Yeah that Linus guy should quit reinventing the wheel, we already had a perfectly good free open source unix clone.
We didn't before. If someone started a new kernel project today, it would be a vanity project because Linux and *BSD are well established and progressing nicely. At this time, there is more to gain by contributing to them than starting over.
We need people to persue whatever seemingly pointless Free Open source projects they want to. It's the shotgun approach to innovation, and it seems to work pretty well.
To a degree this is true. On the other hand, the Open Source community suffers from a case of too many leaders and not enough followers. The result is thousands of false-start projects that should have been contributions to existing, well-managed projects. So I'm not saying that people shouldn't start projects to try completely new things, but they need to do some research first to see if they're unnecessarily duplicating others efforts. Web-based project have probably been the worst offenders in this category. We simply don't need hundreds of CMS, blog, groupware, and picture album projects -- most of which are half baked and simply serve to muddy the water for those looking for a workable open source solution.
The other issue here is priority. If people want to have silly free-time projects, they should first consider whether they're doing enough to further the mainstream of OSS. Consider the developer who, somewhat regretfully, spends their day writing proprietary code and then comes home and works on vanity OSS projects that don't really further the movement appreciably. Sadly, this probably represents the vast majority of the Slashdot crowd. Contrast this person to someone who works a day job, but has foresight and entrepreneurial ambition. When they come home, they contribute to established OSS projects that they feel they can base a business around if the software becomes mature enough. Or, if the software doesn't exist, they work on forming a professional community to develop it -- drawing as much as possible from existing codebases but innovating as required. In a few years, such a person is ready to leave their day job and really make a difference. We need more people who think like this.
The only reason Microsoft is filing all these patents is because they want to get ahold on every freaken idea that anybody could *ever* come up with. That way, when someone else decides that they want to create something (AKA, create a new OpenSource project), they may just not be able to do it anymore.
This is more than likely the case. Even if the majority of the patents would never stand in court, they may be intended to cause a chilling effect. In a sense, it's not good that Slashdot is even reporting on this nonsense because it may be scaring away people who are on the fence.
Our proper collective response, as the OSS community, is:
1.) Make a huge push to get OSS solutions into the business marketplace. This will create allies and do the most to loosen the monopolists' grip. The best defense is a good offense. First step is perfecting OpenOffice. Second step is sweetening the Linux desktop with more specialized, professional business software. OSS as a movement has not reached critical mass where it truly begins to take over the industry. This needs to happen ASAP. Geeks, listen up: leave your silly vanity projects for now and get behind the solid projects that are making a real difference. Make OSS your career, not pasttime. We need more consultant-developers.
2.) Start anti-software-patent prior-art databases where people can publicly brainstorm every possible advancement of the current software state of the art. This would have a two-fold benefit of making new ideas more visible and eliminating the most obnoxiously obvious patents.
This is what I worry about when I think of the OSS business model: aside from services, it seems like the money might be severely front-loaded. So right now it works, because there's a crapload of innovation and new products. But in five years, when most of the critical apps have already been written? Will we see enough new (or at least newly discovered) needs to offset that?
Once today's critical apps are fully commoditized, resources will be liberated for true innovation. The proprietary software industry has severely limited progress of the state of the art by forcing continual wheel re-invention. Once businesses worldwide are no longer spending on operating systems and office suites, they'll have tens of billions to spend on developing innovative software instead -- software that actually improves the way they operate and advances the state of the art. Of course, this may take a few years to be set in motion. The initial reaction to commoditized software is often "hey, now we can spend less on IT." But the smart developers (and businesses) will innovate to get ahead of the game.
Desktop platform choice is driven primarily by the applications that all users need, not the more specialized ones. I think the simplicity of this fact escapes most folks in the Open Source community.
It currently works like this: 1.) All users need an office suite. 2.) MS Office dominates due to file format lock-in, feature richness, and overall polish. 3.) MS Office runs natively on Windows and MacOS. 4.) Windows or MacOS are chosen for the platform, but Windows is cheaper due to the hardware. 5.) Most other software is written for Windows since it is the most popular platform for running the office software that all people need.
I don't know how much more blatantly obvious it can be, but the key to open source on the desktop is a perfected, feature rich, and highly-polished OpenOffice that is a near drop-in replacement for MS Office. MS will never provide us with Office for Linux because it would give us a new means to embrace and extend.
As for perfecting OpenOffice, if we can collectively pull this off, the situation will look like this: 1.) Companies switch to OpenOffice on Windows to save big bucks. (Office costs more than Windows, so it is the first to go) 2.) With OpenOffice proven, many desktops are now immediate candidates for Linux, another cost savings. Some conversion begins. More system integrators ship with Linux and OpenOffice by default. 3.) Demand for Linux business software (including proprietary) spikes because it is the cheaper desktop platform and meets the base needs. Porting efforts begin en masse. 4.) Widespread adoption of Linux desktops brings widespread public exposure to all the other great F/OSS that has been developed over the years. A snowball effect occurs. 5.) Open Source soon dominates the software industry.
OK, so that all sounds great, but how do we actually make this happen ASAP? I see two options at this point. We raise money to either 1.) hire a dedicated group of full-time OpenOffice developers or 2.) buy one of the proprietary MS Office clones, which may be superior to OO at this point, and set it free. This is, of course, in addition to continued community development. Think of it this way: it only took 7 weeks to raise 100k EU to buy Blender from NaN and turn it open source. Blender was a relatively obscure project, and high-end 3D modeling software is hardly something that everyone needs. How many millions could we quickly raise in a fundraising effort for an office suite? What are we waiting for?
Thus MS domination succesfully lowers my benefits of the Open Office superiority and out of its very nature efficiently defends itself from spreading rumors about some better equipment available. You, for one, apparently have not yet got the message.
OOo does have some advantages over MSO already, but your set of needs as a chemist is a special case. Just because it meets your needs does not mean that it is ready for the everyone. Most people using MSO are business types. They're more concerned about perfect compatibility with their existing Word and Powerpoint documents, advanced features, and not having to undergo a retraining process. OOo is currently lacking many features that MSO has and that people have come to rely upon. It also lacks the polish of MSO at this point and still has quite a bit of quirkiness in need of fixing. (For example, the "complex table bug" where you cannot merge cells with overlapping rows or columns of other merge regions)
I personally use nothing but OOo and advocate its use everywhere, despite its current limitations. But I do run into heavy opposition because of the above mentioned concerns of business types. OOo needs to be polished until it is the obvious choice, not one involving extended deliberation.
As most other posters have already mentioned, the threat is more real than Rosen envisons because of the chilling effect. So how do we protect ourselves from legal FUD attacks (or worse) in the future? We make the F/OSS projects that compete with the "big guys" so successful that any attacks will anger millions of users and not be worth the PR backlash. And, if we do this, we will simultaneously be weakening the proprietary cash cows used to monopolize markets and fund bogus lawsuits in the first place!
