So, what if I want to buy a Mac because of its nice hardware but don't want the proprietary OS that comes with it. Can I get Apple to rebate the price?
Right, and then we'll all dance in fairy land and everyone will be happy. I mean seriously, there's no chance in hell that would happen. If the team ever did anything worth a damn with it then the lawyer might have his boss come in and say "Why the hell did you give this away, you are FIRED!"
Sure, they can try to sell it to somebody first. But who's going to buy some random old code from a no-name failed company in Russia. If it turns out that nobody wants it (which is usually the case in these scenarios), it would only be right to let the original development team take it and do as they please.
The only chance you would have of open-sourcing this would be for the guy to convince the company to donate it to FSF or some other non-profit.
There's also the Blender approach: free the code once a reasonable amount has been raised to recoup some of the development costs. Of course, Blender was something that people actually wanted.
This particular use of patent holding companies should be outlawed. If someone wants to patent something, they should be required to actually make innovative use of the patent within a short amount of time. Otherwise, holding companies just become minefields for industry and encourage bogus patents such as this one -- where some unethical weasel files for hundreds of patents on obvious technologies and then just waits for someone to come along and bump into them. Absolutely disgusting.
4. Convince them to assign the rights collectively to the old development team, under an open license. This way, both the old developers and the general public will benefit. That's what any respectable company would do.. (of course, ideally, said company would not have produced proprietary code to begin with and this wouldn't have been an issue)
1.) businesses are the largest source of potential income for Open Source developers / consultants.
2.) businesses typically don't care about how you arrive at a solution but rather: does it do the job properly and is the price right?
3.) businesses buy computers and operating environments (commodity software) to run their core business software (CRM, ERP, groupware, accounting, etc.)
So, if we want to see Free Software expand, there needs to be a focus on meeting the needs of businesses core software needs. We already have the commodity software needs well covered. (OS, desktop environments, basic apps that everyone needs, etc.) Unfortunately, the existing efforts at CRM, ERP, groupware, accounting, etc. have been half-baked. There are dozens of projects duplicating each others efforts and yet none of them are really getting the job done. (Groupware is perhaps the worst example. There have to be at least 50 or so projects on freshmeat. Most of them need to go away. Consolidate your efforts people! One quality project is all we need!)
The one commodity software need that remains, however, is a quality "office suite". It's not very far off, but OO.o and KOffice are certainly not quite there yet. It's a shame that more businesses that currently pay millions for MS Office haven't wised up and contributed to these projects as a long term investment in killing off a major IT cost once and for all.
I wouldn't call this "supporting" open-source. They're just putting it to use like many other companies. From what I understood of the article, they paid the Crossover folks (proprietary Wine version) to add full support for Photoshop. So that's not helping Open-Source. That's helping just helping a proprietary product that runs on top of Linux.
Helping Open Source would be if Disney say.. contributed the money they currently spend on Photoshop licenses to the Gimp project, in return for addition of the handful of needed features it is missing. Gimp is really not that far away from being a complete replacement, especially judging by the latest 1.3.x development code. For as many people that are wasting ongoing big bucks to license Photoshop, you'd think that more would wise up and one-time invest in a permanently free alternative.
That being said, bring on the clueless naysayers who think Gimp can never equal Photoshop for some various specious reasonings. (:
Some of the best software out there is created by hobbyists, but with something as complex as a complete office suite, it does help to have a big staff of full-time developers working on it.
Actually, the mostly hobby-project, KOffice, seems poised to overtake OpenOffice in the not so distant future. In my opinion, it is overall a better written collection of software--even if the MS compatiblity is currently lacking. OOo seems to me a twisted heap of code with an insane learning curve confronting possible new developers. And regardless, final result is a buggy, slow, monolithic application. It kinda surprises me that Sun actually paid good money for it.
From my personal experience, I can attest to the validity of the article's argument. It has been my experience that general purpose software (X11,KDE,etc.) does not gain any significant performance advantage when compiled from source with tweaked gcc compiler options. And there are plenty of other folks who have for years claimed the same thing. Perhaps the most significant reason for this is that modern x86 processors do their own optimizations (instruction re-ordering, etc.) internally. So the vanilla "i386" option is just fine in most cases. The other reason why option tweaking is pointless is that developers typically set their own optimized compiler settings in their Makefiles if it's really going to make that much of a difference. (and incidentally, some compiler optimizations such as -ffast-math aren't even safe to apply generically to all software on a machine) So this whole "which distro is faster" thing really is a dead issue.
That being said, there are a handful of cases where optimizing for your specific processor CAN slightly improve performance. (typically heavy number crunching routines). Some software like gzip, bzip2, gnupg, povray, fftw or other math libraries, etc. may benefit. But that's no need for Gentoo. Debian source packages are trivially easy to retrieve, set optimizations, and compile. It's highly automated, just like Gentoo. The only difference is you aren't forced to do that for every piece of software on your machine.
