I find the author's main argument, that FLOSS development is a natural and necessary result of economic forces, to be correct. However, to imagine that this is the only thing you should think about is naive.
I have argued many of the same arguments in the past. FLOSS development is merely a consortium for software development. As long as your core business does not rely on revenue from the software developed (i.e. virtually every company in existence) you are better off entering into a consortium for software development. Especially if the overhead costs for that consortium are (mostly) free (enter the internet).
What people fail to realize is that FLOSS is a *consumer* movement. It is not a development movement. Developers write FLOSS *because they want to use it*. Especially in the corporate environment, most FLOSS development is a result of wanting to be a user of the software, not of wanting to be a developer of the software.
It is because it is in the best interest of the consumer to join a FLOSS consortium that it is inevitable that FLOSS will continue to thrive.
BUT it is a mistake to ignore the underlying reality of these consortiums. If you refuse to believe that a consortium exists at all (the FLOSS community as it were), you will be in for a world of hurt. We have seen this time and time again. The currency in the FLOSS community is mindshare, not money. So if you try to "compete" against an entrenched player you are very unlikely to experience the economies of scale so eloquently discussed in TFA. Furthermore, if you piss off the "major players" in the community, you are likely to lose the majority of your mindshare.
My personal feeling is that FLOSS has reached critical mass. Only extreme political action (i.e. laws prohibiting it) can stop it now. Every day it is becoming more and more obvious that proprietary software does not provide a competative cost/benefit ratio.
But if you want to succeed in the FLOSS world, you need to understand the culture and be able to play in that way. Those who ignore the culture and community are doomed to failure.
This all goes to show that not only do we need to reduce emissions, but we need to spend more money on research to figure out what's going on. My understanding is that most reputable scientists think that we're in for a big hurt in the next 20-50 years. But what can we do?
Next time you get the opportunity, don't vote for "way of life" or "family values" or "defending US against THEM". Vote for someone who will take positive steps to ensure that people can live a sustainable lifestyle that will continue for as long as we want it to. In other words, vote for someone who will save our asses.
Here in Canada we get a chance to vote very soon. If you are a Canadian, PLEASE vote for....
In many of the more relaxed areas of the Internet, Wikipedia has long supplanted the great Encyclopedia Britanica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper, and secondly it has the words Don't Panic! printed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Just curious... Why does one need a book (especially 1600 pages long)? Does it cover something that's not in the RFCs?
I guess what I'm thinking is that TCP/IP networking is hardly rocket science. Surely the basics can be described in just a few pages. For everything else, you're going to have to look at specs anyway.
Am I missing something? Or are network prototcol programmers jealous of the multi-thousand-page-red-softcover-with-the-author' s-face-on the-cover books that the MSofties have on their desks collecting dust?
I had an idea to create just such a team a while ago. But I realized that I had neither the skill nor the desire to deal with the business end of the idea. So for those that want to liberate my idea, here's the gist of it.
Put together a crack team of 5-6 guys. Finding these people is a tricky business, but if you've been in the industry long enough it should be possible.
My idea was to put it together as an XP style team (although you always have to bow to your customers' wishes). 1 "customer proxy" and the rest programmers who do double duty doing other things. Note: It's important to find programmers who don't think it's beneath them to do acceptance tests (but it's a crack team after all).
Next, the idea is to specialize *only* in startups with VC. In Ottawa alone (where I live), over $1B Cdn is spent on high tech VC every year. My estimate was that there should be at least 5 or 6 small startups each year with no existing development team.
Now the whole pitch is to go to these teams (see how to find them below) and explain, "We have an existing team with a proven track record for success. We can get you up an running and to your next round of VC funding (usually a year away) with flying colours. Not only that, but we can hire and train your follow up staff. We require X (X being a reasonably large amount of money) for the year.
Now the first few contract will be difficult because you have to find jobs and you won't have the aforementioned track record. But once you start to deliver and create success for startups, you move your sales focus directly towards the VC companies.
VC guys often insist on putting certain business consultants into key places in an organization as condition of securing funding. What you want to do is get yourself in that position with the VC's. You bill yourself %100 as a transitional team; one that will greatly increase the chance of success for a startup. And one that will put everything into place after you leave. You aren't the typical "I'll stay here forever soaking up 3x the money for my work" consultant. You're in there, you set things up and then you leave. By design.
Honestly, I think this approach would work. But like I said, I'm only interested in coding, so I've decided not to do this.
I totally agree with you. I won't get into details about why I think the FA was referring to the latter (or even better -- how naive programmers don't even know the difference). Instead, I will mention two ideas that I think will keep nibbling on the edge of expanding our understanding of programming.
1) Generative programming. OOD is a relative good technique for representing the design of an a program. Especially combined with some of the recent (in the last 15 years, say) understanding of OO design patterns. However, OOP does not allow effective reuse of code without compromising the flexibility of the design. Enter generative programming. Essentially you write computer programs that can generate the code you need in different circumstances. A simple example of generative programming is using C++ templates to generate a sorting algorithm for various different types of objects.
2) I know some work is being done in this next area, but I don't know what it's commonly called. Basically allowing the programmer to manipulate the code based on the AST using a refactoring browser. This is essentially a literate programming technique. The "source code" is merely the output of the program that the programmer can use to read the program. However, all interaction with the code is done using a refactoring browser.
So why do I think these are new programming techniques rather than just technological gimmicks? First, I think it is important to distinguish between design techniques (such as design patterns, or OOD) and programming techniques. Programming techniques are how we use technical tools to solve our problems (e.g., using a virtual function table to give us polymorphism).
I would like to also make a distinction between programming techniques and technical tools. For instance, a class library is merely a technical tool. It might reduce my work, but it doesn't give me flexibility to use a language to express different ideas than are in the library. Using templates (or generics) is a programming technique that allows me to do some generative programming (i.e. represent my ideas in a more efficient form), while an "event" in C# is merely a tool that saves me from having to implement the observer pattern.
One can see that a language designed around generative programming ideas, as well as a language that is designed to be manipulated using a refactoring browser can lead to a difference in the way I think about programming. It will change the way I communicate with the computer and my fellow programmers. RIA appears to me to be just a set of tools that might save me time. But perhaps I just don't understand what the FA was talking about.
I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this. Sigh... Slashdot -- Junkfood for the techie mind.
OK, I read Joel's comments from time to time and sometimes he makes sense. This time he has revealed his naivety.
There are stages of enlightenment that a programmer goes through to one degree or another. Some will go through many stages; others not very many at all.
The first stage of enlightenment: I'm a good developer, but there are lots of good developers that I can learn from. I can't wait to learn from them.
Second stage: I'm a good developer, but most of the other developers around me suck. If only we got rid of all the sucky developers, we'd be going somewhere.
Third stage: I'm a good developer, but all the other developers around me suck. If I started a company with only good developers, I could make a fortune.
Fourth stage: I'm a good developer and I *thought* all these people around me were good, but they actually suck. Since all developers suck, I need to put an iron clad process in place to make sure they don't screw up.