Our competitors would like to quietly out-innovate us in a down economy with their increasing armies of R&D people, embrace and extend, release dramatically improved products of their own, and then scare off any further attempts of F/OSS to compete using this patent nonsense. We cannot let them get this far. This strategy represents the new attack on F/OSS. Barring the overthrow of software patenting itself, there is a grave danger to the future of software innovation and F/OSS in the US. We need to act immediately.
As previously stated, we need to get the most influential open source projects into rapid adoption. The way to do this, in the short term, is to perfect the projects that can save businesses and other organizations the most money with the least transition. In the end, cost drives adoption as long as quality is sufficient and migration costs are minimal to non-existant.
Desktop platform choice is driven primarily by the applications that all users need, not the more specialized ones. I think the simplicity of this fact escapes most folks in the Open Source community.
It currently works like this: 1.) All users need an office suite. 2.) MS Office dominates due to file format lock-in, feature richness, and overall polish. 3.) MS Office runs natively on Windows and MacOS. 4.) Windows or MacOS are chosen for the platform. 5.) Most other software is written for Windows since it is the most popular platform for running the office software that all people need.
I don't know how much more blatantly obvious it can be, but the key to open source on the desktop is a perfected, feature rich, and highly-polished OpenOffice that is a near drop-in replacement for MS Office.
If we can collectively pull this off, the situation will look like this: 1.) Companies switch to OpenOffice on Windows to save big bucks. 2.) With OpenOffice proven, many desktops are now immediate candidates for Linux, another cost savings. Some conversion begins. More system integrators ship with Linux and OpenOffice by default. 3.) Demand for Linux business software (including proprietary) spikes because it is the cheaper desktop platform and meets the base needs. Porting efforts begin en masse. 4.) Widespread adoption of Linux desktops brings widespread public exposure to all the other great F/OSS that has been developed over the years. A snowball effect occurs. 5.) Open Source soon dominates the software industry. Software patents are no longer a significant threat.
OK, so that all sounds great, but how do we actually make this happen ASAP? I see two options at this point. We raise money to either 1.) hire a dedicated group of full-time OpenOffice developers or 2.) buy one of the proprietary MS Office clones, which may be superior to OO at this point, and set it free. This is, of course, in addition to continued community development. Think of it this way: it only took 7 weeks to raise 100k EU to buy Blender from NaN and turn it open source. Blender was a relatively obscure project, and high-end 3D modeling software is hardly something that everyone needs. How many millions could we quickly raise in a fundraising effort for an office suite? What are we waiting for?
If open source can produce a product that competes with a multi-billion dollar company's product, it can pool its resources to generate patents. We should find a way to achieve this goal.
It's not that we couldn't, but it would be against our values. Software patents are plainly wrong and it is very reasonable to think them unconstitutional. If the Open Source community started grabbing for patents, we'd be legitimizing software patents and might even help to encourage their adoption outside the US!
He explicitly mentions the classic example of how to make money off free (as in speech) software: services. He also points out, quite correctly, that there's no way for an individual or small group to make any money off this. If you and a buddy write some great app, how on earth are you going to make money off it? A tiny company hasn't got the resources to provide "services" the way IBM or RedHat can.
Your viewpoint here is way too narrow, as was that of the author of this piece. In fact, you are holding another myth that abounds these days: "Support is the only way to make money on Free Software." In reality 'support services' is one of many business models to fund Free Software development. It works in a handful of cases, but is by no means the first or only choice. As an independent developer or small team, the most reasonable way to be paid to write F/OSS is to be paid for the act of initial creation. There are dozens of ways this can happen. The most obvious way is developing software that an organization needs, such as part of a consulting contract. After all, this is the way much in-house software is written, open source or not. But lets take the example of writing a completely original program by ones self or with a couple buddies, even though this is quite uncommon in real life. There is nothing saying that the software must be open source from inception. Look at Blender. It was closed (but 'free as in beer') for years and then a ransom was placed on opening it up, earning the developers over $100k in one lump sum. This model can even apply to features of an existing open source project. Develop a feature that people want but don't distribute it. Put up screenshots and code samples to prove its readiness. Release the code as soon as a given amount is raised.
I think one problem with discussing open source software is we often pretend everyone involved has the same objectives.
Precisely. And in fact, the motivation and objectives are always in flux -- even within a single project or for one developer. In different occasions, I personally have developed OSS to scratch my own itches, for pay to scratch someone elses itches, for the learning experience, for charity, for simple enjoyment, and for the purposes of building something my clients will later pay me to support.
Those are some interesting ideas. If you haven't already, see to it that they get "out there." Although I personally think copyright is all software needs for the time being. Patents on software techniques are highly dangerous and entirely detrimental to the industry -- not to mention there are good arguments that they can be seen as unconstitutionally limiting personal free speech. To violate a patent for a machine, you need a factory and other commercial means. To violate a patent on computer software, you need only express your thoughts using a keyboard. The basic premise of software patents is that all code is written for profit and for sale as a commercial work.
In any case, it seems that this standard is important enough that it should be clearly unencumbered. This will require clear statements from Microsoft about which patents, if any, apply to Sender ID, and to which portions of Sender ID they apply.
There's a bigger issue here. Software patentability itself needs killed -- as soon as possible. But this will take time and a lot of legal wrangling. The SenderID mess is only the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft is hiring thousands of "R&D" people to think up and patent every obvious/trivial "innovation" past the current state of the art in order to create a legal minefield for their competitors (read: F/OSS). The Open Source community needs to wake up. Merely "offering an alternative" is no longer a valid strategy. It is time to go for the preverbial jugular. We need to act collectively and decisively to rapidly usurp as much of the desktop market as possible. The only immediate defense to this software patent garbage appears to be a strong offense.
So how can we do this? Let me apply the KISS principle in this explanation: We need to have the best office suite--one whose choice is a no-brainer for business types. That's pretty much it. Sure, the desktop environments need more polish, but they are adequate. OpenOffice is not. Sure, there's a lot of third party Windows software out there, but it can be easily ported to follow the desktop platform demand.
We all know that these mod chips have limited legitimate uses, but it is intellectually dishonest of the Slashdot crowd to intentionally ignore the primary purpose of these chips.
It is intellectually dishonest of you to make claims that you cannot back up -- such as that most modchips are used primarily for warez and not imports, backup copies, and 'homebrews.' Realistically it's probably about 70/30 or so. And neither is very significant in any regard.
