When the first bundle had a huge boost in last-minute sales after the devs offered to free the source of 4 of the 5 games, I had hoped, they would keep that. I was one of those who paid when they offered to free the games, and I’m pretty sure that they got a huge boost in people who knew the Humble Indie Bundle due to that.
But when the second did not offer freeing the source, I did not pay, and I feared they would go further down that track.
Now Steam comes to GNU/Linux, so being cross-plasform isn’t unique for the Humble Indie Bundle anymore. And they dropped cross-platform support and added DRM. Somehow I saw that coming
Well, they sell their brand while it still holds, but by doing that they burn the ones who brought them where they are today.
Never put effort in a project where you have to *trust* the creator to not misuse it. Free copyleft licenses are a safeguard for contributors - not only the coders, but also for those who promote the project.
I had that experience once with an unfree p2p app. I poured hours, days and months into it to see my work wasted and misused in the end.
That’s why I decided to only ever support free copyleft programs in which others but the main authors have some code. Then they can’t easily make it unfree - and thus steal my unpaid work.
That’s why I stopped supporting the humble indie bundle when the second bundle did not free the games.
well, flattr funding blogs, kickstarter generating millions, the humble indie bundle making millions, startnext moving into the scope of kickstarter as non-profit organization. Sounds quite good - it just took some time to become real.
I’m using Sone, too, and I finally understood why people like Facebook - and could experience that with Sone without having to give up my privacy. And due to the WebOfTrust, it even has better spam resistance than twitter et. al.
I have several IDs: An official ID, one for talking with friends (they can know I’m that one) and an anonymous one which not even my wife knows (she could, but she does not want to). The anonymous ones allow me to speak my mind without fearing future repercussions.
Good to see a clear technical answer - that's also what I thought:
They can only poison Gnutella 0.4 and early versions of 0.6 - that's a very low percentage of todays popular clients. In effect that means, they can't poison real life Gnutella clients.
Since Freenet is not based on Gnutella-0.4, they can't pollute it, either.
They then state that they can't poison BitTorrent (page 11, bottom left).
They say they can poison eMule on the sub-part level.
So to me this looks like a failed attempt to develop a way to bootstrap commercial leech networks on existing p2p networks without exposing the files those networks share internally.
Interesting would be to see what happens when the first people copy that code to their client, but turn it around to poison the files of paying customers. It would just require switching one bool: "Is paying customer" -> "is pirate", and they will suffer from their choice of a poisonable network.
But considering the claims against LimeWire I read last week "you should change the Gnutella network, so it can't be used for piracy anymore" this paper looks like a part of a chessgame:
Step 1: Claim that Gnutella can be changed to no longer allow piracy. Step 2: Make Gnutella developers say, that this isn't viable. Step 3: Make researchers with pseudo-reputation state that it is possible to have something to show the politicians: "it's easy and it works". Step 4: Tell teh politicians to force the Gnutella developers to deploy the (nonworking) scheme in new versions of their software. Step 5: Force the devs to remove the parts which foil the scheme but also are the safety against compromised files. Step 6: Wait till the network goes down. Step 7: Leech from the next network.
Basic BitTorrent isn't interesting to them, because they can easily control one BitTorrent server to allow only their own modified clients (as long as these don't support the DHT, but they can just strip that out).
Yes, but Apple shipping them was the droplet of water which sufficed to make me leave.
I used MacOSX since 10.0.4, and though it got faster up till (excluding) 10.3, it also reduced my usage options - maybe you didn't experience that.
After I switched on, Apple suddenly sent clicks on songs in iTunes to a advertising company. That's when I decided that contrary to my former thoughts, the chances of me coming back would be extremely slim.
I'm a happy KDE user now, and KDE 4.1 gave back what I lost when I left Apple.
At least there are some portals which offer ogg support so artists can upload ogg vorbis files, for example mp3.de even though the name might suggest otherwise.