[Note: sometimes stages 3 and 4 are reversed]
Fifth stage (the first stage with actual "enlightenment"): I suck. Everybody around me sucks. What the hell am I supposed to do? I guess I just need to improve myself (or become Wine grower in Oregon using the millions I made from stages 1 through 4 -- potentially Northern California if you managed to sell your processes from stage 4, or your "management" expertise from stage 3).
Sixth stage: Wait! Not everybody sucks (although I still do). There are a few (very, very few) people who have a handle on stuff. I'll try to learn from them.
Seventh stage: I still suck pretty bad, but I'm improving. Also, I've realized that many of those other sucky people were just mismanaged (i.e. abandonded and ordered to "produce") and misinformed (i.e. not actually taught anything by anyone who knew anything at all or worse taught by those people from stages 1 through 6). Most reasonably talented people can do amazing things if they are coached and developed properly.
That's as far as I go. However, I'm pretty sure stage 8 is "I'm totally sick of making fat cat asshole investors millions of dollars by producing completely irelevant toys that virtually everyone would do better without. I'm sick of watching people with great potential get ground down into stumps by greedy ladder climbing scumbags that fancy themselves as "managers" (or "directors" or "operating" "officers"). I think I'll become a waiter and write free software on the side.
It's all well and good to talk about Linspire, but what I really wanted to hear about was Linspire. Did anyone catch what Linspire was doing at the show? Maybe someone should post an article about Linspire. I'm sure there where other things at the show, but clearly Linspire needs more exposure.
Sigh... You know I've been wasting my time reading Slashdot for almost as long as it's been around. At one point it really *was* "News for Nerds". I was happy to have wasted those few minutes a day -- that was what nerds did!
But Slashdot is now "News for idiots who enjoy flamefests and astroturfing". I can accept that from ignorant commentators such as myself, but from the editorial staff?
If I wanted shocking, controversial, manipulative propaganda, I'd listen to the mainstream news. I want mindless, trivial, techno-mation. I want cool factor, not empire building. Geez, I even miss poor, petrified Natalie Portman. At least that had geek apeal.
So, see ya guys! I end my less than illustrius time on Slashdot completely off topic and being a total troll.
"WordML (Microsoft's XML structure for Word docs) is fairly clear-cut. They can "obfuscate", but they won't, because people'll will want those original files openable in 10-15 years. Backwards compatibility is a huge goal at MS."
This is incorrect. Almost all of the formatting in a WordML file is in comments. Yes, the text is there in the document, but you'll lose all the formatting. The grammar of these comments is *nothing* like XML.
MS will give you the specs for this file format (for free even), but only if you agree not to use it to write conversion utilities.
If you feel that the format is straightforward enough to write a conversion utility, please do so. I've looked into it and know that I couldn't do it without an enourmous amount of energy.
In reality, I'd just make a very bad waiter:-). Actually, I *have* quit my job in the past when I felt that I was asked to deliver sub-standard products to my customers. In my mind sub-standard support is part and parcel to that.
It's a very good question. I've got a couple of rationales for my actions. I'm not sure how good they are, but I'm still working this out in my own head.
First, in this case my customers are *choosing* to purchase a proprietary solution. Free solutions exist for the product I work on. Currently, we have few enough customers that in all practicality it's a moot point. I could hand over the source code to them and they would just stare blankly. This will change someday, though...
Second, I *really* would like to steer the company towards Free software development. This is the first company I've worked for where it seemed possible. Like I said, I just have to come up with a viable business plan and my boss is on-board in a second.
I believe that the Free sofware movement requires more innovation on the business model front. Ultimately, I would like to contribute to that. However, I can't do that from the perspective of being a waiter.
So, I'm kind of in a holding pattern waiting for opportunity to strike. It may be that I'll realize that my approach was wrong. I hope not.
What I don't understand is what they are going to do with this. Does SCO have and programmers left? Or any money to pay contractors? Who is going to do the analysis?
I can't imagine that you have your drivers set up right. I have an AMD 1.8 Ghz processor with an ancient Nvidia card (hm... cant actually remember which one) and Tux Racer runs fine (Debian).
Do I value the 4 freedoms more than free price. Damn yes! I've got a GNU/Linux box at home and a Windows box at work. In *no* way do I prefer my Windows box. Some of the apps are nice on it, but *every* time I have a problem with any of them I find myself screwed. If I phone the developer for "support" (which my company pays for) all I get is, "We're aware of the problem and may fix it in the next release". That's it! No other options! And notice, "may fix it". They don't even tell me if it's going to be fixed. And when a new release comes out, I've got to buy the damned upgrade *before I know if it's fixed my problem!* Not only that, I can't just get a patch for my old release with just my problem fixed.
Do I value the 4 freedoms? Hell yeah. How much money would I pay to have those freedoms? Lots, I tell you. Those 4 freedoms are worth more than the cost of a support contract.
Of course, I'm a programmer, so I'm biased. Some people aren't programmers and may not realize the benefits of freedom the way I do. But let's take the example of a friend of mine. She wanted to do some word processing for a report that she had to write. As I worked at Corel at the time, I happened to have a copy of Word Perfect which I gave to her (it's useless to me...). Well, it turns out it was useless to her too. First of all, it was too complicated and confusing for her (She's not a computer person and she didn't need all the features). Secondly the thing was full of bugs on the features that she did need. Constantly, I got calls of "Miiiikee!!!! Fiiiix it!!!!!". I tried to tell her I couldn't, but she didn't understand.
Eventually I got sick of it and replaced it with Abiword. But not stock Abiword. I ripped everything out if it and gave her a stripped down version. Then any time she asked for a new feature, I added it back.
Do I value the 4 freedoms? Hell yeah. Everyday, I program on a Windows box because the market for my latest companies product is Windows. However, I've been tasked with writing portable code (to port to *ix and Mac). To me this means POSIX. But many of the damn POSIX calls in Windows are broken. What the hell do I do? I'm not allowed to fix them. I have to completely rewrite them, or put endless #ifdefs in my code.
But here's the irony of this whole thing. I understand the value of the 4 freedoms. As a consumer, I would never be stupid enough to purchase mission critical software without those freedoms. But....
I can't quite figure out a non-consulting business model that would allow me to give my customers these freedoms. My boss understands the benefit of freedom as well, but doesn't want to be a consultant. So for now, *I* deny my customers these freedoms which I value so highly.
And here is where I disagree with RMS. He feels that it is immoral to continue the above situation. He recommends quitting and becoming a waiter, writing free software on the side. While it is *very* tempting to do this, I'm not going to. Free software will not move into all sectors of commercial development without finding a variety of business models. Michael Tiemann found one excellent and successful business model with Cygnus. Research needs to be done to find others.
Working every day in this moronic proprietary world shows me the problems and gives me incentive to do something about them. Some day I hope everyone can realize the benefits of Free software. Until that day, I'm sure we'll get lots of delusional people who actually think that proprietary is somehow superior (what a bizarre thought). I'm not going to waste my effect trying to tell them they are wrong.