Where are the open source equivalents to the Astaro Security Linux distro with its very friendly integrated config tools? Or consider all the pre-built (and expensive) security boxes now on the market -- such as Watchguard Firebox or Cisco products. Nothing! We have the raw materials (Linux, iptables, OpenSwan, Squid, Squidguard, Snort, Postfix, Spamassassin, ClamAV, etc.), but no existing projects make these tools usable for the majority of administrators out there -- people who are knowledgable about networking and security, but don't have an expert level knowledge of Linux and the fussy manual configuration of all these complicated pieces of software. The saying that "Linux is free only if your time is worthless" sadly *still* holds true today for many applications. The economic reality is that most small/medium-sized organizations don't have the IT resources to handle the use of common OSS as-is. Therefore, they turn to pre-built solutions--Linux based or otherwise.
The off the cuff remark is usually, "Just use Webmin." But Webmin, at this point, is only good for the most basic administrative tasks. Most modules are half-baked and many are merely web forms to edit configuration files! Webmin does not remove the need for extensive, indepth knowledge of the underlying tools. It does not assist in integration -- such as mobile VPN + firewall rules. It is nothing more than a tool for experts to (maybe) save a little bit of time and not have to use solely ssh and vi.
There are dozens of commercial products that make Open Source server and security tools usable to non-experts (and also much easier for experts without sacrificing capability). There is no reason why the Open Source community cannot do the same.
PHP supports persistent state through shared memory blocks trivially.
You refer to the Unix-specific shmop extension. I don't think that 'trivial' is the right word, considering that developers are left to pretty much come up with their own memory management routines unless their needs are also trivial. Serializing objects all the time is hardly efficient either.
The implementation of data caching schemes that use this feature is not hard.
Are there any existing frameworks? For supposedly being so easy, there sure aren't many people doing it.
PHP is not always good enough (was Re:Yahoo)
on
On PHP and Scaling
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
IMHO, PHP rocks. It's suitable for pretty much any and all web development. It can be used for quick hacks, or you can code it like a pro with objects and stuff.
Yes, PHP is excellent for web development. Yes, PHP can scale to even some large web sites. But since the web is still all the rage, this is unfortunately all that many people think about. Where PHP stumbles is when you need to move off the web or when you need to write complex business logic that is not solely driven by a web tier. PHP also fails when you need to integrate diverse transactional resources in an efficient manner. Not all business applications can be suitably implemented in PHP. As examples:
- PHP, by its scripted execute-and-terminate nature, cannot schedule the execution of tasks on its own. So, for example, there is no way to schedule an email to be sent at a specified time. If you need this sort of functionality, you'll have to look beyond PHP to ugly hacks like cron jobs that call PHP. (and then PHP scripts that can automatically modify your cron scripts..) Alternatively, you could write your own scheduler in a different language.
- Somewhat related, PHP is incapable of asynchronous operation. Suppose, for example, that we have a flood of customers placing orders. Our inventory database is fully capable of keeping up with the demand, but credit card processing system is backlogged and this is out of our control. So we cannot give users an immediate response as to whether their payment was accepted upon placing the order. We also don't want to make them wait 5-10 minutes after hitting the "place order" button for a response. The proper business solution is to accept the order, but send the customer an email later if the payment was rejected. This process requires asychronous operation -- queueing of the payment validation requests and possible further action separate from user interaction. PHP has no solution for this scenario or the many others like it and thus we must look beyond the PHP domain.
- PHP is quite weak when it comes to writing a complex business logic layer. This is not to say that it is not possible, but there are no frameworks available comparable to those offered in the Java world (and I'm not just talking about EJB, btw). So this is not a question of languages, but of available tools to do the job efficiently. For example, PHP has no concept of application-level transaction management. (declarative transactions, isolation levels, etc.) Looking towards the cutting edge, it has no support for Aspect Oriented Programming, which is an enormous boon to business logic developers, available in Java, C++,.NET and others.
- PHP is weak on tools for developing the persistence layer. For example, it has nothing comparable to Hibernate, let alone tools for RAD employing UML.
- PHP has no pre-built solutions for caching persistent data, and certainly not objects. Once again, it is possible, but developers are left to roll their own solutions using shm extensions or writing out to the database backend. Using the database can be terribly slow and even the shm approach requires (de-)serialization on script load/terminate. While this sort of thing does not limit scalability, it does limit performance (response times).
- PHP has no means of replicating application state in a cluster other than using the backend database. While this is often of no consequence, some complex business software holds a fair amount of state which needs not be persistent.
- PHP itself cannot reasonably be used to develop non-web clients such as a GUI tool for efficient rapid data entry or greater interactivity, a PDA client, or an embedded device that interfaces with a campus security system. These sorts of clients can talk to PHP scripts via SOAP extensions, but it should be recognized that we have again left the PHP domain to meet these needs and the resulting solution may not be the most efficient.
OOo's codebase is a still a bit messy, though it is improving. Recall that Sun bought it from some fly-by-night German company and then turned it over to the Open Source community in hopes that we'd help clean it up. (perhaps their own programmers threw up their arms in disgust after hammering on it awhile?) Frankly, I think they should have just devoted the same resources to improving KOffice, which is far cleaner and less bloated code. Just a comparison: KWord loads in 3 seconds, OOwriter in 16 seconds on my box. But, on the other hand, OOo is steadily becoming faster and more stable, so who knows which project will have the most success ultimately. I consider OOo to be at the same place Mozilla was in the earlier milestone releases. It will be another couple years before OOo has reached it's equivalent of Firefox.
Now, one really important thing to realize is that the different modules of OOo are not yet independent. While OOwriter took 16 seconds to load, I can later open OOimpress in 3-4 seconds because the OOo libraries are cached. Once OOo is further modularized and switches to using standard KDE or GTk libraries, load time should be drastically improved.
And of course, even today, how much does 256Mb. of RAM cost today? $30-50. (vs.) $300-500 for MS Office. I can live with that until OOo is improved.
Another problem may be patents. Sun owns quite a few Java-related patents and the GPL requires them to give everyone a free license to those patents. That would allow MS to use those patents in their software and even to build another evil Java clone, but then, Sun wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Another patent problem may be that third party patents cannot be used in GPLed software (even though Sun can license it). So Sun might not be able to include some functionality in a GPLed Java.
Given that software patents are bogus to begin with, Sun's best move would be to abandon them and just go GPL. This would immensely bolster their image with the Open Source community on two fronts. Fact is, patent or no patents, nothing is preventing the creation of Java clones, so why bother? Microsoft? Yeah right -- they abandoned Java years ago and now have C# instead. Third party patents? Invalidate them or find workarounds.
As for SCP, I have my doubts whether this actually works to begin with. It seems to me most of the actual innovation in the J2EE scene, for example, comes through Open Source projects like Apache/Jakarta, JBoss, Hibernate, JUnit, etc.
