Leaving aside the fact that Google is in fact not leveraging their monopoly on Search (since you can leave News without leaving Search), the fact is that MS killing Netscape - their "crime" - was what lead to its rebirth as Mozilla and then Firefox, which is in my opinion a much better browser than Netscape ever was, but more importantly it conquered plenty of market share despite MS keeping IE bundled with Windows.
Non legally created monopolies are not a big a problem for consumers as people want to believe, particularly in places like the Web where the costs of switching are general quite low.
Your competitors are free to use whatever open source they can to deliver their own solution.
I wrote proprietary competitors, not all competitors. Sure, they're free to use and write open source like us, but then they wouldn't be proprietary!
The fact is, most companies in our field are afraid of open sourcing their applications, and are therefore unable to take advantage of the big copyleft community in which we participate.
Why is a proprietary competitor bound to NOT use any open source software?
All the software we use* and write is GNU AGPL licensed.
*Except for the programming language and its standard library.
Other companies hiring yours generally aren't going to care about that philosophy. They want to know that the program they paid for will work, be maintainable, and most importantly be done cheaper than the competitor.
I think people here have a reading problem.
Sigh. Of course they don't, but never I claimed they did. Quoting my own post:
we're able to benefit from a big open source community an deliver better tested software in less time and for less money.
No, you can have many physical servers with many IPs.
Eventually people will start using distributed torrent discovery (see Tribler), which coupled with integrated torrent signing for the release groups to authenticate theirs, will be invulnerable to such raids.
Because just being on the same rack as a "presumed illegal" website can put you offline. Ask the Pinboard guy when the FBI seized the whole blade, putting dozens of websites offline.
Did you read my whole post, or did you stop at the first period?
The reason the company I work for is competitive and has clients is because we're open source, not despite it. When our proprietary competitors have to charge an arm and a leg for making a lot from scratch, we're able to benefit from a big open source community an deliver better tested software in less time and for less money. And then we contribute back new modules, as well as bug fixes, translations, etc.
I think he's taking a big paycut to work on what he wants, when he wants, free from stress and annoying people. It's a reasonable trade-off. And I don't think he really lowers the bar for everyone else.
Because we give and take from the free software community (and it's not a zero-sum game), our solution will be up and running on the clients machine before you even wrote the first draft. Clients want results, not paying more just to keep the program closed.
Keep rebuilding the world for each client, I'm sure they'll be happy to pay you 10 times what we charge for each project.
There are some nice projects on KS. See git-annex assistant; a very talented guy (Debian 'oldtimer', wrote git-annex) which is delivering a real free and open source program for a fairly low "salary".
It's your choice too; nothing forces you to work with clients that refuse it.
Almost all our software is open source, and clients don't really get a say in that besides simply not hiring us. Yet we don't have a lack of clients, because being open source enables us to take advantage of GPLed code from other companies - much like they do with our code - and deliver much cheaper and well-tested solutions that custom proprietary code.
People are disagreeing with you, because your definition of work is not the same as most people's. Work is time spent directly related to your job, not writing unrelated software on the side.
I also program, read technical book and listen to software related podcasts outside my job, but if you ask me how many hours I work, I'd only consider those directly related to my job.
The thing is that work is not only the kind of activities you do, but the whole context under what you do them. Constraints, requirements, deadlines, goals, all of those are different in a work vs hobby environment.
I've re-read the posts, and I think I've mistaken your position, and I apologize.
Yes, a definition doesn't have to be complete to be useful. But history shows that whenever parts of the definition are put into question, those are suddenly considered optional or figurative.
Well, that leaves me out of almost every other religion, from the ancient Greeks with their conflicting gods, to Judaism and Christianity, whose god will be filled with a "godly jealously" if one worships the wrong god.
I guess you're my new Messiah. I expect promises of eternal life and preferably 40 good-looking women. The virgin part is optional.
Since theists can paint god under whatever light it suits them, nothing can be concluded about it, regardless of philosophies or probabilities. Therefore, the question is irrelevant and dismissed as such, until an actual concrete definition of god is brought forth.
Which is why the Ignostic position is the only sensible one.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe parent doesn't want or need "REAL" journalists, and is quite content with having cheaper ones provide the news?
Paying one way or another for services rendered is standard and entirely acceptable.
So do Slashdot editors, programmers, sysadmins, etc, but I don't see a subscriber mark on your account.
If you claim you watch ads instead, GP never ruled that out either, so you're killing a strawman.
Leaving aside the fact that Google is in fact not leveraging their monopoly on Search (since you can leave News without leaving Search), the fact is that MS killing Netscape - their "crime" - was what lead to its rebirth as Mozilla and then Firefox, which is in my opinion a much better browser than Netscape ever was, but more importantly it conquered plenty of market share despite MS keeping IE bundled with Windows.
Non legally created monopolies are not a big a problem for consumers as people want to believe, particularly in places like the Web where the costs of switching are general quite low.
Google only has a near-monopoly on Search, not news aggregators.