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Not that you don't need extensive outside work, but Pimsleur Japanese is actually quite good for pronunciation. I actually get frustrated by the amount of repetition. The only other thing that drives me batty is the constant variation of pronunciation by the speakers (switching from "g" to "ng", "o" to "wo", 2 different "e"s, etc). It's good to get used to the variation, but I wish they were a bit more consistent.
The one thing I appreciate is the absolute dedication to pacing. I watch a *lot* of Japanese TV (at least 2 hours a day) and even native speakers can get sloppy. The Pimsleur CDs are really consistent.
I'm waiting for the new edition of Level 2 to become available. It was supposed to be out in September, but I can't find anyone who sells it.
BTW, I also believe that you *need* to do much more than Pimsleur to learn this language, in case you mistake me for a Pimsleur fan boy. I actually find it frustrating most of the time (especially how they gloss over important grammatical issues). However, it's extremely good for pronunciation.
You write: You seem to think developing FOSS is somehow free (as in beer). That's only true if the developer's time costs no money.
Sure it's free if the developer is a hobbyist, but remember hobbyist developers can just as easily develop closed software.
-- end of quote
I am not making that assumption. I'm sure there are people who feel a loss when they don't bring a project to the level that they first envisioned.
However, from a *project* perspective, failed development does not represent a cost. If 1,000,000 lines of code are not checked into a FOSS project there is cost to the project itself. There is no cost of lost opportunity, because there *is* no opportunity.
I will state that in almost every case, the act of doing FOSS development must pay for itself *by the time the development is done*. In fact, I can't think of a successful business model where this wouldn't be the case.
For the most part, FOSS developers write code because they desire the functionality. They invest their time and energy and money and reap what they sew. Sometimes FOSS developers are paid to do their work (even better!). But they are paid because their sponsor desires functionality.
If the development fails... well, some people will be out time or money. That sucks. But what does the project care? It didn't spend any money. Such a failed development is meaningless to it.
Sometimes the development is sucessful (meets the requirements of the developers/sponsors), but the code is not accepted into the project. Well, in this case, nobody cares. Everybody got what they wanted. Certainly the project is happy because it didn't spend any money on this development.
FOSS projects are not horded by their developers. Sure the copyright is owned. But the project is open to anyone who abides by the license.
Once you realize that, you understand why *not checking in code* presents no cost to a FOSS project. The people who developed that code got what they got (and it may or may not be what they wanted). But the project doesn't care. It did not invest anything.
Just to give you a few concrete examples... Let's suppose I write 1,000,000 horrible lines of C code destined for the Linux kernel. Now let's say that I realize the horridness of my code and *never submit it*. How much does Linus care? Not one little bit. 'Cause he didn't pay me and his remuneration has nothing to do with my incompetance.
Let's say someone writes a new whiz bang kernel that supposed to be the cat's meow. It's supposed to be the crown jewel of their awesome OS. Let's say they work on it for 10-15 years and nobody likes it. Instead, let's say some punk college kid from a frozen wasteland writes a kernel and completes that OS. Does the original person care? Not in the least (as long as you remember to tell people it completed *their* OS;-)).
While failed development may cost developers money, it costs FOSS *projects* nothing.
I have to agree (mostly) with the author's conclusions (or at least the ones I didn't ignore:-)). However, I disagree with the reasoning.
FOSS dominance in most fields is inevitable. I'm not talking market share, I'm talking stable features. In a prorietary world, features cost money. Bug fixes cost money. Even worse than that, they cost resources (one can have money to do something, but not enough people to pay to do it).
Currently, proprietary providers live with a difficult economic reality. They invest 10% of their expenses on R&D and require at least a 5% total profit. This means that you need a 10.5:1 return on R&D investment in order for a feature to be worthwhile. Since not all development works out, successful features need to be even more profitable.
When you first start, there is lots of low hanging fruit and even a 20:1 return on R&D investment (what most VCs demand) is quite reasonable. As the product matures, features get more difficult and more and more of your R&D gets used up by support (bug fixes etc). Not only that, but by Brook's law we know that adding R&D resources slows things down (due to communication overhead). This means that's there's a practical maximum of resources that can be added to the project. At some point, development slows down to a crawl.
FOSS, by nature of the fact that there isn't an expected return on R&D investment, runs into no such problem. In theory, there are infinite resources availble to the problem. If a feature is desired enough by someone, it will be implemented. The return on investment (benefit vs cost) only has to be worth it for *one* person. The benefit does not even have to be returned as money.
Not only that, but FOSS operates in an evolutionary way. HUGE numbers of resources are expended on projects which yield no results (just check the abandoned projects on sourceforge). But it doesn't matter. Those people eventually migrate to the successful projects. If I develop A and then discover B is better, I can abandon A with no cost to myself. Eventually the more successful projects end up getting more and more resources.
FOSS generally doesn't need to worry about Brook's law, because wasted effort is irrelevant. FOSS projects can afford *not* to communicate thereby duplicating effort. The popular version will win out and everyone can migrate with no loss (generally speaking) to themselves.
That is why FOSS feature/stability dominance is inevitable (generally speaking). So why doesn't it always work that way? Well the first problem is recruitment. At the beginning, there may be many different competing projects. Until the consolidation period (in the author's paper), there may not be enough resources in any one project to compete with a proprietary provider's VC backed investment. This is not always the case. A good example where FOSS was *way* ahead of the curve is window managers. I think most people would concede that OSX temporarily tipped the balance, but not for long.... FOSS dominance is inevitable. Good ideas will be copied, bad ideas abandoned and new ideas will be forthcoming.
The other area where FOSS does not dominate is in projects where there isn't enough interest to do development. Word processors used to be a good example. Nobody wrote one because nobody used one. Now there's are a few groups of people with a bee in their bonnet about office suites. Given enough time, most areas will probably be dominated by FOSS. They may lag behind the curve, though, if developers don't see the reasoning early enough.
Finally (whew!), feature/stability dominance != market dominance. I personally don't agree that IIE *ever* had feature dominance over Apache. However, market share is market share. The thing about FOSS, though, is that it never goes away. You can try to kill it, but it will just resurface a year later. With proprietary software, all you have to do is cripple or buy the producer. With FOSS, you are faced with the prospect of a never ending propoganda program (making your product even *more* expensive).
The *only* way for proprietary companies to successfully compete against FOSS is to make FOSS illegal. We need to be vigilant.
This quote is so brilliant I can hardly contain myself.
It very succinctly underlines the problem that people find in the "Information Age".
You see, most managers are incompetant. They believe that their role is to make decisions and to boss people around (which they call managing). However, they consistently "delegate" (i.e., push down their real work) to their staff.
They expect their staff to "be on top of things". This leaves precious little time for the staff to actually get their work done.
Most managers fail to realize that the only reason a team needs a manager is so that someone can handle the distractions of every day life and leave the majority to get the work done.
As an example, the best kind of manager would be able to send their emplyees "status reports". These "status reports" would say, "This is what I think you did this week. If I'm wrong, please get back to me."
Any other kind of status report indicates a problem, IM(NS)HO.
Luckily, I've been blessed with good managers in the past few years who stay on top of things so that I can stay on the bottom of them.