As for Solaris being opensoured like Java, well thats just an erroneous statement since Java is not opensourced.
I think in Sun's eyes (or at least according to their PR) Java is "open source" in the sense that you can get the source code if you agree to an ugly license/NDA. If the Solaris "open source" license is at all similar, it will be of no benefit to the Open Source community. As example, Linux developers may be legally unable to view the Solaris code and yet keep working on Linux.
As stated by Sun, according to the article: "Going the way of Linux-type licensing, he suggested, creates open source but not open standards." This roughly translates to: "We still want full control over Solaris. You can see the code but we still have full say over what you can do with it."
What I think Sun misses is that lack of strong control really is a strength of Linux and other popular OSS. The whole "fragmentation" argument is textbook OSS FUD. And, of course, it is highly erroneous to say that Linux's GPL licensing causes fragmented distros since Linux is just a kernel. Linux itself has never fragmented. The existance of many diverse GNU/Linux/OSS distros has pros and cons. Two entirely separate issues.
"Sure," the buyer will say, "I could buy a more expensive computer so I could put Linux on it, but I can get this nifty 10GHz machine for half the price."
It's not whether there is a monopoly amongst the hardware manufacturers that will stop this, but how much in bed the big hardware sellers such as Dell are with the big software manufacturers.
It's not quite that simple. The only reason a "free hardware bundled with proprietary software" business model would work in the first place is if the hardware had become cheap enough to be subsidized by the margins on the software. And therein lies the problem: most desktop software companies don't have that huge of margins. The exceptions, of course, are Microsoft and probably Adobe, Norton, etc. But even Microsoft reportedly only has a huge margin on Windows and Office product lines, both of which are under increasing attack from Linux and OpenOffice. And keep in mind that the profits from Windows/Office subsidize many of MS's other divisions. OK, so this hardware has to be pretty darn cheap to make this all work -- cheap enough that there is incentive for companies to mass produce 'naked' hardware, throw some OSS on it, and sell it for cheaper than the big-name hardware/software bundles. Remember: Even unsubsized hardware will be very cheap. What's the difference between a $100 and $200 PC to the average Joe? Not much. And what about businesses that order hundreds of workstations at once? It's pretty much guaranteed that the software costs will be the primary deciding factor.
This whole thing is comparable to those $400 rebates if you sign up with a dial-up ISP when you buy a pre-fab machine. Most people are wise enough to realize the ISP costs far more than $400 for the term of the service agreement. Not to mention, they might want cable or DSL anyway.
Just another bump in the road.. The future is super-cheap, general-purpose hardware running mostly Free Software.
No, the real question is: Not being Open Source, is it of any relevance long term? In my opinion, attempts at proprietary alternatives to MS software are wasted efforts. That's not to say the products aren't quality, but no small company alone is going to be able to compete head-to-head with MS. You can't compete with them on price or quality because monopolistic control of the market trumps both. MS can always out-price a competitor to retain control and out-BS a competitor's marketing.
This is all the more evidence why we need more companies that support Open Source software like OpenOffice commercially and use their resources to help improve it. While a market does exist for alternatives, small players can't survive alone.
The RIAA is actually more concerned about marketshare than piracy. The big concern is that non-RIAA acts will get equal promotion time as RIAA acts....
Oddly enough, this hasn't happened yet. Most artists are still brainwashed by the "need to get a record deal to succeed" mentality. But yes, the RIAA is worried that as soon as one artist goes mainstream using online free content as promotion, a thousand others will follow and they'll be history in very short time. Keep in mind that free content is how RIAA promotion works to begin with: radio! They pay people (stations) to give away their music.. but they want that free content to be on their own terms. If they can get people to stop using illegit P2P today, people won't be using P2P at all and thus there won't be an established alternative route for the legit content. The same goes for internet radio. If they can strangle all the RIAA content out, people won't want to listen because there's not enough good independent content yet.
The model is there, and believe it or not, it does work.
But here's the big problem: P2P in itself does not equal promotion! People have to know about your music to want to download it, even for free. What we need is essentially an "independent RIAA" run by and for artists using the "free content for promotion" business model. In other words, a reliable way for quality independent artists to become known to the general public and a single source of independent music charts. Sure, this has been tried before, but it has never been tried on a large enough scale to make a difference. This is no easy task because it means competing directly with the likes of MTV and the ClearChannel monopoly. On the other hand, if all of the effort focused into the multitude of alternative free music sites/services was focused into one, it would likely be possible.
The RIAA isn't going to stop until P2P is dead or until they've lost market dominance due to legit free content. It is silly to think that downloading RIAA music over P2P will ever change the industry. This has been going on since Napster with absolutely no result. The RIAA has just as much stranglehold on the industry as when people first learned what an "MP3" was. Online music will continue to be a losing battle until significant changes are made.
Completely wrong. "Open Source patents" would be a terrible waste of money and time and would be extremely hypocritical of community ethos.
The most reasonable approach to fighting this threat is to push as hard as possible in the next couple years to get OSS into the marketplace. That means: 1.) getting resources to projects that need them so they can rapidly improve 2.) thinking commercially 3.) more OSS-savvy consultants who can employ/sponsor/contribute to free software solutions. The more people who switch to OSS solutions, the more people that will be seriously peeved if abusive monopolists start trying to shake down the little guys with bogus legal claims. The more people who successfully switch away from proprietary products, the less money that will go into the war chests of those with a tendancy to abuse the system.
The other front is directly challenging the current, broken patent system. Simply put: the patenting of software needs to be thrown out altogether. There are two ways this basic problem can be attacked: 1.) A patent case that potentially goes all the way to the Supreme Court and gets software patents ruled unconstitutional. (which they reasonably should be) 2.) A massive grassroots campaign among software developers that can put enough pressure on legislators to affect change. There are surely a lot of small-medium corporations who would sign onto this campaign as well. Even some larger companies might, assuming they view their software patent portfolio as defensive. Ideally this should happen before the first legal volley is fired, but sadly it will probably take this to stir up enough dissent.
So under the BSD license whoever writes the line of code gets to determine whether it's free or not. That's sounds quite fair to me.
Not necessarily. It encourages proprietary free-riding on the efforts of the community rather than a healthy responsibility to give back. That's only good if you don't believe OSS is more than a toy and don't care what direction the industry goes. In the commercial realm, GPL prevents your competitors from holding back their improvements to your code, again free-riding. Thus GPL is more like a social contract than a simple give-away.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah that Linus guy should quit reinventing the wheel, we already had a perfectly good free open source unix clone.
We didn't before. If someone started a new kernel project today, it would be a vanity project because Linux and *BSD are well established and progressing nicely. At this time, there is more to gain by contributing to them than starting over.