I'm saying that the government should define the problem away. Copyright is a limited monopoly assigned by the government to artists for the purposes of promoting the arts. IMHO, copyright should be 2-3 years. Most P2P copyright infringement would vanish. Me, I'm extreme enough to say that there shouldn't be any copyright past 6 months, but thats not going to happen.
That's right on. Modern technology allows artists and producers a fair and reasonable chance to capitalize on creative works in a very short amount of time. Sales peak in the first year or two, then drop off to a steady but insignificant level. An even better example is movies. All but the very worst recoup their productions costs while in the theater. The successful ones turn several times profit. (which is a whole lot when you consider the wasteful $50-150mil production cost range of a blockbuster hit) If movies went public domain the second they left the theater, hollywood would still be rolling in the money.
Far too many people forget that copyright was originally intended to serve the public by expanding the wealth of the public domain. It was not meant to grant true "property" rights to producers, but rather strike a temporary compromise to encourage production. In many cases that compromise isn't even needed anymore (ex. Open Source software). In the rest, the time limit of that compromise does not need to be anywhere near as long as it now is.
It's quite simple. We need more Open Source consultants, especially in the US, to push low-cost free software solutions. Every shop that switches to Linux / OSS is another voice of dissent if M$ ever tries to pull crap.
Don't just sit on your butts. Get out there and help cut off their income stream!
Immoral laws can never be tolerated by an educated population, and there is nothing as immoral as claiming to own others, whether in physical or intellectual slavery. The mis-application of copyright as if property is as such immoral.
The easiest way to destroy immoral laws is to make them irrelevant. If everyone switched to Open Source software and RIAA-independent bands who gladly share their tunes, none of this stuff would matter and all these excessive "IP" lawyers would be out of jobs.
Of course, this requires one putting their money where their mouth is. As long as folks insist on "playing the old game", they're going to keep being hastled by the old game's rules.
Says who? In any case, how an artist wants to make money is a matter for that artist, and no one else.
True, however it's up to the market to decide if the artist will actually make money in their various attempts. And the market is increasingly telling the artist that trying to sell music itself is neither optimal nor desireable. (As a sidenote, you can sell high-quality copies of albums without demanding exclusive rights)
Self-serving bunk. People can try to sell whatever they want. Your use of "should" implies a moral judgment at work. Morality has nothing to do with this. As my mother used to say, people in hell want ice water. And you just want free CD's.
Sure, people can try to sell anything. The operative word here is try. Using the word "should" does not imply a moral judgment. I'm being practical and making a suggestion. Now, your assumption that I just want free CD's is a moral judgment. The reality is that I believe it is best for both fans and artists if recorded music is distributed without restrictions. For the fans, because nobody can afford to buy all the music out there. For the artists, because it eliminates the need for contracts, lawyers, and distributors, and largely eliminates the need for promotional spending.
Second, what's with that "unnecessary middleman" stuff? You want someone to be a fullt-time entertainer and fly their own planes, do their own accounting, arrange their own bookings, run their own payroll, act as their own lawyers, write their own contracts, prepare their own taxes, etc.??
Unnecessary middlemen are people who take a cut of the musicians profits without offering much, if anything, in return. First of all, since when is any musician a "full-time" entertainer? Last I checked, most concerts are done at night from something like 7-10pm. What about the rest of the day? Second, artists can hire their own travel agencies, accountants, bookers, advertisers, etc. They don't need a middleman label to do that for them while sucking up all the profits. Ask yourself: when five thousand people paying $35 each attend a concert (that's $175,000), where does all that money go? And that's a single (and modest sized) concert. Now, multiply that by say, 100 concerts per year. If that $17.5 million isn't enough to support and operate a typical band, someone is seriously taking advantage of them.
In general, just one more immature post trying to dress simple greed in bogus moralistic rationalizations.
In general, just one more troll who blindly assumes that everything is fine with current system and can't think for himself how it could be better. And no, it's not greed to want the best for both the musician and the fans.
Putting money where our mouths are
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 1
We can all discuss and rant and argue all day long about how and why our rights and freedoms are being taken away, but until we take real action and encourage others to do the same, nothing is going to change. None of us have political power. But fortunately, a successful grassroots movement is far more powerful than ANY politicians or lobbyists.
So are you ready to put your money where your mouths are? Do you really want to save the Net? Here's how:
1.) Open Source - No, not just a free lunch where available - instead think about making it your career. The more companies that switch to OSS solutions, the weaker the established proprietary empires become and the greater the resistance to any bogus legal challenges. The Open Source movement is only hindered by a lack of consultant-developers who can simultaneously make a living by meeting clients needs and help write the software to enable their own and others ability to do so. Offer cheaper and better solutions and you will have customers.