I need to comment on this because it is often misunderstood. Filesharing is not a grey area. It is a well defined (if misunderstood) area.
The copyright act specifically allows you to make a copy of music *from an original*. It can only be music (not a play, not video, not a book reading, not a game, etc). You can only make a copy from an original. The copy can be for personal use only.
The only way in which filesharing (i.e. electronic filesharing) would be legal is if the copy on the original machine was an original. This is unlikely, but not impossible.
People are very confused by the this issue because it was badly explained by the press. In the issue where the judge declined to allow names of filesharers to be released, there were two key points made.
1) The mere act of allowing people to copy your files is not necessarily infringement. Afterall, anyone is allowed to make a copy of an original for their own personal use. If the files that are made available for copying are originals, then no infringement has been made.
2) The mere act of downloading a file is not necessarily infringement. The judge made the point that just clicking on a link shouldn't be infringing because you might not know that you were downloading the file. Only if there was an infringing use would it be infringement.
In the above case, he refused to release the names because the recording industry had failed to show *any* evidence that infringement had taken place. He did *not* (and I repeat -- DID NOT) say that no infringement had taken place. Merely that no evidence to that effect was presented.
The recording industry in turn cried that they couldn't collect evidence if they didn't know who was copying the files. This did not impress the judge.
Now, as I said, file sharing is not a grey area. You can share any files you want with other people provided they are originals. How you manage to obtain original recordings of music on your hard drive (without copying them from your CDs) is an interesting question.
If you get a piece of musing from somebody else, you are *not* allowed to share it out again.
Ho hum... Next a news flash that the sky is blue..
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NYT on EA Games
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I can't believe people on *Slashdot* are surprised that a large software company is abusing their employees. How many of us (who are programmers) have *not* lived through this very reality (and fuck it -- I *never* got a laundery service despite my 90-100 hour weeks).
Now, I'll be the first person to say that unpaid overtime is unethical and illegal. I will also be the first to say it's unproductive. Hmm... Now that I'm thinking about it -- I'm not the first; not by a large margin. I believe a little book called "Peopleware" beat me out by a couple of decades.
However, this is the norm. 65 hour weeks? And they call that abusive? I almost laughed out loud. My first employer made me work in a septic tank and I had to walk 40 miles uphill (in both directions) to work, cleaning the road with my tongue. (apologies to Monty Python for butchering that).
But seriously, back in the day I wouldn't have even called 65 hours a week "crunching". I remember working 90 hour weeks *during my vacation*. That was crunching. Anybody remember Jamie Zawinski's rant about the telephone survey on work hours that had a maximum of 99 hours per week? Of course he had an apartment painted entirely black and hung manequin parts from the ceiling...
Now, after burning out a couple of times, I am older and wiser. I've got a job where my boss kicks me out at 5:00 every evening. Not only that but I never have to do status reports because he reads my code to see where I am.
My point is, why crucify one company? 99% of those so-called places of employment are the same. If you are so enraged, either vote with your feet or *do something about your present employer*.
I don't mean suing. I mean showing them that people are *more* productive with 40 hour work weeks. Hell, in my last job, I worked for 5 years at one of the most notorious abusers in all of software and worked only about 10 weekends the entire time. I got glowing reviews and convinced an entire department of 40 people to try 40 hour weeks. I collected a shit-load of stats and showed upper management that less was more.
It is possible. But instead of bitching about it, you have to dig out your oft-neglected people skills and *persuade* others to look at the problem from a different perspective. Offer to run a pilot project. Develop solid productivity measurements and show how productivity *increases* when you aren't trying to figure out if it's Wednesday or Thursday, whether that caffeine induced halluncination of Natalie Portman is real or not, and how the hell you got so much lint in your belly button.
You know, executives are crazy. Why force people to watch something when you already *know* they will watch it if you give them access to it voluntarily?
For example, commercials... Anyone ever heard of the endless commercial channel known as "The Shopping Channel"? Crap, I'm paying to get this thing in my cable setup. There are people who have this abomination hard wired into their TV so that they don't have to be subjected to any actual content in their viewing pleasure.
Here's what I want from a PVR: When the commercials are coming up, instead of skipping them, give me a menu of all the commercials and allow me to choose to watch one if I want. Also give me a an option *not* to watch any. Give me the option to ban specific ads (for content inappropriate to my family) on my PVR too. Finally, give me a list of all the ads associated with a show and allow me to save the ads separately (in case it's a particularly good one and I want to show my friends).
Let's face it. Some people don't want to see any ads. Showing them ads will just piss them off and make them *less* likely to buy your product. The *vast majority* of people actually want to see some ads and would choose to watch them at least once or twice if given the option.
I don't see the point in forcing people to view an ad for a product that they don't want. In some cases (McCain's!!!!!) the ads themselves are so bad that some people (I won't mention any names) boycott the product just because of the ad.
I don't think it would work. If the owner of the copyrighted work figured out the scheme (easy to do since you are *sharing* the files and presumably the technique to reassemble the original) they will sue you anyway. These pieces are not "worthless". They are derivative works. Just because each doesn't sound like the original does not mean it isn't a derivative work. They just has to be derived from the original (which they obviously are).
Also, I can envision the "backlash" of making general purpose encryption illegal -- Lots of slashdotters up in arms and the general public completely oblivious. Almost none of the media would cover the issue since they would be behind the move in the first place. Hmm... sorta like DMCA...
I'm going to have to go with the parent poster on this. I've met a couple of the developers that work on Xandros (both past and present). Generally they are smart bunch of guys. I also used to work at Corel where this thing started, so I know the management as well. I will repeat the same question I asked back then...
Why on earth would I switch from a Proprietary Windows world to a Proprietary Linux world? It makes no sense. Perhaps you get a brief respite from viruses, etc. But without the benefit of a free (as in speech) distribution, what is the point?
Here's a Linux distro that's geared to look just like Windows. And it's proprietary to boot. Plus it's backed by a small company from Ottawa who could go under at any minute (although last I heard they were actually doing OK).
My point is, if I wanted a desktop solution that looked like windows and I was willing to put up with the assinine licensing that comes with it, why the hell wouldn't I choose the defacto standard in the desktop computing world and *choose windows*????
When OOo first came out, I was working for a certain competitor to MS's office suite. As soon as the program managers found out about it, they were in a tizzy. "How will we sell our product if they're just giving their's away for free?"
I calmly invited them to my office and showed them OOo (which they hadn't bothered to look at before). They said, "Man, that sucks. Phew, I guess we don't have to worry".
To which I replied, "We don't have to worry right now, but give it 4 or 5 years and we will probably have a lot of problems". They didn't believe me (in the proprietary world, when software sucks it stays sucky because fixing sucky software is considered unprofitable).
It's now 4 years later and I no longer work for that company. I will enjoy seeing how OOo competes with them:-)
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I find the author's main argument, that FLOSS development is a natural and necessary result of economic forces, to be correct. However, to imagine that this is the only thing you should think about is naive.