We need people to persue whatever seemingly pointless Free Open source projects they want to. It's the shotgun approach to innovation, and it seems to work pretty well.
To a degree this is true. On the other hand, the Open Source community suffers from a case of too many leaders and not enough followers. The result is thousands of false-start projects that should have been contributions to existing, well-managed projects. So I'm not saying that people shouldn't start projects to try completely new things, but they need to do some research first to see if they're unnecessarily duplicating others efforts. Web-based project have probably been the worst offenders in this category. We simply don't need hundreds of CMS, blog, groupware, and picture album projects -- most of which are half baked and simply serve to muddy the water for those looking for a workable open source solution.
The other issue here is priority. If people want to have silly free-time projects, they should first consider whether they're doing enough to further the mainstream of OSS. Consider the developer who, somewhat regretfully, spends their day writing proprietary code and then comes home and works on vanity OSS projects that don't really further the movement appreciably. Sadly, this probably represents the vast majority of the Slashdot crowd. Contrast this person to someone who works a day job, but has foresight and entrepreneurial ambition. When they come home, they contribute to established OSS projects that they feel they can base a business around if the software becomes mature enough. Or, if the software doesn't exist, they work on forming a professional community to develop it -- drawing as much as possible from existing codebases but innovating as required. In a few years, such a person is ready to leave their day job and really make a difference. We need more people who think like this.
Professional Open Source is the future.
The only reason Microsoft is filing all these patents is because they want to get ahold on every freaken idea that anybody could *ever* come up with. That way, when someone else decides that they want to create something (AKA, create a new OpenSource project), they may just not be able to do it anymore.
This is more than likely the case. Even if the majority of the patents would never stand in court, they may be intended to cause a chilling effect. In a sense, it's not good that Slashdot is even reporting on this nonsense because it may be scaring away people who are on the fence.
Our proper collective response, as the OSS community, is:
1.) Make a huge push to get OSS solutions into the business marketplace. This will create allies and do the most to loosen the monopolists' grip. The best defense is a good offense. First step is perfecting OpenOffice. Second step is sweetening the Linux desktop with more specialized, professional business software. OSS as a movement has not reached critical mass where it truly begins to take over the industry. This needs to happen ASAP. Geeks, listen up: leave your silly vanity projects for now and get behind the solid projects that are making a real difference. Make OSS your career, not pasttime. We need more consultant-developers.
2.) Start anti-software-patent prior-art databases where people can publicly brainstorm every possible advancement of the current software state of the art. This would have a two-fold benefit of making new ideas more visible and eliminating the most obnoxiously obvious patents.
This is what I worry about when I think of the OSS business model: aside from services, it seems like the money might be severely front-loaded. So right now it works, because there's a crapload of innovation and new products. But in five years, when most of the critical apps have already been written? Will we see enough new (or at least newly discovered) needs to offset that?
Once today's critical apps are fully commoditized, resources will be liberated for true innovation. The proprietary software industry has severely limited progress of the state of the art by forcing continual wheel re-invention. Once businesses worldwide are no longer spending on operating systems and office suites, they'll have tens of billions to spend on developing innovative software instead -- software that actually improves the way they operate and advances the state of the art. Of course, this may take a few years to be set in motion. The initial reaction to commoditized software is often "hey, now we can spend less on IT." But the smart developers (and businesses) will innovate to get ahead of the game.
Desktop platform choice is driven primarily by the applications that all users need, not the more specialized ones. I think the simplicity of this fact escapes most folks in the Open Source community.
It currently works like this:
1.) All users need an office suite.
2.) MS Office dominates due to file format lock-in, feature richness, and overall polish.
3.) MS Office runs natively on Windows and MacOS.
4.) Windows or MacOS are chosen for the platform, but Windows is cheaper due to the hardware.
5.) Most other software is written for Windows since it is the most popular platform for running the office software that all people need.
I don't know how much more blatantly obvious it can be, but the key to open source on the desktop is a perfected, feature rich, and highly-polished OpenOffice that is a near drop-in replacement for MS Office. MS will never provide us with Office for Linux because it would give us a new means to embrace and extend.
As for perfecting OpenOffice, if we can collectively pull this off, the situation will look like this:
1.) Companies switch to OpenOffice on Windows to save big bucks. (Office costs more than Windows, so it is the first to go)
2.) With OpenOffice proven, many desktops are now immediate candidates for Linux, another cost savings. Some conversion begins. More system integrators ship with Linux and OpenOffice by default.
3.) Demand for Linux business software (including proprietary) spikes because it is the cheaper desktop platform and meets the base needs. Porting efforts begin en masse.
4.) Widespread adoption of Linux desktops brings widespread public exposure to all the other great F/OSS that has been developed over the years. A snowball effect occurs.
5.) Open Source soon dominates the software industry.
OK, so that all sounds great, but how do we actually make this happen ASAP? I see two options at this point. We raise money to either 1.) hire a dedicated group of full-time OpenOffice developers or 2.) buy one of the proprietary MS Office clones, which may be superior to OO at this point, and set it free. This is, of course, in addition to continued community development. Think of it this way: it only took 7 weeks to raise 100k EU to buy Blender from NaN and turn it open source. Blender was a relatively obscure project, and high-end 3D modeling software is hardly something that everyone needs. How many millions could we quickly raise in a fundraising effort for an office suite? What are we waiting for?
Thus MS domination succesfully lowers my benefits of the Open Office superiority and out of its very nature efficiently defends itself from spreading rumors about some better equipment available. You, for one, apparently have not yet got the message.
OOo does have some advantages over MSO already, but your set of needs as a chemist is a special case. Just because it meets your needs does not mean that it is ready for the everyone. Most people using MSO are business types. They're more concerned about perfect compatibility with their existing Word and Powerpoint documents, advanced features, and not having to undergo a retraining process. OOo is currently lacking many features that MSO has and that people have come to rely upon. It also lacks the polish of MSO at this point and still has quite a bit of quirkiness in need of fixing. (For example, the "complex table bug" where you cannot merge cells with overlapping rows or columns of other merge regions)
I personally use nothing but OOo and advocate its use everywhere, despite its current limitations. But I do run into heavy opposition because of the above mentioned concerns of business types. OOo needs to be polished until it is the obvious choice, not one involving extended deliberation.
As most other posters have already mentioned, the threat is more real than Rosen envisons because of the chilling effect. So how do we protect ourselves from legal FUD attacks (or worse) in the future? We make the F/OSS projects that compete with the "big guys" so successful that any attacks will anger millions of users and not be worth the PR backlash. And, if we do this, we will simultaneously be weakening the proprietary cash cows used to monopolize markets and fund bogus lawsuits in the first place!