2.) Alternative Media - Simply put, don't support the existing media empires. Whether that means canceling your $80/mo supreme cable or satellite package, waiting for movies to hit the rental store, not buying RIAA music or going to signed bands' concerts, or whatever, the revenue stream to these greedy and abusive oligopolists must be redirected elsewhere for change to ever happen. Instead, use the money you would have spent on supporting independent artists. And if you're going to use P2P, use it to spread legal, alternative content. Otherwise, you just help advertise for the establishment. And if you're really connected to your local music scene, why not help your favorite artists get online and establish an Internet fanbase that'll eventually allow them to tour and sell concert tickets.
3.) Have you been successful at 1.) and/or 2.)? Write some articles on how you did it, encourage others to become entrepreneurs in your footsteps, and generally let the world know that a choice exists. There are a lot of people who would love to break from the mold, but aren't convinced it's possible.
4.) Support groups like the EFF. I consider this a political option and therefore less powerful than 1. and 2., but it can still make a difference in the meantime.
Pro file-sharing? That's just half the story. From your link:..part of an ongoing campaign to protect the rights of people sharing music online while compensating artists
People often forget about the compensation part...
That's just half the story. People often forget that selling albums is not the optimal way for artists to receive compensation. That's what live performances should be for. Pre-recorded albums should be free promotional material and a service to the fans.
And artists often forget that once the unnecessary middlemen are cut out of the picture, there is plenty of money to be made in concerts alone. -- That is, assuming said artists are any good to begin with, such that people actually want to see them in concert. If not, they should find another career.
As much as I love Open Source (I'm typing this via Moz on FreeBSD!), I don't think I could recommend it to Sally Secretary quite yet. Its still got a bit more polishing to do. In Gnome, for example, I occasionally get a dialog box that says " occurred. For more information, click on the help button." Naturally there is no help button.
If it saves them money, then perhaps governments ought to consider doing some of the polishing themselves and actually have something to show for the tax dollars spent. Of course, in reality, they'd hire someone to do the polishing for them. Too bad there aren't any geeks looking for jobs these days.:-P
Enjoy your BMWs and Mercedes while you have them, because the second there's a way to cut you and your friends out of this picture, we will do it, and I will then start buying music again because I, unlike you, actually DO care about the artists.
The problem is that Joe Idiot using P2P to share RIAA content doesn't know about alternatives. RIAA content is all he has been exposed to via MTV, big concert promotions, the radio, etc. So for him, it's just a matter of "15-18 bucks is a total rip off for a CD and here I can get it for free instead".
What we (music enthusiasts) need is a means as pervasive as P2P to promote *quality* independent artists but without involving commercial interests for the promotion itself. So this needs to be either a non-profit group or some sort of grassroots movement. And quality is the key. Existing independent-music related sites have done a terrible job at promoting quality. Most music on such sites is downright garbage and it takes far too long to find the good stuff. So there needs to be a way to filter the bad from the good but in a way that is fair and unbiased.
Once this happens, the RIAA is history, because new artists can strive to hit community-driven charts instead of land a record-label contract for their promotion needs.
Until then, the best thing we can do is encourage people to ignore RIAA content -- not even download it. A lot of people are going to be really annoyed by these lawsuits. Now is the time to spread the seeds of change.
If you particularly like a certain distro and use it for day-to-day use, I suggest you do the same if you want it to survive. Or if it's something like Gentoo, give them the amount it would cost if they had a boxset once a year or so, which would be about $60.
I disagree. Having multiple general purpose distros is a waste of resources, a confusion to end-users, and a hastle for sysadmins and consultants such as myself who have to keep up with all the goofy nuances. In reality, we don't need RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, and other companies to package GNU/Linux and other Free Software for us. Minus a user-friendly installer, Debian does everything that the big guys do and yet is entirely a community project. Sure, it has its weaknesses and some of the package maintainers are faster than others. But, in the end, if companies who make money primarily through support, training, and solutions would get behind a single distro instead of each creating their own, the whole community would be better off. Debian is perhaps 95% there as a "distro for everyone". A couple full-time developers working at the various Linux "vendors" would be all that is required to make it more end-user friendly and round out the few rough edges. Then, such companies, RedHat et al, could focus on providing solutions, not software package wheel-reinventing. Everyone would benefit. It just plain makes sense.
..while good OSS projects don't have investment value.
Not if your company is going to save a bundle through not having to pay for proprietary software. Funding and/or developing OSS yourself can most definitely be an investment in reducing future costs.
There are plenty of valid pro-FLOS arguments, but this isn't one of them. Your 'if' should be at least all caps--licensing a proprietary solution is almost always cheaper (monetarily) than developing the same thing in-house, because in the proprietary case, the cost of development is spread across all the licensees.
However, in most cases, "in-house" OSS projects don't necessitate starting from scratch. So if enough of the work is already done, OSS is often still the way to go. There are a lot more IF's to consider for the proprietary solution as well: will there be future license costs? will the software meet your needs as well as a custom tweaked solution? Now, lets take the extreme example: the (free) software just plain doesn't exist. Before going the proprietary route, another option is to consider collaborating with other people/businesses with the same needs. This makes it possible to spread the cost of development in the way that licenses do for proprietary work. In a sense, this is partly what the Apache project did. Perhaps we need non-profit groups to help coordinate development of some other common software needs. And once the base is laid, the "starting from scratch" hurdle is overcome, allowing in-house or consultant development to carry the rest.