I have argued many of the same arguments in the past. FLOSS development is merely a consortium for software development. As long as your core business does not rely on revenue from the software developed (i.e. virtually every company in existence) you are better off entering into a consortium for software development. Especially if the overhead costs for that consortium are (mostly) free (enter the internet).
What people fail to realize is that FLOSS is a *consumer* movement. It is not a development movement. Developers write FLOSS *because they want to use it*. Especially in the corporate environment, most FLOSS development is a result of wanting to be a user of the software, not of wanting to be a developer of the software.
It is because it is in the best interest of the consumer to join a FLOSS consortium that it is inevitable that FLOSS will continue to thrive.
BUT it is a mistake to ignore the underlying reality of these consortiums. If you refuse to believe that a consortium exists at all (the FLOSS community as it were), you will be in for a world of hurt. We have seen this time and time again. The currency in the FLOSS community is mindshare, not money. So if you try to "compete" against an entrenched player you are very unlikely to experience the economies of scale so eloquently discussed in TFA. Furthermore, if you piss off the "major players" in the community, you are likely to lose the majority of your mindshare.
My personal feeling is that FLOSS has reached critical mass. Only extreme political action (i.e. laws prohibiting it) can stop it now. Every day it is becoming more and more obvious that proprietary software does not provide a competative cost/benefit ratio.
But if you want to succeed in the FLOSS world, you need to understand the culture and be able to play in that way. Those who ignore the culture and community are doomed to failure.
This all goes to show that not only do we need to reduce emissions, but we need to spend more money on research to figure out what's going on. My understanding is that most reputable scientists think that we're in for a big hurt in the next 20-50 years. But what can we do?
Next time you get the opportunity, don't vote for "way of life" or "family values" or "defending US against THEM". Vote for someone who will take positive steps to ensure that people can live a sustainable lifestyle that will continue for as long as we want it to. In other words, vote for someone who will save our asses.
Here in Canada we get a chance to vote very soon. If you are a Canadian, PLEASE vote for....
umm....
oh crap.
I was thinking something like:
In many of the more relaxed areas of the Internet, Wikipedia has long supplanted the great Encyclopedia Britanica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper, and secondly it has the words Don't Panic! printed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Well, OK... except for the Don't Panic part...
Just curious... Why does one need a book (especially 1600 pages long)? Does it cover something that's not in the RFCs?
' s-face-on the-cover books that the MSofties have on their desks collecting dust?
I guess what I'm thinking is that TCP/IP networking is hardly rocket science. Surely the basics can be described in just a few pages. For everything else, you're going to have to look at specs anyway.
Am I missing something? Or are network prototcol programmers jealous of the multi-thousand-page-red-softcover-with-the-author
I had an idea to create just such a team a while ago. But I realized that I had neither the skill nor the desire to deal with the business end of the idea. So for those that want to liberate my idea, here's the gist of it.
Put together a crack team of 5-6 guys. Finding these people is a tricky business, but if you've been in the industry long enough it should be possible.
My idea was to put it together as an XP style team (although you always have to bow to your customers' wishes). 1 "customer proxy" and the rest programmers who do double duty doing other things. Note: It's important to find programmers who don't think it's beneath them to do acceptance tests (but it's a crack team after all).
Next, the idea is to specialize *only* in startups with VC. In Ottawa alone (where I live), over $1B Cdn is spent on high tech VC every year. My estimate was that there should be at least 5 or 6 small startups each year with no existing development team.
Now the whole pitch is to go to these teams (see how to find them below) and explain, "We have an existing team with a proven track record for success. We can get you up an running and to your next round of VC funding (usually a year away) with flying colours. Not only that, but we can hire and train your follow up staff. We require X (X being a reasonably large amount of money) for the year.
Now the first few contract will be difficult because you have to find jobs and you won't have the aforementioned track record. But once you start to deliver and create success for startups, you move your sales focus directly towards the VC companies.
VC guys often insist on putting certain business consultants into key places in an organization as condition of securing funding. What you want to do is get yourself in that position with the VC's. You bill yourself %100 as a transitional team; one that will greatly increase the chance of success for a startup. And one that will put everything into place after you leave. You aren't the typical "I'll stay here forever soaking up 3x the money for my work" consultant. You're in there, you set things up and then you leave. By design.
Honestly, I think this approach would work. But like I said, I'm only interested in coding, so I've decided not to do this.
I totally agree with you. I won't get into details about why I think the FA was referring to the latter (or even better -- how naive programmers don't even know the difference). Instead, I will mention two ideas that I think will keep nibbling on the edge of expanding our understanding of programming.
1) Generative programming. OOD is a relative good technique for representing the design of an a program. Especially combined with some of the recent (in the last 15 years, say) understanding of OO design patterns. However, OOP does not allow effective reuse of code without compromising the flexibility of the design. Enter generative programming. Essentially you write computer programs that can generate the code you need in different circumstances. A simple example of generative programming is using C++ templates to generate a sorting algorithm for various different types of objects.
2) I know some work is being done in this next area, but I don't know what it's commonly called. Basically allowing the programmer to manipulate the code based on the AST using a refactoring browser. This is essentially a literate programming technique. The "source code" is merely the output of the program that the programmer can use to read the program. However, all interaction with the code is done using a refactoring browser.
So why do I think these are new programming techniques rather than just technological gimmicks? First, I think it is important to distinguish between design techniques (such as design patterns, or OOD) and programming techniques. Programming techniques are how we use technical tools to solve our problems (e.g., using a virtual function table to give us polymorphism).
I would like to also make a distinction between programming techniques and technical tools. For instance, a class library is merely a technical tool. It might reduce my work, but it doesn't give me flexibility to use a language to express different ideas than are in the library. Using templates (or generics) is a programming technique that allows me to do some generative programming (i.e. represent my ideas in a more efficient form), while an "event" in C# is merely a tool that saves me from having to implement the observer pattern.
One can see that a language designed around generative programming ideas, as well as a language that is designed to be manipulated using a refactoring browser can lead to a difference in the way I think about programming. It will change the way I communicate with the computer and my fellow programmers. RIA appears to me to be just a set of tools that might save me time. But perhaps I just don't understand what the FA was talking about.
I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this. Sigh... Slashdot -- Junkfood for the techie mind.
OK, I read Joel's comments from time to time and sometimes he makes sense. This time he has revealed his naivety.
There are stages of enlightenment that a programmer goes through to one degree or another. Some will go through many stages; others not very many at all.
The first stage of enlightenment: I'm a good developer, but there are lots of good developers that I can learn from. I can't wait to learn from them.
Second stage: I'm a good developer, but most of the other developers around me suck. If only we got rid of all the sucky developers, we'd be going somewhere.
Third stage: I'm a good developer, but all the other developers around me suck. If I started a company with only good developers, I could make a fortune.
Fourth stage: I'm a good developer and I *thought* all these people around me were good, but they actually suck. Since all developers suck, I need to put an iron clad process in place to make sure they don't screw up.