And there are already free quicktime components for Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora which Apple would just have to ship by default to add support - and they've been around for years (they already were around when I switched on to GNU/Linux).
I've used OSX since the early betas, and when iTunes hit the market, AAC was called the best format around and stuff, yet Apple never compared it to ogg vorbis, though they showed most other formats.
When both got a side by side comparision by a third party at last, Ogg Vorbis and AAC were rated pretty much the same, and I found the similar results when I did some comparisions myself.
But Apple didn't even aknowledge the existence of Ogg Vorbis. They were too busy saying "Our audio sounds best".
So what I want to get at is:
I think that Apple saw and sees Ogg Vorbis as competition.
Besides: Ogg Vorbis gets used at places where you'd never guess it, for example in games. I once found a game with *.snd files which my player easily identified as simple Ogg Vorbis:) That's one of the strengths of really free formats: They encourage innovation.
- Why do all developers have to submit their applications to Apple before they can be loaded onto an iPhone?... who's in control of the phones?
- Why does iTunes still contain so much DRM-laden music?... when Amazon partly has the same Music without DRM?
- The iPhone 3G has GPS support. How can users be sure that the GPS cannot be used to track their position, without their permission?... do you trust Apple?
- In 'Thoughts on Music', Steve Jobs said, "it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in 'open' licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC".... where's the catch?
- Last question. Why can the iPhone 3G only be activated by Apple and AT&T?... and is that legal?
That's what each "Genius" will know about afterwards, and he'll have fitting answers, so it might even benefit Apples customers in the end.
Besides: I see myself as free software fanboy, and I am sure I do oversee some things myself.
But I'm happy to see the FSF acting to try to get people realize, that Apple isn't a do-gooder everywhere, and that using really free alternatives is the better way to act.
How could they better archieve that goal? (This is a genuine question - do you know better ways which reach the public?)
Simple things like gapless playback are handled very differently depending on the codec
For example, ogg vorbis already does it out of the box.
And if your placback options get more complicated if you add a codec, you might want to add a layer of abstraction.
I rather think their reasons are far simpler:
Ogg vorbis is as good as AAC. They couldn't have said "Our codec is best" if they also shipped ogg vorbis.
Because it would really have been easy. You can do it yourself: using ipodlinux, every ipod after 3rd edition can play ogg vorbis by just stripping away everything apple wrote and replacing it with a uclinux.
It would have gotten them the money which now went to my NintendoDS which can play ogg vorbis (with R4). It might not be quite as convenient as an iPod, but it plays my music in full quality.
You could also say, apple recently began to hog the spot that really free software could have taken.
But I agree that most times having more alternatives is good, and there are places which free software couldn't have got that Apple took - and free software projects did learn stuff from Apple, too - just look at the design of KDE 4.
Besides: I was a Mac User up until 4 years ago, when I decided to leave them over their implementation of Treacherous Computing (I decided to use FSF terminology here). That was when I stopped trusting them to be interested in my computer-experience.
KDE 4 gave me back the usability I gave up when I switched on from OSX to GNU/Linux. It took 4 years, but now it's a reality.
Yours is the first non-hostile comment I read here.
Thanks for thinking history before posting. There's that saying about what happens if we forget history.
Apple clearly misuses its Fanboy advantage, and sadly it seems that it's necessary to drop that fanish faith if you want to see some of the harsher implications of their actions.
Which idea will make it if you don't fight for yours?
There is always someone with money who'll pay someone to fight for his idea, and it generally won't profit you - else where would the other ones money come from?
That's why I use the following signature for years, now:
We'd love to see you try out the Hurd and to hear about your experiences. Maybe you'd like to host a Wiki on a Hurd Installation, like bddebian does with the the Hurd wiki:
There was a trend to having only proprietary software (by former free software being enslaved in the job contracts its creators took) and to having the hacker community die out.
That trend was reversed by GNU with the invention of the GPL and the GNU System.