Take Office as an example. Say you need 100 licenses; call it US$80,000 in licensing. $80,000 of paid, full-time developers is unlikely to get you anywhere near the functionality of an office suite.
"Office" software is a perfect example of what I described above. It's software that most everyone needs. Maybe $80,000 isn't enough to bring OpenOffice or KOffice to the sophistication of M$ Office. But then, consider that businesses and governments pay billions each year for M$ Office. If even say 1/100th of them instead contributed to a collaborative project, M$ would be out a cash cow in a year or two's time. Do the math. Say.. $5bil / 100 = $50mil. That would be 500 OSS developers for 1 year at $100,000 each! And look how far KOffice has come with about a dozen developers in only their spare time!
Take your favorite FLOS software and do a cost-of-development estimate using whatever figures you want, with whatever model you want (COCOMO is probably the best-known, albeit an old one, and there are FLOS tools that will do COCOMO analysis for you on most languages). I was astounded the first time I tried this.
I've never tried it, but honestly, I don't really believe in tools like this. They make too many pessimistic assumptions. They're too constrained by "traditional" business practices -- over-management, etc. Maybe they work fine for government labs or large corporations doing slothful in-house work where nobody gives a damn, but I'd bet according to these tools, most OSS couldn't even exist -- yet it does. Furthermore, impassioned developers and entrepreneurs tend not to fit onto bell curves.
The rest of your comment is sound, and I'm a proponent of FLOS software myself, but the idea that developing in-house is cost-effective vs. licensing proprietary software is rarely true except in the most specialized or most trivial cases.
Once again, only if you can't find somebody to collaborate with.
Strange. You seem to have reversed half your viewpoints since the parent post -- in which you stated (in essense) that OSS was an evil communist plot to rob everyone of the ability to make a living. OK, I'll bite. I'm bored so what the hey. Maybe you aren't a troll afterall.
But there needs to be an economic reward for the developers. What we need is something different from this world of mega monopolies and free software revolution against the machine. We need to figure out how to create a structure where there is both a flow of ideas and money.
There's this nasty lie floating about that OSS is just a wild-eyed revolution "against the machine" and without economic reward for those involved. I would propose that this myth is largely propagated by those with stake in the "old way" of doing software business. While OSS is indeed a revolution, it is not against the principles of business, the free market economy, and being paid for hard work. It's just a different (and incredibly more efficient) approach at arriving at the same goal. I personally do (paid) consulting using OSS solutions. The free software I use, develop and/or enhance gives me a large advantage over my competitors -- I can charge them less for the total package because all they're paying for is my labor. I could keep my own custom software closed, but then I'd be freeloading off the hard work of others and hindering the revolution from continuing. (and if it stopped, there goes my business model) And of course by staying open, I get free bug-fixes, feedback suggestions, and enhancements from other people in a similar line of work. So it's something of a 'symbiotic' relationship with other OSS developers. Not all who use my software pay me for consulting, but enough do, and that's all that matters to me. I'm doing something I love and getting paid to do it. Sure, it's a brand new business and I'm not making the big bucks, but all things start out small.
"Free Software" alone won't kick the third world's IT industry into high gear. There has to be an economic reward for the hard work it takes to become a great software developing center. Reworked revolutionary sloganeering (even with the Who playing in the background) won't create software heaven.
It depends on what you mean by "high gear." If many independent developers and small businesses can collectively accomplish more than traditional large software development firms, then that should be considered the new "high gear" even if those people aren't under the same roof in a big flashy headquarters. As for developing countries, they're just working at inching forward in first gear anyhow. So OSS is currently a great way to give them a boost because there are no barriers to entering the labor market of OSS development. "What about exports?" you may ask. Well, it's just labor. So there's no reason why US consultants can't pay overseas developers to help in meeting their clients' needs. And heck, the inverse is true as well!
I would love to be able to make a living developing OSS, however, there needs to be a way to pay rent.
Start brainstorming. Start out by finding out what the needs of local businesses are. Ask around. Right now, a career with OSS is usually about being your own boss. That'll change in the future as larger consulting firms develop, but for now it's the easiest option.
For that matter, I think software developers should make enough that on a whim they could vacate for the islands on a cruise ship, and maybe buy some trinkets.
If they think that's a worthwhile expenditure of disposable income, software developers can do what the vast majority of the world's population would have to do: save up. "On a whim" implies gratuitous wealth. Maybe possible, maybe not. Depends on how good of an entrepreneur you are. (:
The main goal of OSS is simply to end the idea of software development as a business. Software development is only one piece of the pie. But back to third world evangelizing. Most US software companies have found out that they cannot afford serious OSS development. When the flaws of the revolution become apparent, it is natural to move to the third world.