[Note: sometimes stages 3 and 4 are reversed]
Fifth stage (the first stage with actual "enlightenment"): I suck. Everybody around me sucks. What the hell am I supposed to do? I guess I just need to improve myself (or become Wine grower in Oregon using the millions I made from stages 1 through 4 -- potentially Northern California if you managed to sell your processes from stage 4, or your "management" expertise from stage 3).
Sixth stage: Wait! Not everybody sucks (although I still do). There are a few (very, very few) people who have a handle on stuff. I'll try to learn from them.
Seventh stage: I still suck pretty bad, but I'm improving. Also, I've realized that many of those other sucky people were just mismanaged (i.e. abandonded and ordered to "produce") and misinformed (i.e. not actually taught anything by anyone who knew anything at all or worse taught by those people from stages 1 through 6). Most reasonably talented people can do amazing things if they are coached and developed properly.
That's as far as I go. However, I'm pretty sure stage 8 is "I'm totally sick of making fat cat asshole investors millions of dollars by producing completely irelevant toys that virtually everyone would do better without. I'm sick of watching people with great potential get ground down into stumps by greedy ladder climbing scumbags that fancy themselves as "managers" (or "directors" or "operating" "officers"). I think I'll become a waiter and write free software on the side.
Oh well...
It's all well and good to talk about Linspire, but what I really wanted to hear about was Linspire. Did anyone catch what Linspire was doing at the show? Maybe someone should post an article about Linspire. I'm sure there where other things at the show, but clearly Linspire needs more exposure.
Sigh... You know I've been wasting my time reading Slashdot for almost as long as it's been around. At one point it really *was* "News for Nerds". I was happy to have wasted those few minutes a day -- that was what nerds did!
But Slashdot is now "News for idiots who enjoy flamefests and astroturfing". I can accept that from ignorant commentators such as myself, but from the editorial staff?
If I wanted shocking, controversial, manipulative propaganda, I'd listen to the mainstream news. I want mindless, trivial, techno-mation. I want cool factor, not empire building. Geez, I even miss poor, petrified Natalie Portman. At least that had geek apeal.
So, see ya guys! I end my less than illustrius time on Slashdot completely off topic and being a total troll.
Enjoy!
"WordML (Microsoft's XML structure for Word docs) is fairly clear-cut. They can "obfuscate", but they won't, because people'll will want those original files openable in 10-15 years. Backwards compatibility is a huge goal at MS."
This is incorrect. Almost all of the formatting in a WordML file is in comments. Yes, the text is there in the document, but you'll lose all the formatting. The grammar of these comments is *nothing* like XML.
MS will give you the specs for this file format (for free even), but only if you agree not to use it to write conversion utilities.
If you feel that the format is straightforward enough to write a conversion utility, please do so. I've looked into it and know that I couldn't do it without an enourmous amount of energy.
In reality, I'd just make a very bad waiter :-). Actually, I *have* quit my job in the past when I felt that I was asked to deliver sub-standard products to my customers. In my mind sub-standard support is part and parcel to that.
It's a very good question. I've got a couple of rationales for my actions. I'm not sure how good they are, but I'm still working this out in my own head.
First, in this case my customers are *choosing* to purchase a proprietary solution. Free solutions exist for the product I work on. Currently, we have few enough customers that in all practicality it's a moot point. I could hand over the source code to them and they would just stare blankly. This will change someday, though...
Second, I *really* would like to steer the company towards Free software development. This is the first company I've worked for where it seemed possible. Like I said, I just have to come up with a viable business plan and my boss is on-board in a second.
I believe that the Free sofware movement requires more innovation on the business model front. Ultimately, I would like to contribute to that. However, I can't do that from the perspective of being a waiter.
So, I'm kind of in a holding pattern waiting for opportunity to strike. It may be that I'll realize that my approach was wrong. I hope not.
What I don't understand is what they are going to do with this. Does SCO have and programmers left? Or any money to pay contractors? Who is going to do the analysis?
I can't imagine that you have your drivers set up right. I have an AMD 1.8 Ghz processor with an ancient Nvidia card (hm... cant actually remember which one) and Tux Racer runs fine (Debian).
Do I value the 4 freedoms more than free price. Damn yes! I've got a GNU/Linux box at home and a Windows box at work. In *no* way do I prefer my Windows box. Some of the apps are nice on it, but *every* time I have a problem with any of them I find myself screwed. If I phone the developer for "support" (which my company pays for) all I get is, "We're aware of the problem and may fix it in the next release". That's it! No other options! And notice, "may fix it". They don't even tell me if it's going to be fixed. And when a new release comes out, I've got to buy the damned upgrade *before I know if it's fixed my problem!* Not only that, I can't just get a patch for my old release with just my problem fixed.
Do I value the 4 freedoms? Hell yeah. How much money would I pay to have those freedoms? Lots, I tell you. Those 4 freedoms are worth more than the cost of a support contract.
Of course, I'm a programmer, so I'm biased. Some people aren't programmers and may not realize the benefits of freedom the way I do. But let's take the example of a friend of mine. She wanted to do some word processing for a report that she had to write. As I worked at Corel at the time, I happened to have a copy of Word Perfect which I gave to her (it's useless to me...). Well, it turns out it was useless to her too. First of all, it was too complicated and confusing for her (She's not a computer person and she didn't need all the features). Secondly the thing was full of bugs on the features that she did need. Constantly, I got calls of "Miiiikee!!!! Fiiiix it!!!!!". I tried to tell her I couldn't, but she didn't understand.
Eventually I got sick of it and replaced it with Abiword. But not stock Abiword. I ripped everything out if it and gave her a stripped down version. Then any time she asked for a new feature, I added it back.
Do I value the 4 freedoms? Hell yeah. Everyday, I program on a Windows box because the market for my latest companies product is Windows. However, I've been tasked with writing portable code (to port to *ix and Mac). To me this means POSIX. But many of the damn POSIX calls in Windows are broken. What the hell do I do? I'm not allowed to fix them. I have to completely rewrite them, or put endless #ifdefs in my code.
But here's the irony of this whole thing. I understand the value of the 4 freedoms. As a consumer, I would never be stupid enough to purchase mission critical software without those freedoms. But....
I can't quite figure out a non-consulting business model that would allow me to give my customers these freedoms. My boss understands the benefit of freedom as well, but doesn't want to be a consultant. So for now, *I* deny my customers these freedoms which I value so highly.
And here is where I disagree with RMS. He feels that it is immoral to continue the above situation. He recommends quitting and becoming a waiter, writing free software on the side. While it is *very* tempting to do this, I'm not going to. Free software will not move into all sectors of commercial development without finding a variety of business models. Michael Tiemann found one excellent and successful business model with Cygnus. Research needs to be done to find others.
Working every day in this moronic proprietary world shows me the problems and gives me incentive to do something about them. Some day I hope everyone can realize the benefits of Free software. Until that day, I'm sure we'll get lots of delusional people who actually think that proprietary is somehow superior (what a bizarre thought). I'm not going to waste my effect trying to tell them they are wrong.