Our competitors would like to quietly out-innovate us in a down economy with their increasing armies of R&D people, embrace and extend, release dramatically improved products of their own, and then scare off any further attempts of F/OSS to compete using this patent nonsense. We cannot let them get this far. This strategy represents the new attack on F/OSS. Barring the overthrow of software patenting itself, there is a grave danger to the future of software innovation and F/OSS in the US. We need to act immediately.
As previously stated, we need to get the most influential open source projects into rapid adoption. The way to do this, in the short term, is to perfect the projects that can save businesses and other organizations the most money with the least transition. In the end, cost drives adoption as long as quality is sufficient and migration costs are minimal to non-existant.
Desktop platform choice is driven primarily by the applications that all users need, not the more specialized ones. I think the simplicity of this fact escapes most folks in the Open Source community.
It currently works like this:
1.) All users need an office suite.
2.) MS Office dominates due to file format lock-in, feature richness, and overall polish.
3.) MS Office runs natively on Windows and MacOS.
4.) Windows or MacOS are chosen for the platform.
5.) Most other software is written for Windows since it is the most popular platform for running the office software that all people need.
I don't know how much more blatantly obvious it can be, but the key to open source on the desktop is a perfected, feature rich, and highly-polished OpenOffice that is a near drop-in replacement for MS Office.
If we can collectively pull this off, the situation will look like this:
1.) Companies switch to OpenOffice on Windows to save big bucks.
2.) With OpenOffice proven, many desktops are now immediate candidates for Linux, another cost savings. Some conversion begins. More system integrators ship with Linux and OpenOffice by default.
3.) Demand for Linux business software (including proprietary) spikes because it is the cheaper desktop platform and meets the base needs. Porting efforts begin en masse.
4.) Widespread adoption of Linux desktops brings widespread public exposure to all the other great F/OSS that has been developed over the years. A snowball effect occurs.
5.) Open Source soon dominates the software industry. Software patents are no longer a significant threat.
OK, so that all sounds great, but how do we actually make this happen ASAP? I see two options at this point. We raise money to either 1.) hire a dedicated group of full-time OpenOffice developers or 2.) buy one of the proprietary MS Office clones, which may be superior to OO at this point, and set it free. This is, of course, in addition to continued community development. Think of it this way: it only took 7 weeks to raise 100k EU to buy Blender from NaN and turn it open source. Blender was a relatively obscure project, and high-end 3D modeling software is hardly something that everyone needs. How many millions could we quickly raise in a fundraising effort for an office suite? What are we waiting for?
If open source can produce a product that competes with a multi-billion dollar company's product, it can pool its resources to generate patents. We should find a way to achieve this goal.
It's not that we couldn't, but it would be against our values. Software patents are plainly wrong and it is very reasonable to think them unconstitutional. If the Open Source community started grabbing for patents, we'd be legitimizing software patents and might even help to encourage their adoption outside the US!
He explicitly mentions the classic example of how to make money off free (as in speech) software: services. He also points out, quite correctly, that there's no way for an individual or small group to make any money off this. If you and a buddy write some great app, how on earth are you going to make money off it? A tiny company hasn't got the resources to provide "services" the way IBM or RedHat can.
Your viewpoint here is way too narrow, as was that of the author of this piece. In fact, you are holding another myth that abounds these days: "Support is the only way to make money on Free Software." In reality 'support services' is one of many business models to fund Free Software development. It works in a handful of cases, but is by no means the first or only choice. As an independent developer or small team, the most reasonable way to be paid to write F/OSS is to be paid for the act of initial creation. There are dozens of ways this can happen. The most obvious way is developing software that an organization needs, such as part of a consulting contract. After all, this is the way much in-house software is written, open source or not. But lets take the example of writing a completely original program by ones self or with a couple buddies, even though this is quite uncommon in real life. There is nothing saying that the software must be open source from inception. Look at Blender. It was closed (but 'free as in beer') for years and then a ransom was placed on opening it up, earning the developers over $100k in one lump sum. This model can even apply to features of an existing open source project. Develop a feature that people want but don't distribute it. Put up screenshots and code samples to prove its readiness. Release the code as soon as a given amount is raised.
I think one problem with discussing open source software is we often pretend everyone involved has the same objectives.
Precisely. And in fact, the motivation and objectives are always in flux -- even within a single project or for one developer. In different occasions, I personally have developed OSS to scratch my own itches, for pay to scratch someone elses itches, for the learning experience, for charity, for simple enjoyment, and for the purposes of building something my clients will later pay me to support.
Those are some interesting ideas. If you haven't already, see to it that they get "out there." Although I personally think copyright is all software needs for the time being. Patents on software techniques are highly dangerous and entirely detrimental to the industry -- not to mention there are good arguments that they can be seen as unconstitutionally limiting personal free speech. To violate a patent for a machine, you need a factory and other commercial means. To violate a patent on computer software, you need only express your thoughts using a keyboard. The basic premise of software patents is that all code is written for profit and for sale as a commercial work.
Electronics 101: when you connect 2 circuits in series each sees half the total voltage.
Electronics 102: when you connect 2 equal non-reactive loads in series, each drops half the total voltage.
In the real world you are likely to use 48 LEDs, in two different strings, so that you get light from both sides of the wave.
In real world, you use a full-wave rectifier so that all 48 LEDs light during both sides of the wave.
In any case, it seems that this standard is important enough that it should be clearly unencumbered. This will require clear statements from Microsoft about which patents, if any, apply to Sender ID, and to which portions of Sender ID they apply.
There's a bigger issue here. Software patentability itself needs killed -- as soon as possible. But this will take time and a lot of legal wrangling. The SenderID mess is only the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft is hiring thousands of "R&D" people to think up and patent every obvious/trivial "innovation" past the current state of the art in order to create a legal minefield for their competitors (read: F/OSS). The Open Source community needs to wake up. Merely "offering an alternative" is no longer a valid strategy. It is time to go for the preverbial jugular. We need to act collectively and decisively to rapidly usurp as much of the desktop market as possible. The only immediate defense to this software patent garbage appears to be a strong offense.
So how can we do this? Let me apply the KISS principle in this explanation: We need to have the best office suite--one whose choice is a no-brainer for business types. That's pretty much it. Sure, the desktop environments need more polish, but they are adequate. OpenOffice is not. Sure, there's a lot of third party Windows software out there, but it can be easily ported to follow the desktop platform demand.
We all know that these mod chips have limited legitimate uses, but it is intellectually dishonest of the Slashdot crowd to intentionally ignore the primary purpose of these chips.
It is intellectually dishonest of you to make claims that you cannot back up -- such as that most modchips are used primarily for warez and not imports, backup copies, and 'homebrews.' Realistically it's probably about 70/30 or so. And neither is very significant in any regard.
