - I haven't ever really thought too much about the points Jon made. He took the time and effort to write something that opened my mind a bit, and made me think about something I *knew*, but have never really *thought* too much about.
He's also given me something to show to non-open minded, non-/. types, to help open their minds a bit, perhaps, and help them think about it as well.
I never knew that Jon was over 50. To be honest, it significantly changes my opinion about him; in many cases, for the better. A 20-something geek wannabe is an entirely different person from a 50-something journalist who decides, damnit, this stuff is *cool* and I'm going to figure it out even if it melts my brain...
My father was on the verge of 50 when we got him his first computer. My dad's a lawyer, a rabid SF reader, a history nut, enjoys technical toys, and is just generally a sharp guy. Granted, I may be biased:-)
Still... thinking back on what my brother and I have gone through with my Dad over the past few years to get him computer-literate and on the net... it looks like Jon's come further, faster, than my Dad ever could have. We can't even convince him to try and tackle Linux (he still has the DOS command cheat sheet I made for him years ago!)
Actually, I think he finds computers (some computers - at least his Mac, apparently) easy to use. For all we know, he may find Linux easy to use, too. I can't explain every piece of technology that impacts my life to the same degree that most Linux users can explain their systems; but that doesn't keep me from using that technology, often very effectively.
He apparently finds the idea of assembling and installing a system to be daunting, though. I can understand that, despite the fact that I enjoy doing it. I know someone who's an automobile hobbyist, who thoroughly enjoyed building a kit car, something I'd never consider doing - for me, a car is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
So, yeah, maybe Jon's article is inappropriate for a hobbyist site. I don't really think/. counts as a hobbyist site, though... you may not like that, but the folks supporting and developing Linux have done a good enough job that people who really don't care about the ins and outs of the hardware and OS are starting to use it. They want something that works as a work processor, or runs a database, or lets them play Quake, and that doesn't demand hours or days of commitment before they can actually do what it is that they wanted to do in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a reason they treat the symptoms rather than the cause - most civilized societies recognize that in order to get to and treat the "cause" would mean implementing Orwellian-like policies about what is and isn't acceptable thought.
Remember, innocent until proven guilty... and you must act in order to be proven guilty; otherwise, your condemnation is based on the predicate that your accuser understands what you might do - and that you should be punished not for what you have done, but what you might do.
Patent law and IP law fall into the same baliwick - they are an imperfect attempt, by an imperfect society, to ensure that the rights of some people are protected in an enforceable way.
Hmmm? I think I agree with the statement "ownership of information is unethical".
The problem I have is classifying source code as "information". The algorithms used within that code are information, for example; the way those algorithms are implemented are not.
If you need an analogy, think of a screenwriter - that industry has some fairly rigid rules about the format and content of a screenplay; that's the algorithm. Copyrighting or protecting that algorithm is unethical. Copyrighting or protecting the pieces of work that was created using that algorithm, IMHO, is a just being civil.
Lastly, with farmer, there is no similarity at all. When a farmer gives out their crop, they can no longer use it -- material property is that way. if you give out source, YOUR copy of the source is still usable to you. But the time I have spent creating that source is gone, lost to me. Those minutes, hours, days and weeks spent designing, debugging, and coding the final item are the cost of that item - not the few cents needed to make a printed or electronic copy.
> The GPL protects Linux in that if Microsoft makes changes to anything licensed under the GPL, they have
> to release the source code of their changes.
Correct - but that doesn't answer the question: *will* the Linux community accept patches to the kernel from MS when those patches are offered in order to "improve" Linux so that it will run MS apps better (or at all?)
For example, if MS offers a patch that adds Win32-like registry support to the kernel. They've made the source available, it's under the GPL, and hell! - you can download the latest version direct from the MSLinux DevTeam CVS repository, if you want it...
...and *all* MSLinux products *require* that this patch be installed in the OS, otherwise they can't run, period.
Lather, rinse, repeat with MS patches for networking support, filesystems, etc., each of which is *required* for closed-source MS apps to work at all. They'd be giving away the source, all right - and slooooowly forcing people who want to use MSLinux products to use *their* version of the OS.
And when 51% of the kernel is source contributd by MS, how long do you think it will take MS to find a way to claim ownership? Even if they *can't* claim that, legally... what's to keep them from doing so anyways, over and over again in various different ways, and dragging out a lengthy court case that ends with "Whoops! Sorry! We must have misunderstood the GPL!"
Chances are, they wouldn't even end up paying damages - who would they pay, themselves (after all, *they* were the ones who released their code under the GPL), other developers, who? "Let's see, the judgement was for $100 million... and while we had the source tied up in legal battles, we were able to make over a billion off of it."