You can remove your site from News and not Search if you want, because not only Google doesn't "leverage their monopoly" as they provide the tools for you to do jut that: https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1061943
(The sibling post was mistaken)
Your competitors are free to use whatever open source they can to deliver their own solution.
I wrote proprietary competitors, not all competitors. Sure, they're free to use and write open source like us, but then they wouldn't be proprietary!
The fact is, most companies in our field are afraid of open sourcing their applications, and are therefore unable to take advantage of the big copyleft community in which we participate.
Your competitors are free to use whatever open source they can to deliver their own solution.
How can a company which only develops proprietary software use third-party AGPL licensed code, exactly? Sure, jty
Why is a proprietary competitor bound to NOT use any open source software?
All the software we use* and write is GNU AGPL licensed.
*Except for the programming language and its standard library.
Other companies hiring yours generally aren't going to care about that philosophy. They want to know that the program they paid for will work, be maintainable, and most importantly be done cheaper than the competitor.
I think people here have a reading problem.
Sigh. Of course they don't, but never I claimed they did. Quoting my own post:
we're able to benefit from a big open source community an deliver better tested software in less time and for less money.
GP didn't actually say they got the money from TPB, just implied it.
No, you can have many physical servers with many IPs.
Eventually people will start using distributed torrent discovery (see Tribler), which coupled with integrated torrent signing for the release groups to authenticate theirs, will be invulnerable to such raids.
Because just being on the same rack as a "presumed illegal" website can put you offline. Ask the Pinboard guy when the FBI seized the whole blade, putting dozens of websites offline.
The problem is that you just need to be on the same blade server to be affected; see Pinboard.
You're making the unsubstantiated leap from "TPB had an income" and "they have some money" to "their money came from TPB".
Did you read my whole post, or did you stop at the first period?
The reason the company I work for is competitive and has clients is because we're open source, not despite it. When our proprietary competitors have to charge an arm and a leg for making a lot from scratch, we're able to benefit from a big open source community an deliver better tested software in less time and for less money. And then we contribute back new modules, as well as bug fixes, translations, etc.
I think he's taking a big paycut to work on what he wants, when he wants, free from stress and annoying people. It's a reasonable trade-off.
And I don't think he really lowers the bar for everyone else.
In any case, his living arrangements seem rather inexpensive: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/notes_for_a_caretaker/
Because we give and take from the free software community (and it's not a zero-sum game), our solution will be up and running on the clients machine before you even wrote the first draft. Clients want results, not paying more just to keep the program closed.
Keep rebuilding the world for each client, I'm sure they'll be happy to pay you 10 times what we charge for each project.
There are some nice projects on KS. See git-annex assistant; a very talented guy (Debian 'oldtimer', wrote git-annex) which is delivering a real free and open source program for a fairly low "salary".
It's your choice too; nothing forces you to work with clients that refuse it.
Almost all our software is open source, and clients don't really get a say in that besides simply not hiring us. Yet we don't have a lack of clients, because being open source enables us to take advantage of GPLed code from other companies - much like they do with our code - and deliver much cheaper and well-tested solutions that custom proprietary code.
I just found that Google's Eric Schmidt was one of the original writers of Lex. My mind is blown; I thought he was only a tech-oriented business guy.
That aside, isn't parsing the least interesting and demanding part of compilers? I always found it fairly easy to "get".
People are disagreeing with you, because your definition of work is not the same as most people's. Work is time spent directly related to your job, not writing unrelated software on the side.
I also program, read technical book and listen to software related podcasts outside my job, but if you ask me how many hours I work, I'd only consider those directly related to my job.
The thing is that work is not only the kind of activities you do, but the whole context under what you do them. Constraints, requirements, deadlines, goals, all of those are different in a work vs hobby environment.
I've re-read the posts, and I think I've mistaken your position, and I apologize.
Yes, a definition doesn't have to be complete to be useful. But history shows that whenever parts of the definition are put into question, those are suddenly considered optional or figurative.
No, I'm saying that it doesn't even make sense to talk about the existence of undefined. Please read on ignosticism and theological noncognitivism.
To put it in another way: Does _ exist?
Well, that leaves me out of almost every other religion, from the ancient Greeks with their conflicting gods, to Judaism and Christianity, whose god will be filled with a "godly jealously" if one worships the wrong god.
I guess you're my new Messiah. I expect promises of eternal life and preferably 40 good-looking women. The virgin part is optional.
This does not say much about the existence or non existence of god
Of course it doesn't, if god is undefined, nothing can say anything about its existence. That's my point!
No movie after Metropolis (1927) can be said to be before special effects.
Since they probably haven't ported them to ARM either, running Windows on the RPi would be rather useless for that purpose.
Since theists can paint god under whatever light it suits them, nothing can be concluded about it, regardless of philosophies or probabilities. Therefore, the question is irrelevant and dismissed as such, until an actual concrete definition of god is brought forth.
Which is why the Ignostic position is the only sensible one.