Completely wrong. OSS is about ending the idea of software development as an artificial monopoly business. It's not about "free lunch for everybody"; it's about meeting needs more efficiently. The existing proprietary software industry has hardly done that -- there are way too many middlemen, there is way too much business (management, marketing, etc.) overhead, there is too much wheel-reinventing, and closed code too often gets abandoned and never seen again. So of course most US software companies can't afford serious OSS development -- it's not their business model! Their businesses are based on: high overhead, develop once, sell millions of times for near zero marginal cost. That doesn't prove the OSS revolution is "flawed", it proves that existing software companies are obsolete as currently structured!
Preaching free software and creating a world where software is only taken and not traded, then the third world nimrods who fall for the propaganda will find their software development skills worth less than the local trinket makers.
Wrong again. Unlike software licenses, OSS development is not an ongoing cost. You develop (or enhance) the software to meet your needs, release your changes back unto the community, and then forget about it. If those development costs are less than that of proprietary licenses, you are saving money. This works whether you're a third world country, a giant US corporation, or a tiny mom-and-pop operation. From a purchasing perspective only difference is you're paying the programmers and consultants more directly and getting a better product for much cheaper.
In someways I see this little Stalin-wannabe iconoclast preaching in the third world as the ultimate act of contempt. Giving your work away for free doesn't work in the first world. So you preach to the peasantry of the glories of the revolution to the third world.
Wow. Now you're really off track. OSS draws absolutely no parallel to the failed communist movement. There is no centralization, there is no governing body saying who does what, there is no underlying evil motive of power and control, and it's about increasing personal freedoms, not taking them away. OSS is about empowering free markets and capitalism -- removing monopolies, ensuring easy entry, and encouraging diversity. It's not about giving away all your hard work; it's about making your living in the same industry but through more efficient and ethical means.
It is a fun example of history repeating itself. The fearless leader preaches the glories of revolution to the peasantry knowing full well that the dictatorship of the prolitariat intends to pave the roads of their paradise with the blood of their followers.
Now that is propaganda -- and totally unsupported propaganda at that. Your troll is almost professional enough to have come from the M$ PR team itself.
The panelists agreed that SCO is targeting companies like IBM in an attempt to raise cash. Most importantly: "if a company is not after money, suing is not the way to go."
They're just sore losers. If only there was a marketplace "poor sportsmanship" penalty. (oh wait.. there is.. it's called bad PR. nevermind.) (:
When it's all reduced to a real labor market, as you call it, programming becomes a commodity. Then it's shipped to the country with the lowest wages.
Programming is already a commodity and sometimes already is shipped to the country with the lowest wages. Who cares. That's how a free market is supposed to work. But commoditization doesn't negate the need for local programmers and consultants to install, support, customize, and tweak.
Fast-forward 20-30 years. Programming languages and tools will have become so abstract and close to natural language that entirely unskilled persons will be able to 'program'. Advance another 20-30 years and computers will be starting to write their own software with humans only to guide them. So regardless, the software industry is in for enormous changes. Just as factory laborers are increasingly being replaced by robotics, today's inefficient manufacturing-model software development will be replaced by Open Source collaboration, free labor markets, and eventually elements of AI. Progress is good.
No matter how much you call Intellectual Property a 'nonsense "IP" myth' there will continue to be highly intelligent and skillful engineers out there developing Intellectual Property and expecting renumeration from the people who use it.
Did I ever say that hardware should be free? Nope. I said that there are no valid "helping the competition" concerns in releasing specification on how a piece of hardware talks to the rest of the system. In other words, the valuable intellectual product of any hardware is hard-coded into the silicon.
No amount of handwaving about 'freedom' and propaganda about 'sharing' will amount to anything more than a stone soup swindle.... That kind of ideology only works when there's a collective goal.
There is a collective goal: meeting technology needs efficiently. And surprise, surprise, the social institution of "intellectual property" has proven an extremely inefficient means in many cases. Hardware is an exception because a physical product must still be custom engineered and manufactured. Software, on the other hand, is now in the hands of anyone who wishes to write it.
People like you miss the point of Open Source. It's not about "fire the engineers and coders, everything should be a free lunch!". It's about meeting needs with as few middlemen as possible. It's about transforming the software industry from an artificial manufacturing market into a real labor market. And yes, everybody is still getting paid -- just by different folks.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you could only hire about 2 $70K sysadmins for that money. An employee usually costs close to 2 times his/her salary.
Or, you could hire one full-time employee and contract 2-3 part-time consultants.
So, what if I want to buy a Mac because of its nice hardware but don't want the proprietary OS that comes with it. Can I get Apple to rebate the price?
Right, and then we'll all dance in fairy land and everyone will be happy. I mean seriously, there's no chance in hell that would happen. If the team ever did anything worth a damn with it then the lawyer might have his boss come in and say "Why the hell did you give this away, you are FIRED!"