It's called irony, a literary convention often used to make a point in a way that exposes the absurdity of a previous comment.
You might get to it in your next high school Engish Lit class.
> gcc, on the other hand, supports every architecture under the sun. gcc also compiles and runs on
> every architecture under the sun. Finally, it optimizes on all of those architectures, in most cases only
> slightly worst than the best compilers out there.
NOW. I have little experience with gcc, but you can't expect me to believe that the first public release had all these capabilities.
gcc has (obviously) grown and matured over the years. No doubt the first version was a decent compiler, but people (largely folks outside the FSF, I'd wager) have spent a lot of hours and a lot of sweat improving it.
So, let me get this staight: You think MS, Apple, Sun, etc. have the right to claim part ownership of any software I created\compiled with one of their compilers, or link to their libraries?
Give me a break.
VHS and audio CD? C'mon, take it to it's logical conclusion. TCP/IP, NNTP, MIME, HTTP, HTML... why, they're all dead protocols! Why in the world would *anyone* think they had an economic incentive to keep these non-proprietary protocols around?
But stereotypes don't come from nowhere! No, they don't. Be careful, though - there's always the danger is that people outside the group come to expect the stereotype, instead of people, and that people inside the group start to act like the stereotype, instead of individuals. ... not too surprising when it's in your best interest for people to fight. Good point - laywyers, like police, or soldiers, or various other agents, exist to fight (court cases, crime, battles) and win. Most of my experience with lawyers has been seeing them in their "off" time. Someone who had to face a lawyer (or group of lawyers) day in, day out, as their central opponent in some conflict would no doubt have a different view.
Well, for one, they (and the courts) are pretty much what keeps MS, Oracle, Intel, and other folks from just grabbing GPL'd software and ignoring the license requirements.
My father is a lawyer, as is my brother. Believe it or not, they're human beings, and good people (took me years to realize my brother was OK, of course.) Both of 'em like lawyer jokes, even.
Keep that in mind, will you, when you're posting about how all the idiot lawyers suck and they should be forced to live in stinking garbage heaps? I'm not saying all lawyers are saints - but c'mon, folks, most of 'em are just regular people.
If they have any fault as a group, it's that they tend to live in their own little world, use terms that baffle outsiders, argue among themselves over things as simple as the definition and syntax, and spend long hours deciphering arcane and confusing language in an effort to try and produce something that approaches a working program... er, court case.
In my case - and a few others, I'm sure - I haven't ever really thought too much about the points Jon made. He took the time and effort to write something that opened my mind a bit, and made me think about something I *knew*, but have never really *thought* too much about.
He's also given me something to show to non-open minded, non-/. types, to help open their minds a bit, perhaps, and help them think about it as well.
-Samrobb
I never knew that Jon was over 50. To be honest, it significantly changes my opinion about him; in many cases, for the better. A 20-something geek wannabe is an entirely different person from a 50-something journalist who decides, damnit, this stuff is *cool* and I'm going to figure it out even if it melts my brain...
:-)
My father was on the verge of 50 when we got him his first computer. My dad's a lawyer, a rabid SF reader, a history nut, enjoys technical toys, and is just generally a sharp guy. Granted, I may be biased
Still... thinking back on what my brother and I have gone through with my Dad over the past few years to get him computer-literate and on the net... it looks like Jon's come further, faster, than my Dad ever could have. We can't even convince him to try and tackle Linux (he still has the DOS command cheat sheet I made for him years ago!)
Congratulations, Jon. Keep on pluggin.
Has anyone seen any information/speculation on the physical properties this stuff would have?
Actually, I think he finds computers (some computers - at least his Mac, apparently) easy to use. For all we know, he may find Linux easy to use, too. I can't explain every piece of technology that impacts my life to the same degree that most Linux users can explain their systems; but that doesn't keep me from using that technology, often very effectively.
/. counts as a hobbyist site, though... you may not like that, but the folks supporting and developing Linux have done a good enough job that people who really don't care about the ins and outs of the hardware and OS are starting to use it. They want something that works as a work processor, or runs a database, or lets them play Quake, and that doesn't demand hours or days of commitment before they can actually do what it is that they wanted to do in the first place.
He apparently finds the idea of assembling and installing a system to be daunting, though. I can understand that, despite the fact that I enjoy doing it. I know someone who's an automobile hobbyist, who thoroughly enjoyed building a kit car, something I'd never consider doing - for me, a car is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
So, yeah, maybe Jon's article is inappropriate for a hobbyist site. I don't really think
Sigh. This is flamebait, I know. Have at it...