Where are the open source equivalents to the Astaro Security Linux distro with its very friendly integrated config tools? Or consider all the pre-built (and expensive) security boxes now on the market -- such as Watchguard Firebox or Cisco products. Nothing! We have the raw materials (Linux, iptables, OpenSwan, Squid, Squidguard, Snort, Postfix, Spamassassin, ClamAV, etc.), but no existing projects make these tools usable for the majority of administrators out there -- people who are knowledgable about networking and security, but don't have an expert level knowledge of Linux and the fussy manual configuration of all these complicated pieces of software. The saying that "Linux is free only if your time is worthless" sadly *still* holds true today for many applications. The economic reality is that most small/medium-sized organizations don't have the IT resources to handle the use of common OSS as-is. Therefore, they turn to pre-built solutions--Linux based or otherwise.
The off the cuff remark is usually, "Just use Webmin." But Webmin, at this point, is only good for the most basic administrative tasks. Most modules are half-baked and many are merely web forms to edit configuration files! Webmin does not remove the need for extensive, indepth knowledge of the underlying tools. It does not assist in integration -- such as mobile VPN + firewall rules. It is nothing more than a tool for experts to (maybe) save a little bit of time and not have to use solely ssh and vi.
There are dozens of commercial products that make Open Source server and security tools usable to non-experts (and also much easier for experts without sacrificing capability). There is no reason why the Open Source community cannot do the same.
PHP supports persistent state through shared memory blocks trivially.
You refer to the Unix-specific shmop extension. I don't think that 'trivial' is the right word, considering that developers are left to pretty much come up with their own memory management routines unless their needs are also trivial. Serializing objects all the time is hardly efficient either.
The implementation of data caching schemes that use this feature is not hard.
Are there any existing frameworks? For supposedly being so easy, there sure aren't many people doing it.
IMHO, PHP rocks. It's suitable for pretty much any and all web development. It can be used for quick hacks, or you can code it like a pro with objects and stuff.
.NET and others.
Yes, PHP is excellent for web development. Yes, PHP can scale to even some large web sites. But since the web is still all the rage, this is unfortunately all that many people think about. Where PHP stumbles is when you need to move off the web or when you need to write complex business logic that is not solely driven by a web tier. PHP also fails when you need to integrate diverse transactional resources in an efficient manner. Not all business applications can be suitably implemented in PHP. As examples:
- PHP, by its scripted execute-and-terminate nature, cannot schedule the execution of tasks on its own. So, for example, there is no way to schedule an email to be sent at a specified time. If you need this sort of functionality, you'll have to look beyond PHP to ugly hacks like cron jobs that call PHP. (and then PHP scripts that can automatically modify your cron scripts..) Alternatively, you could write your own scheduler in a different language.
- Somewhat related, PHP is incapable of asynchronous operation. Suppose, for example, that we have a flood of customers placing orders. Our inventory database is fully capable of keeping up with the demand, but credit card processing system is backlogged and this is out of our control. So we cannot give users an immediate response as to whether their payment was accepted upon placing the order. We also don't want to make them wait 5-10 minutes after hitting the "place order" button for a response. The proper business solution is to accept the order, but send the customer an email later if the payment was rejected. This process requires asychronous operation -- queueing of the payment validation requests and possible further action separate from user interaction. PHP has no solution for this scenario or the many others like it and thus we must look beyond the PHP domain.
- PHP is quite weak when it comes to writing a complex business logic layer. This is not to say that it is not possible, but there are no frameworks available comparable to those offered in the Java world (and I'm not just talking about EJB, btw). So this is not a question of languages, but of available tools to do the job efficiently. For example, PHP has no concept of application-level transaction management. (declarative transactions, isolation levels, etc.) Looking towards the cutting edge, it has no support for Aspect Oriented Programming, which is an enormous boon to business logic developers, available in Java, C++,
- PHP is weak on tools for developing the persistence layer. For example, it has nothing comparable to Hibernate, let alone tools for RAD employing UML.
- PHP has no pre-built solutions for caching persistent data, and certainly not objects. Once again, it is possible, but developers are left to roll their own solutions using shm extensions or writing out to the database backend. Using the database can be terribly slow and even the shm approach requires (de-)serialization on script load/terminate. While this sort of thing does not limit scalability, it does limit performance (response times).
- PHP has no means of replicating application state in a cluster other than using the backend database. While this is often of no consequence, some complex business software holds a fair amount of state which needs not be persistent.
- PHP itself cannot reasonably be used to develop non-web clients such as a GUI tool for efficient rapid data entry or greater interactivity, a PDA client, or an embedded device that interfaces with a campus security system. These sorts of clients can talk to PHP scripts via SOAP extensions, but it should be recognized that we have again left the PHP domain to meet these needs and the resulting solution may not be the most efficient.
So in closing, PHP is great for some thing
OOo's codebase is a still a bit messy, though it is improving. Recall that Sun bought it from some fly-by-night German company and then turned it over to the Open Source community in hopes that we'd help clean it up. (perhaps their own programmers threw up their arms in disgust after hammering on it awhile?) Frankly, I think they should have just devoted the same resources to improving KOffice, which is far cleaner and less bloated code. Just a comparison: KWord loads in 3 seconds, OOwriter in 16 seconds on my box. But, on the other hand, OOo is steadily becoming faster and more stable, so who knows which project will have the most success ultimately. I consider OOo to be at the same place Mozilla was in the earlier milestone releases. It will be another couple years before OOo has reached it's equivalent of Firefox.
Now, one really important thing to realize is that the different modules of OOo are not yet independent. While OOwriter took 16 seconds to load, I can later open OOimpress in 3-4 seconds because the OOo libraries are cached. Once OOo is further modularized and switches to using standard KDE or GTk libraries, load time should be drastically improved.
And of course, even today, how much does 256Mb. of RAM cost today? $30-50. (vs.) $300-500 for MS Office. I can live with that until OOo is improved.
Another problem may be patents. Sun owns quite a few Java-related patents and the GPL requires them to give everyone a free license to those patents. That would allow MS to use those patents in their software and even to build another evil Java clone, but then, Sun wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Another patent problem may be that third party patents cannot be used in GPLed software (even though Sun can license it). So Sun might not be able to include some functionality in a GPLed Java.
Given that software patents are bogus to begin with, Sun's best move would be to abandon them and just go GPL. This would immensely bolster their image with the Open Source community on two fronts. Fact is, patent or no patents, nothing is preventing the creation of Java clones, so why bother? Microsoft? Yeah right -- they abandoned Java years ago and now have C# instead. Third party patents? Invalidate them or find workarounds.
As for SCP, I have my doubts whether this actually works to begin with. It seems to me most of the actual innovation in the J2EE scene, for example, comes through Open Source projects like Apache/Jakarta, JBoss, Hibernate, JUnit, etc.