And today millions of people use free software and we have organizations like the EFF and FSF who work for a free software society.
More people than ever before use free software, and it becomes an integral part of out society as more and more government offices (e.g. in germany: Munich) and companies adopt it.
Today we have a trend to having only nonfree culture (by the laws being turned upside down and politicians being bought) and members of the free speech community to give up.
What I learn from history is:
That trend can be reversed, too, and our society might become a free culture society, just like it slowly becomes a free software society, even though most people will only realize it in hindsight.
"Do you still remember the times, when every office had Windows in it?"
"Only barely, but do you still remember the times, when we feared lawsuits when we accessed the predecessors of the culture pool?"
"Those were the times. Now, let's get writing again. Don't want to let our fans wait for the next storyarch, do we?"
The ones who profit from unfree media will give a fight this time, though.
And that they choose to go semi-criminal shows, that different from the proprietary software vendors back when GNU was invented, the unfree media companies are already losing, and they know it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, bit by bit. Especially if you use it where it already does (to some degree).
When the first bundle had a huge boost in last-minute sales after the devs offered to free the source of 4 of the 5 games, I had hoped, they would keep that. I was one of those who paid when they offered to free the games, and I’m pretty sure that they got a huge boost in people who knew the Humble Indie Bundle due to that.
But when the second did not offer freeing the source, I did not pay, and I feared they would go further down that track.
Now Steam comes to GNU/Linux, so being cross-plasform isn’t unique for the Humble Indie Bundle anymore. And they dropped cross-platform support and added DRM. Somehow I saw that coming
Well, they sell their brand while it still holds, but by doing that they burn the ones who brought them where they are today.
Never put effort in a project where you have to *trust* the creator to not misuse it. Free copyleft licenses are a safeguard for contributors - not only the coders, but also for those who promote the project.
I had that experience once with an unfree p2p app. I poured hours, days and months into it to see my work wasted and misused in the end.
That’s why I decided to only ever support free copyleft programs in which others but the main authors have some code. Then they can’t easily make it unfree - and thus steal my unpaid work.
That’s why I stopped supporting the humble indie bundle when the second bundle did not free the games.
previous comment was by me - forgot to login.
So look at the GPL. That’s a really great hack on the copyright system.
same for me.
well, flattr funding blogs, kickstarter generating millions, the humble indie bundle making millions, startnext moving into the scope of kickstarter as non-profit organization. Sounds quite good - it just took some time to become real.
I’m using Sone, too, and I finally understood why people like Facebook - and could experience that with Sone without having to give up my privacy. And due to the WebOfTrust, it even has better spam resistance than twitter et. al.
I have several IDs: An official ID, one for talking with friends (they can know I’m that one) and an anonymous one which not even my wife knows (she could, but she does not want to). The anonymous ones allow me to speak my mind without fearing future repercussions.
http://freenetproject.org/
Ah, OK. Thanks for the clarification!
So the only license which would be incompatible is the Qt Commercial Developer License.
http://qt.nokia.com/products/licensing/
If Nokia wanted to merge KDElibs into Qt, they’d have to drop that.
I don’t really see how they should be able to merge as long as Nokia requires copyright assignment.
KDE is GPL. Qt is unfree OR LGPL OR GPLv3, as the developer wishes. Qt with KDE could only be GPL.
And I don’t see a reason to deprive free software developers of the advantage which KDE offers them over developers of unfree software.
Good to see a clear technical answer - that's also what I thought:
They can only poison Gnutella 0.4 and early versions of 0.6 - that's a very low percentage of todays popular clients. In effect that means, they can't poison real life Gnutella clients.
Since Freenet is not based on Gnutella-0.4, they can't pollute it, either.
They then state that they can't poison BitTorrent (page 11, bottom left).
They say they can poison eMule on the sub-part level.
So to me this looks like a failed attempt to develop a way to bootstrap commercial leech networks on existing p2p networks without exposing the files those networks share internally.