Sure, they can try to sell it to somebody first. But who's going to buy some random old code from a no-name failed company in Russia. If it turns out that nobody wants it (which is usually the case in these scenarios), it would only be right to let the original development team take it and do as they please.
The only chance you would have of open-sourcing this would be for the guy to convince the company to donate it to FSF or some other non-profit.
There's also the Blender approach: free the code once a reasonable amount has been raised to recoup some of the development costs. Of course, Blender was something that people actually wanted.
This particular use of patent holding companies should be outlawed. If someone wants to patent something, they should be required to actually make innovative use of the patent within a short amount of time. Otherwise, holding companies just become minefields for industry and encourage bogus patents such as this one -- where some unethical weasel files for hundreds of patents on obvious technologies and then just waits for someone to come along and bump into them. Absolutely disgusting.
There are basically three options you have.
How about:
4. Convince them to assign the rights collectively to the old development team, under an open license. This way, both the old developers and the general public will benefit. That's what any respectable company would do.. (of course, ideally, said company would not have produced proprietary code to begin with and this wouldn't have been an issue)
What many people seem to forget is that:
1.) businesses are the largest source of potential income for Open Source developers / consultants.
2.) businesses typically don't care about how you arrive at a solution but rather: does it do the job properly and is the price right?
3.) businesses buy computers and operating environments (commodity software) to run their core business software (CRM, ERP, groupware, accounting, etc.)
So, if we want to see Free Software expand, there needs to be a focus on meeting the needs of businesses core software needs. We already have the commodity software needs well covered. (OS, desktop environments, basic apps that everyone needs, etc.) Unfortunately, the existing efforts at CRM, ERP, groupware, accounting, etc. have been half-baked. There are dozens of projects duplicating each others efforts and yet none of them are really getting the job done. (Groupware is perhaps the worst example. There have to be at least 50 or so projects on freshmeat. Most of them need to go away. Consolidate your efforts people! One quality project is all we need!)
The one commodity software need that remains, however, is a quality "office suite". It's not very far off, but OO.o and KOffice are certainly not quite there yet. It's a shame that more businesses that currently pay millions for MS Office haven't wised up and contributed to these projects as a long term investment in killing off a major IT cost once and for all.
I wouldn't call this "supporting" open-source. They're just putting it to use like many other companies. From what I understood of the article, they paid the Crossover folks (proprietary Wine version) to add full support for Photoshop. So that's not helping Open-Source. That's helping just helping a proprietary product that runs on top of Linux.
Helping Open Source would be if Disney say.. contributed the money they currently spend on Photoshop licenses to the Gimp project, in return for addition of the handful of needed features it is missing. Gimp is really not that far away from being a complete replacement, especially judging by the latest 1.3.x development code. For as many people that are wasting ongoing big bucks to license Photoshop, you'd think that more would wise up and one-time invest in a permanently free alternative.
That being said, bring on the clueless naysayers who think Gimp can never equal Photoshop for some various specious reasonings. (:
Some of the best software out there is created by hobbyists, but with something as complex as a complete office suite, it does help to have a big staff of full-time developers working on it.
Actually, the mostly hobby-project, KOffice, seems poised to overtake OpenOffice in the not so distant future. In my opinion, it is overall a better written collection of software--even if the MS compatiblity is currently lacking. OOo seems to me a twisted heap of code with an insane learning curve confronting possible new developers. And regardless, final result is a buggy, slow, monolithic application. It kinda surprises me that Sun actually paid good money for it.
From my personal experience, I can attest to the validity of the article's argument. It has been my experience that general purpose software (X11,KDE,etc.) does not gain any significant performance advantage when compiled from source with tweaked gcc compiler options. And there are plenty of other folks who have for years claimed the same thing. Perhaps the most significant reason for this is that modern x86 processors do their own optimizations (instruction re-ordering, etc.) internally. So the vanilla "i386" option is just fine in most cases. The other reason why option tweaking is pointless is that developers typically set their own optimized compiler settings in their Makefiles if it's really going to make that much of a difference. (and incidentally, some compiler optimizations such as -ffast-math aren't even safe to apply generically to all software on a machine) So this whole "which distro is faster" thing really is a dead issue.
That being said, there are a handful of cases where optimizing for your specific processor CAN slightly improve performance. (typically heavy number crunching routines). Some software like gzip, bzip2, gnupg, povray, fftw or other math libraries, etc. may benefit. But that's no need for Gentoo. Debian source packages are trivially easy to retrieve, set optimizations, and compile. It's highly automated, just like Gentoo. The only difference is you aren't forced to do that for every piece of software on your machine.
I'm saying that the government should define the problem away. Copyright is a limited monopoly assigned by the government to artists for the purposes of promoting the arts. IMHO, copyright should be 2-3 years. Most P2P copyright infringement would vanish. Me, I'm extreme enough to say that there shouldn't be any copyright past 6 months, but thats not going to happen.