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Not that you don't need extensive outside work, but Pimsleur Japanese is actually quite good for pronunciation. I actually get frustrated by the amount of repetition. The only other thing that drives me batty is the constant variation of pronunciation by the speakers (switching from "g" to "ng", "o" to "wo", 2 different "e"s, etc). It's good to get used to the variation, but I wish they were a bit more consistent.
The one thing I appreciate is the absolute dedication to pacing. I watch a *lot* of Japanese TV (at least 2 hours a day) and even native speakers can get sloppy. The Pimsleur CDs are really consistent.
I'm waiting for the new edition of Level 2 to become available. It was supposed to be out in September, but I can't find anyone who sells it.
BTW, I also believe that you *need* to do much more than Pimsleur to learn this language, in case you mistake me for a Pimsleur fan boy. I actually find it frustrating most of the time (especially how they gloss over important grammatical issues). However, it's extremely good for pronunciation.
> Of course, for those incapable of such forethought, why not fail earlier rather than later.
Exactly! Don't wait until the last minute to fail. Fail early on so you have time to fix it!
Really. I'm not joking...
Bah... no one takes me seriously....
You write: You seem to think developing FOSS is somehow free (as in beer). That's only true if the developer's time costs no money.
;-)).
Sure it's free if the developer is a hobbyist, but remember hobbyist developers can just as easily develop closed software.
-- end of quote
I am not making that assumption. I'm sure there are people who feel a loss when they don't bring a project to the level that they first envisioned.
However, from a *project* perspective, failed development does not represent a cost. If 1,000,000 lines of code are not checked into a FOSS project there is cost to the project itself. There is no cost of lost opportunity, because there *is* no opportunity.
I will state that in almost every case, the act of doing FOSS development must pay for itself *by the time the development is done*. In fact, I can't think of a successful business model where this wouldn't be the case.
For the most part, FOSS developers write code because they desire the functionality. They invest their time and energy and money and reap what they sew. Sometimes FOSS developers are paid to do their work (even better!). But they are paid because their sponsor desires functionality.
If the development fails... well, some people will be out time or money. That sucks. But what does the project care? It didn't spend any money. Such a failed development is meaningless to it.
Sometimes the development is sucessful (meets the requirements of the developers/sponsors), but the code is not accepted into the project. Well, in this case, nobody cares. Everybody got what they wanted. Certainly the project is happy because it didn't spend any money on this development.
FOSS projects are not horded by their developers. Sure the copyright is owned. But the project is open to anyone who abides by the license.
Once you realize that, you understand why *not checking in code* presents no cost to a FOSS project. The people who developed that code got what they got (and it may or may not be what they wanted). But the project doesn't care. It did not invest anything.
Just to give you a few concrete examples... Let's suppose I write 1,000,000 horrible lines of C code destined for the Linux kernel. Now let's say that I realize the horridness of my code and *never submit it*. How much does Linus care? Not one little bit. 'Cause he didn't pay me and his remuneration has nothing to do with my incompetance.
Let's say someone writes a new whiz bang kernel that supposed to be the cat's meow. It's supposed to be the crown jewel of their awesome OS. Let's say they work on it for 10-15 years and nobody likes it. Instead, let's say some punk college kid from a frozen wasteland writes a kernel and completes that OS. Does the original person care? Not in the least (as long as you remember to tell people it completed *their* OS
While failed development may cost developers money, it costs FOSS *projects* nothing.
I have to agree (mostly) with the author's conclusions (or at least the ones I didn't ignore :-)). However, I disagree with the reasoning.
FOSS dominance in most fields is inevitable. I'm not talking market share, I'm talking stable features. In a prorietary world, features cost money. Bug fixes cost money. Even worse than that, they cost resources (one can have money to do something, but not enough people to pay to do it).
Currently, proprietary providers live with a difficult economic reality. They invest 10% of their expenses on R&D and require at least a 5% total profit. This means that you need a 10.5:1 return on R&D investment in order for a feature to be worthwhile. Since not all development works out, successful features need to be even more profitable.
When you first start, there is lots of low hanging fruit and even a 20:1 return on R&D investment (what most VCs demand) is quite reasonable. As the product matures, features get more difficult and more and more of your R&D gets used up by support (bug fixes etc). Not only that, but by Brook's law we know that adding R&D resources slows things down (due to communication overhead). This means that's there's a practical maximum of resources that can be added to the project. At some point, development slows down to a crawl.
FOSS, by nature of the fact that there isn't an expected return on R&D investment, runs into no such problem. In theory, there are infinite resources availble to the problem.
If a feature is desired enough by someone, it will be implemented. The return on investment (benefit vs cost) only has to be worth it for *one* person. The benefit does not even have to be returned as money.
Not only that, but FOSS operates in an evolutionary way. HUGE numbers of resources are expended on projects which yield no results (just check the abandoned projects on sourceforge). But it doesn't matter. Those people eventually migrate to the successful projects. If I develop A and then discover B is better, I can abandon A with no cost to myself. Eventually the more successful projects end up getting more and more resources.
FOSS generally doesn't need to worry about Brook's law, because wasted effort is irrelevant. FOSS projects can afford *not* to communicate thereby duplicating effort. The popular version will win out and everyone can migrate with no loss (generally speaking) to themselves.
That is why FOSS feature/stability dominance is inevitable (generally speaking). So why doesn't it always work that way? Well the first problem is recruitment. At the beginning, there may be many different competing projects. Until the consolidation period (in the author's paper), there may not be enough resources in any one project to compete with a proprietary provider's VC backed investment. This is not always the case. A good example where FOSS was *way* ahead of the curve is window managers. I think most people would concede that OSX temporarily tipped the balance, but not for long.... FOSS dominance is inevitable. Good ideas will be copied, bad ideas abandoned and new ideas will be forthcoming.
The other area where FOSS does not dominate is in projects where there isn't enough interest to do development. Word processors used to be a good example. Nobody wrote one because nobody used one. Now there's are a few groups of people with a bee in their bonnet about office suites. Given enough time, most areas will probably be dominated by FOSS. They may lag behind the curve, though, if developers don't see the reasoning early enough.
Finally (whew!), feature/stability dominance != market dominance. I personally don't agree that IIE *ever* had feature dominance over Apache. However, market share is market share. The thing about FOSS, though, is that it never goes away. You can try to kill it, but it will just resurface a year later. With proprietary software, all you have to do is cripple or buy the producer. With FOSS, you are faced with the prospect of a never ending propoganda program (making your product even *more* expensive).
The *only* way for proprietary companies to successfully compete against FOSS is to make FOSS illegal. We need to be vigilant.
This quote is so brilliant I can hardly contain myself.
It very succinctly underlines the problem that people find in the "Information Age".
You see, most managers are incompetant. They believe that their role is to make decisions and to boss people around (which they call managing). However, they consistently "delegate" (i.e., push down their real work) to their staff.
They expect their staff to "be on top of things". This leaves precious little time for the staff to actually get their work done.
Most managers fail to realize that the only reason a team needs a manager is so that someone can handle the distractions of every day life and leave the majority to get the work done.
As an example, the best kind of manager would be able to send their emplyees "status reports". These "status reports" would say, "This is what I think you did this week. If I'm wrong, please get back to me."