Interesting would be to see what happens when the first people copy that code to their client, but turn it around to poison the files of paying customers. It would just require switching one bool: "Is paying customer" -> "is pirate", and they will suffer from their choice of a poisonable network.
But considering the claims against LimeWire I read last week "you should change the Gnutella network, so it can't be used for piracy anymore" this paper looks like a part of a chessgame:
Step 1: Claim that Gnutella can be changed to no longer allow piracy.
Step 2: Make Gnutella developers say, that this isn't viable.
Step 3: Make researchers with pseudo-reputation state that it is possible to have something to show the politicians: "it's easy and it works".
Step 4: Tell teh politicians to force the Gnutella developers to deploy the (nonworking) scheme in new versions of their software.
Step 5: Force the devs to remove the parts which foil the scheme but also are the safety against compromised files.
Step 6: Wait till the network goes down.
Step 7: Leech from the next network.
Basic BitTorrent isn't interesting to them, because they can easily control one BitTorrent server to allow only their own modified clients (as long as these don't support the DHT, but they can just strip that out).
Yes, but Apple shipping them was the droplet of water which sufficed to make me leave.
I used MacOSX since 10.0.4, and though it got faster up till (excluding) 10.3, it also reduced my usage options - maybe you didn't experience that.
After I switched on, Apple suddenly sent clicks on songs in iTunes to a advertising company. That's when I decided that contrary to my former thoughts, the chances of me coming back would be extremely slim.
I'm a happy KDE user now, and KDE 4.1 gave back what I lost when I left Apple.
If you want to see my way (in german): http://bah.draketo.de/
At least there are some portals which offer ogg support so artists can upload ogg vorbis files, for example mp3.de even though the name might suggest otherwise.
And there are already free quicktime components for Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora which Apple would just have to ship by default to add support - and they've been around for years (they already were around when I switched on to GNU/Linux).
- http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/
You're right.
I've used OSX since the early betas, and when iTunes hit the market, AAC was called the best format around and stuff, yet Apple never compared it to ogg vorbis, though they showed most other formats.
When both got a side by side comparision by a third party at last, Ogg Vorbis and AAC were rated pretty much the same, and I found the similar results when I did some comparisions myself.
But Apple didn't even aknowledge the existence of Ogg Vorbis. They were too busy saying "Our audio sounds best".
So what I want to get at is:
I think that Apple saw and sees Ogg Vorbis as competition.
Besides: Ogg Vorbis gets used at places where you'd never guess it, for example in games. I once found a game with *.snd files which my player easily identified as simple Ogg Vorbis :)
That's one of the strengths of really free formats: They encourage innovation.
Except that AAC isn't "their codec", it's just the current MPEG audio codec.
Didn't you see the "information"? AAC, better codec, noone yet offers this as default, ...
iTunes said as much.
Did you read the questionaire?
I'd like to repeat the questions here:
- Why do all developers have to submit their applications to Apple before they can be loaded onto an iPhone? ... who's in control of the phones?
- Why does iTunes still contain so much DRM-laden music? ... when Amazon partly has the same Music without DRM?
- The iPhone 3G has GPS support. How can users be sure that the GPS cannot be used to track their position, without their permission? ... do you trust Apple?
- In 'Thoughts on Music', Steve Jobs said, "it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in 'open' licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC". ... where's the catch?
- Last question. Why can the iPhone 3G only be activated by Apple and AT&T? ... and is that legal?
That's what each "Genius" will know about afterwards, and he'll have fitting answers, so it might even benefit Apples customers in the end.
To get all of them using iPods, too ;)
Besides: I see myself as free software fanboy, and I am sure I do oversee some things myself.
But I'm happy to see the FSF acting to try to get people realize, that Apple isn't a do-gooder everywhere, and that using really free alternatives is the better way to act.
How could they better archieve that goal? (This is a genuine question - do you know better ways which reach the public?)