That's right on. Modern technology allows artists and producers a fair and reasonable chance to capitalize on creative works in a very short amount of time. Sales peak in the first year or two, then drop off to a steady but insignificant level. An even better example is movies. All but the very worst recoup their productions costs while in the theater. The successful ones turn several times profit. (which is a whole lot when you consider the wasteful $50-150mil production cost range of a blockbuster hit) If movies went public domain the second they left the theater, hollywood would still be rolling in the money.
Far too many people forget that copyright was originally intended to serve the public by expanding the wealth of the public domain. It was not meant to grant true "property" rights to producers, but rather strike a temporary compromise to encourage production. In many cases that compromise isn't even needed anymore (ex. Open Source software). In the rest, the time limit of that compromise does not need to be anywhere near as long as it now is.
It's quite simple. We need more Open Source consultants, especially in the US, to push low-cost free software solutions. Every shop that switches to Linux / OSS is another voice of dissent if M$ ever tries to pull crap.
Don't just sit on your butts. Get out there and help cut off their income stream!
Immoral laws can never be tolerated by an educated population, and there is nothing as immoral as claiming to own others, whether in physical or intellectual slavery. The mis-application of copyright as if property is as such immoral.
The easiest way to destroy immoral laws is to make them irrelevant. If everyone switched to Open Source software and RIAA-independent bands who gladly share their tunes, none of this stuff would matter and all these excessive "IP" lawyers would be out of jobs.
Of course, this requires one putting their money where their mouth is. As long as folks insist on "playing the old game", they're going to keep being hastled by the old game's rules.
Says who? In any case, how an artist wants to make money is a matter for that artist, and no one else.
True, however it's up to the market to decide if the artist will actually make money in their various attempts. And the market is increasingly telling the artist that trying to sell music itself is neither optimal nor desireable. (As a sidenote, you can sell high-quality copies of albums without demanding exclusive rights)
Self-serving bunk. People can try to sell whatever they want. Your use of "should" implies a moral judgment at work. Morality has nothing to do with this. As my mother used to say, people in hell want ice water. And you just want free CD's.
Sure, people can try to sell anything. The operative word here is try. Using the word "should" does not imply a moral judgment. I'm being practical and making a suggestion. Now, your assumption that I just want free CD's is a moral judgment. The reality is that I believe it is best for both fans and artists if recorded music is distributed without restrictions. For the fans, because nobody can afford to buy all the music out there. For the artists, because it eliminates the need for contracts, lawyers, and distributors, and largely eliminates the need for promotional spending.
Second, what's with that "unnecessary middleman" stuff? You want someone to be a fullt-time entertainer and fly their own planes, do their own accounting, arrange their own bookings, run their own payroll, act as their own lawyers, write their own contracts, prepare their own taxes, etc.??
Unnecessary middlemen are people who take a cut of the musicians profits without offering much, if anything, in return. First of all, since when is any musician a "full-time" entertainer? Last I checked, most concerts are done at night from something like 7-10pm. What about the rest of the day? Second, artists can hire their own travel agencies, accountants, bookers, advertisers, etc. They don't need a middleman label to do that for them while sucking up all the profits. Ask yourself: when five thousand people paying $35 each attend a concert (that's $175,000), where does all that money go? And that's a single (and modest sized) concert. Now, multiply that by say, 100 concerts per year. If that $17.5 million isn't enough to support and operate a typical band, someone is seriously taking advantage of them.
In general, just one more immature post trying to dress simple greed in bogus moralistic rationalizations.
In general, just one more troll who blindly assumes that everything is fine with current system and can't think for himself how it could be better. And no, it's not greed to want the best for both the musician and the fans.
We can all discuss and rant and argue all day long about how and why our rights and freedoms are being taken away, but until we take real action and encourage others to do the same, nothing is going to change. None of us have political power. But fortunately, a successful grassroots movement is far more powerful than ANY politicians or lobbyists.
So are you ready to put your money where your mouths are? Do you really want to save the Net? Here's how:
1.) Open Source - No, not just a free lunch where available - instead think about making it your career. The more companies that switch to OSS solutions, the weaker the established proprietary empires become and the greater the resistance to any bogus legal challenges. The Open Source movement is only hindered by a lack of consultant-developers who can simultaneously make a living by meeting clients needs and help write the software to enable their own and others ability to do so. Offer cheaper and better solutions and you will have customers.
2.) Alternative Media - Simply put, don't support the existing media empires. Whether that means canceling your $80/mo supreme cable or satellite package, waiting for movies to hit the rental store, not buying RIAA music or going to signed bands' concerts, or whatever, the revenue stream to these greedy and abusive oligopolists must be redirected elsewhere for change to ever happen. Instead, use the money you would have spent on supporting independent artists. And if you're going to use P2P, use it to spread legal, alternative content. Otherwise, you just help advertise for the establishment. And if you're really connected to your local music scene, why not help your favorite artists get online and establish an Internet fanbase that'll eventually allow them to tour and sell concert tickets.