Any other kind of status report indicates a problem, IM(NS)HO.
Luckily, I've been blessed with good managers in the past few years who stay on top of things so that I can stay on the bottom of them.
I need to comment on this because it is often misunderstood. Filesharing is not a grey area. It is a well defined (if misunderstood) area.
The copyright act specifically allows you to make a copy of music *from an original*. It can only be music (not a play, not video, not a book reading, not a game, etc). You can only make a copy from an original. The copy can be for personal use only.
The only way in which filesharing (i.e. electronic filesharing) would be legal is if the copy on the original machine was an original. This is unlikely, but not impossible.
People are very confused by the this issue because it was badly explained by the press. In the issue where the judge declined to allow names of filesharers to be released, there were two key points made.
1) The mere act of allowing people to copy your files is not necessarily infringement. Afterall, anyone is allowed to make a copy of an original for their own personal use. If the files that are made available for copying are originals, then no infringement has been made.
2) The mere act of downloading a file is not necessarily infringement. The judge made the point that just clicking on a link shouldn't be infringing because you might not know that you were downloading the file. Only if there was an infringing use would it be infringement.
In the above case, he refused to release the names because the recording industry had failed to show *any* evidence that infringement had taken place. He did *not* (and I repeat -- DID NOT) say that no infringement had taken place. Merely that no evidence to that effect was presented.
The recording industry in turn cried that they couldn't collect evidence if they didn't know who was copying the files. This did not impress the judge.
Now, as I said, file sharing is not a grey area. You can share any files you want with other people provided they are originals. How you manage to obtain original recordings of music on your hard drive (without copying them from your CDs) is an interesting question.
If you get a piece of musing from somebody else, you are *not* allowed to share it out again.
I can't believe people on *Slashdot* are surprised that a large software company is abusing their employees. How many of us (who are programmers) have *not* lived through this very reality (and fuck it -- I *never* got a laundery service despite my 90-100 hour weeks).
Now, I'll be the first person to say that unpaid overtime is unethical and illegal. I will also be the first to say it's unproductive. Hmm... Now that I'm thinking about it -- I'm not the first; not by a large margin. I believe a little book called "Peopleware" beat me out by a couple of decades.
However, this is the norm. 65 hour weeks? And they call that abusive? I almost laughed out loud. My first employer made me work in a septic tank and I had to walk 40 miles uphill (in both directions) to work, cleaning the road with my tongue. (apologies to Monty Python for butchering that).
But seriously, back in the day I wouldn't have even called 65 hours a week "crunching". I remember working 90 hour weeks *during my vacation*. That was crunching. Anybody remember Jamie Zawinski's rant about the telephone survey on work hours that had a maximum of 99 hours per week? Of course he had an apartment painted entirely black and hung manequin parts from the ceiling...
Now, after burning out a couple of times, I am older and wiser. I've got a job where my boss kicks me out at 5:00 every evening. Not only that but I never have to do status reports because he reads my code to see where I am.
My point is, why crucify one company? 99% of those so-called places of employment are the same. If you are so enraged, either vote with your feet or *do something about your present employer*.
I don't mean suing. I mean showing them that people are *more* productive with 40 hour work weeks. Hell, in my last job, I worked for 5 years at one of the most notorious abusers in all of software and worked only about 10 weekends the entire time. I got glowing reviews and convinced an entire department of 40 people to try 40 hour weeks. I collected a shit-load of stats and showed upper management that less was more.
It is possible. But instead of bitching about it, you have to dig out your oft-neglected people skills and *persuade* others to look at the problem from a different perspective. Offer to run a pilot project. Develop solid productivity measurements and show how productivity *increases* when you aren't trying to figure out if it's Wednesday or Thursday, whether that caffeine induced halluncination of Natalie Portman is real or not, and how the hell you got so much lint in your belly button.
You know, executives are crazy. Why force people to watch something when you already *know* they will watch it if you give them access to it voluntarily?
For example, commercials... Anyone ever heard of the endless commercial channel known as "The Shopping Channel"? Crap, I'm paying to get this thing in my cable setup. There are people who have this abomination hard wired into their TV so that they don't have to be subjected to any actual content in their viewing pleasure.
Here's what I want from a PVR: When the commercials are coming up, instead of skipping them, give me a menu of all the commercials and allow me to choose to watch one if I want. Also give me a an option *not* to watch any. Give me the option to ban specific ads (for content inappropriate to my family) on my PVR too. Finally, give me a list of all the ads associated with a show and allow me to save the ads separately (in case it's a particularly good one and I want to show my friends).
Let's face it. Some people don't want to see any ads. Showing them ads will just piss them off and make them *less* likely to buy your product. The *vast majority* of people actually want to see some ads and would choose to watch them at least once or twice if given the option.
I don't see the point in forcing people to view an ad for a product that they don't want. In some cases (McCain's!!!!!) the ads themselves are so bad that some people (I won't mention any names) boycott the product just because of the ad.
I don't think it would work. If the owner of the copyrighted work figured out the scheme (easy to do since you are *sharing* the files and presumably the technique to reassemble the original) they will sue you anyway. These pieces are not "worthless". They are derivative works. Just because each doesn't sound like the original does not mean it isn't a derivative work. They just has to be derived from the original (which they obviously are).
Also, I can envision the "backlash" of making general purpose encryption illegal -- Lots of slashdotters up in arms and the general public completely oblivious. Almost none of the media would cover the issue since they would be behind the move in the first place. Hmm... sorta like DMCA...
That might be OK for Windows. For Linux, you might not want to wait for a reboot to take a pee. Just a word of warning...
I'm going to have to go with the parent poster on this. I've met a couple of the developers that work on Xandros (both past and present). Generally they are smart bunch of guys. I also used to work at Corel where this thing started, so I know the management as well. I will repeat the same question I asked back then...
Why on earth would I switch from a Proprietary Windows world to a Proprietary Linux world? It makes no sense. Perhaps you get a brief respite from viruses, etc. But without the benefit of a free (as in speech) distribution, what is the point?
Here's a Linux distro that's geared to look just like Windows. And it's proprietary to boot. Plus it's backed by a small company from Ottawa who could go under at any minute (although last I heard they were actually doing OK).
My point is, if I wanted a desktop solution that looked like windows and I was willing to put up with the assinine licensing that comes with it, why the hell wouldn't I choose the defacto standard in the desktop computing world and *choose windows*????
When OOo first came out, I was working for a certain competitor to MS's office suite. As soon as the program managers found out about it, they were in a tizzy. "How will we sell our product if they're just giving their's away for free?"
:-)
I calmly invited them to my office and showed them OOo (which they hadn't bothered to look at before). They said, "Man, that sucks. Phew, I guess we don't have to worry".
To which I replied, "We don't have to worry right now, but give it 4 or 5 years and we will probably have a lot of problems". They didn't believe me (in the proprietary world, when software sucks it stays sucky because fixing sucky software is considered unprofitable).
It's now 4 years later and I no longer work for that company. I will enjoy seeing how OOo competes with them