From your words it seems you aren't a fanboy.
But why did you answer?
The actions of Apple (DRM, semi-free, etc.) have very bad implications. As long as you doN't drop your apple-faith, you might oversee them.
For example, ogg vorbis already does it out of the box.
And if your placback options get more complicated if you add a codec, you might want to add a layer of abstraction.
I rather think their reasons are far simpler:
Ogg vorbis is as good as AAC. They couldn't have said "Our codec is best" if they also shipped ogg vorbis.
Because it would really have been easy. You can do it yourself: using ipodlinux, every ipod after 3rd edition can play ogg vorbis by just stripping away everything apple wrote and replacing it with a uclinux.
It would have gotten them the money which now went to my NintendoDS which can play ogg vorbis (with R4). It might not be quite as convenient as an iPod, but it plays my music in full quality.
The iPod doesn't -> it's out of the game.
And with my NintendoDS I can also play games.
You could also say, apple recently began to hog the spot that really free software could have taken.
But I agree that most times having more alternatives is good, and there are places which free software couldn't have got that Apple took - and free software projects did learn stuff from Apple, too - just look at the design of KDE 4.
Besides: I was a Mac User up until 4 years ago, when I decided to leave them over their implementation of Treacherous Computing (I decided to use FSF terminology here). That was when I stopped trusting them to be interested in my computer-experience.
KDE 4 gave me back the usability I gave up when I switched on from OSX to GNU/Linux. It took 4 years, but now it's a reality.
Yours is the first non-hostile comment I read here.
Thanks for thinking history before posting. There's that saying about what happens if we forget history.
Apple clearly misuses its Fanboy advantage, and sadly it seems that it's necessary to drop that fanish faith if you want to see some of the harsher implications of their actions.
Which idea will make it if you don't fight for yours?
There is always someone with money who'll pay someone to fight for his idea, and it generally won't profit you - else where would the other ones money come from?
That's why I use the following signature for years, now:
That's a great idea!
Please meet us in the Hurd Mailinglists:
- http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/mailing_lists/
For some reason, bug-hurd became the main development list, where discussions run about any topic, including Summer of Code projects:
- http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-hurd
We'd love to see you try out the Hurd and to hear about your experiences. Maybe you'd like to host a Wiki on a Hurd Installation, like bddebian does with the the Hurd wiki:
- http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/
Apart from mailing lists you can also use IRC to get in contact with Hurd developers:
- http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/irc/
And if you'd like to know, if your code can make a difference, please have a look at the tschwinge - sthibaul effect in our gnumach codeswarm video:
- http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/community/weblogs/ArneBab/2008-07-12-codeswarm-movies-for-the-hurd/
I hope to read you soon!
There was a trend to having only proprietary software (by former free software being enslaved in the job contracts its creators took) and to having the hacker community die out.
That trend was reversed by GNU with the invention of the GPL and the GNU System.
And today millions of people use free software and we have organizations like the EFF and FSF who work for a free software society.
- That huge success story in about 4 minutes: http://infinite-hands.draketo.de/
More people than ever before use free software, and it becomes an integral part of out society as more and more government offices (e.g. in germany: Munich) and companies adopt it.
Today we have a trend to having only nonfree culture (by the laws being turned upside down and politicians being bought) and members of the free speech community to give up.
What I learn from history is:
That trend can be reversed, too, and our society might become a free culture society, just like it slowly becomes a free software society, even though most people will only realize it in hindsight.
"Do you still remember the times, when every office had Windows in it?"
"Only barely, but do you still remember the times, when we feared lawsuits when we accessed the predecessors of the culture pool?"
"Those were the times. Now, let's get writing again. Don't want to let our fans wait for the next storyarch, do we?"
The ones who profit from unfree media will give a fight this time, though.
And that they choose to go semi-criminal shows, that different from the proprietary software vendors back when GNU was invented, the unfree media companies are already losing, and they know it.