As for Solaris being opensoured like Java, well thats just an erroneous statement since Java is not opensourced.
I think in Sun's eyes (or at least according to their PR) Java is "open source" in the sense that you can get the source code if you agree to an ugly license/NDA. If the Solaris "open source" license is at all similar, it will be of no benefit to the Open Source community. As example, Linux developers may be legally unable to view the Solaris code and yet keep working on Linux.
As stated by Sun, according to the article: "Going the way of Linux-type licensing, he suggested, creates open source but not open standards." This roughly translates to: "We still want full control over Solaris. You can see the code but we still have full say over what you can do with it."
What I think Sun misses is that lack of strong control really is a strength of Linux and other popular OSS. The whole "fragmentation" argument is textbook OSS FUD. And, of course, it is highly erroneous to say that Linux's GPL licensing causes fragmented distros since Linux is just a kernel. Linux itself has never fragmented. The existance of many diverse GNU/Linux/OSS distros has pros and cons. Two entirely separate issues.
"Sure," the buyer will say, "I could buy a more expensive computer so I could put Linux on it, but I can get this nifty 10GHz machine for half the price."
It's not whether there is a monopoly amongst the hardware manufacturers that will stop this, but how much in bed the big hardware sellers such as Dell are with the big software manufacturers.
It's not quite that simple. The only reason a "free hardware bundled with proprietary software" business model would work in the first place is if the hardware had become cheap enough to be subsidized by the margins on the software. And therein lies the problem: most desktop software companies don't have that huge of margins. The exceptions, of course, are Microsoft and probably Adobe, Norton, etc. But even Microsoft reportedly only has a huge margin on Windows and Office product lines, both of which are under increasing attack from Linux and OpenOffice. And keep in mind that the profits from Windows/Office subsidize many of MS's other divisions. OK, so this hardware has to be pretty darn cheap to make this all work -- cheap enough that there is incentive for companies to mass produce 'naked' hardware, throw some OSS on it, and sell it for cheaper than the big-name hardware/software bundles. Remember: Even unsubsized hardware will be very cheap. What's the difference between a $100 and $200 PC to the average Joe? Not much. And what about businesses that order hundreds of workstations at once? It's pretty much guaranteed that the software costs will be the primary deciding factor.
This whole thing is comparable to those $400 rebates if you sign up with a dial-up ISP when you buy a pre-fab machine. Most people are wise enough to realize the ISP costs far more than $400 for the term of the service agreement. Not to mention, they might want cable or DSL anyway.
Just another bump in the road.. The future is super-cheap, general-purpose hardware running mostly Free Software.
No, the real question is: Not being Open Source, is it of any relevance long term? In my opinion, attempts at proprietary alternatives to MS software are wasted efforts. That's not to say the products aren't quality, but no small company alone is going to be able to compete head-to-head with MS. You can't compete with them on price or quality because monopolistic control of the market trumps both. MS can always out-price a competitor to retain control and out-BS a competitor's marketing.
This is all the more evidence why we need more companies that support Open Source software like OpenOffice commercially and use their resources to help improve it. While a market does exist for alternatives, small players can't survive alone.
The RIAA is actually more concerned about marketshare than piracy. The big concern is that non-RIAA acts will get equal promotion time as RIAA acts....
Oddly enough, this hasn't happened yet. Most artists are still brainwashed by the "need to get a record deal to succeed" mentality. But yes, the RIAA is worried that as soon as one artist goes mainstream using online free content as promotion, a thousand others will follow and they'll be history in very short time. Keep in mind that free content is how RIAA promotion works to begin with: radio! They pay people (stations) to give away their music.. but they want that free content to be on their own terms. If they can get people to stop using illegit P2P today, people won't be using P2P at all and thus there won't be an established alternative route for the legit content. The same goes for internet radio. If they can strangle all the RIAA content out, people won't want to listen because there's not enough good independent content yet.
The model is there, and believe it or not, it does work.
But here's the big problem: P2P in itself does not equal promotion! People have to know about your music to want to download it, even for free. What we need is essentially an "independent RIAA" run by and for artists using the "free content for promotion" business model. In other words, a reliable way for quality independent artists to become known to the general public and a single source of independent music charts. Sure, this has been tried before, but it has never been tried on a large enough scale to make a difference. This is no easy task because it means competing directly with the likes of MTV and the ClearChannel monopoly. On the other hand, if all of the effort focused into the multitude of alternative free music sites/services was focused into one, it would likely be possible.
The RIAA isn't going to stop until P2P is dead or until they've lost market dominance due to legit free content. It is silly to think that downloading RIAA music over P2P will ever change the industry. This has been going on since Napster with absolutely no result. The RIAA has just as much stranglehold on the industry as when people first learned what an "MP3" was. Online music will continue to be a losing battle until significant changes are made.
Completely wrong. "Open Source patents" would be a terrible waste of money and time and would be extremely hypocritical of community ethos.
The most reasonable approach to fighting this threat is to push as hard as possible in the next couple years to get OSS into the marketplace. That means: 1.) getting resources to projects that need them so they can rapidly improve 2.) thinking commercially 3.) more OSS-savvy consultants who can employ/sponsor/contribute to free software solutions. The more people who switch to OSS solutions, the more people that will be seriously peeved if abusive monopolists start trying to shake down the little guys with bogus legal claims. The more people who successfully switch away from proprietary products, the less money that will go into the war chests of those with a tendancy to abuse the system.
The other front is directly challenging the current, broken patent system. Simply put: the patenting of software needs to be thrown out altogether. There are two ways this basic problem can be attacked: 1.) A patent case that potentially goes all the way to the Supreme Court and gets software patents ruled unconstitutional. (which they reasonably should be) 2.) A massive grassroots campaign among software developers that can put enough pressure on legislators to affect change. There are surely a lot of small-medium corporations who would sign onto this campaign as well. Even some larger companies might, assuming they view their software patent portfolio as defensive. Ideally this should happen before the first legal volley is fired, but sadly it will probably take this to stir up enough dissent.
So under the BSD license whoever writes the line of code gets to determine whether it's free or not. That's sounds quite fair to me.
Not necessarily. It encourages proprietary free-riding on the efforts of the community rather than a healthy responsibility to give back. That's only good if you don't believe OSS is more than a toy and don't care what direction the industry goes. In the commercial realm, GPL prevents your competitors from holding back their improvements to your code, again free-riding. Thus GPL is more like a social contract than a simple give-away.
The choice of license is up to the programmer. If you want things to "alwas be free", then choose the BSD. Who is forcing people to choose BSD?
Who ever said anything about forcing. Wasn't me. I just said GPL can be desireable because it prohibits proprietary forks of free code. End of story.