3.) Have you been successful at 1.) and/or 2.)? Write some articles on how you did it, encourage others to become entrepreneurs in your footsteps, and generally let the world know that a choice exists. There are a lot of people who would love to break from the mold, but aren't convinced it's possible.
4.) Support groups like the EFF. I consider this a political option and therefore less powerful than 1. and 2., but it can still make a difference in the meantime.
Pro file-sharing? That's just half the story. From your link: ..part of an ongoing campaign to protect the rights of people sharing music online while compensating artists
People often forget about the compensation part...
That's just half the story. People often forget that selling albums is not the optimal way for artists to receive compensation. That's what live performances should be for. Pre-recorded albums should be free promotional material and a service to the fans.
And artists often forget that once the unnecessary middlemen are cut out of the picture, there is plenty of money to be made in concerts alone. -- That is, assuming said artists are any good to begin with, such that people actually want to see them in concert. If not, they should find another career.
As much as I love Open Source (I'm typing this via Moz on FreeBSD!), I don't think I could recommend it to Sally Secretary quite yet. Its still got a bit more polishing to do. In Gnome, for example, I occasionally get a dialog box that says " occurred. For more information, click on the help button." Naturally there is no help button.
:-P
If it saves them money, then perhaps governments ought to consider doing some of the polishing themselves and actually have something to show for the tax dollars spent. Of course, in reality, they'd hire someone to do the polishing for them. Too bad there aren't any geeks looking for jobs these days.
Enjoy your BMWs and Mercedes while you have them, because the second there's a way to cut you and your friends out of this picture, we will do it, and I will then start buying music again because I, unlike you, actually DO care about the artists.
The problem is that Joe Idiot using P2P to share RIAA content doesn't know about alternatives. RIAA content is all he has been exposed to via MTV, big concert promotions, the radio, etc. So for him, it's just a matter of "15-18 bucks is a total rip off for a CD and here I can get it for free instead".
What we (music enthusiasts) need is a means as pervasive as P2P to promote *quality* independent artists but without involving commercial interests for the promotion itself. So this needs to be either a non-profit group or some sort of grassroots movement. And quality is the key. Existing independent-music related sites have done a terrible job at promoting quality. Most music on such sites is downright garbage and it takes far too long to find the good stuff. So there needs to be a way to filter the bad from the good but in a way that is fair and unbiased.
Once this happens, the RIAA is history, because new artists can strive to hit community-driven charts instead of land a record-label contract for their promotion needs.
Until then, the best thing we can do is encourage people to ignore RIAA content -- not even download it. A lot of people are going to be really annoyed by these lawsuits. Now is the time to spread the seeds of change.
If you particularly like a certain distro and use it for day-to-day use, I suggest you do the same if you want it to survive. Or if it's something like Gentoo, give them the amount it would cost if they had a boxset once a year or so, which would be about $60.
I disagree. Having multiple general purpose distros is a waste of resources, a confusion to end-users, and a hastle for sysadmins and consultants such as myself who have to keep up with all the goofy nuances. In reality, we don't need RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, and other companies to package GNU/Linux and other Free Software for us. Minus a user-friendly installer, Debian does everything that the big guys do and yet is entirely a community project. Sure, it has its weaknesses and some of the package maintainers are faster than others. But, in the end, if companies who make money primarily through support, training, and solutions would get behind a single distro instead of each creating their own, the whole community would be better off. Debian is perhaps 95% there as a "distro for everyone". A couple full-time developers working at the various Linux "vendors" would be all that is required to make it more end-user friendly and round out the few rough edges. Then, such companies, RedHat et al, could focus on providing solutions, not software package wheel-reinventing. Everyone would benefit. It just plain makes sense.
..while good OSS projects don't have investment value.
Not if your company is going to save a bundle through not having to pay for proprietary software. Funding and/or developing OSS yourself can most definitely be an investment in reducing future costs.
There are plenty of valid pro-FLOS arguments, but this isn't one of them. Your 'if' should be at least all caps--licensing a proprietary solution is almost always cheaper (monetarily) than developing the same thing in-house, because in the proprietary case, the cost of development is spread across all the licensees.
However, in most cases, "in-house" OSS projects don't necessitate starting from scratch. So if enough of the work is already done, OSS is often still the way to go. There are a lot more IF's to consider for the proprietary solution as well: will there be future license costs? will the software meet your needs as well as a custom tweaked solution? Now, lets take the extreme example: the (free) software just plain doesn't exist. Before going the proprietary route, another option is to consider collaborating with other people/businesses with the same needs. This makes it possible to spread the cost of development in the way that licenses do for proprietary work. In a sense, this is partly what the Apache project did. Perhaps we need non-profit groups to help coordinate development of some other common software needs. And once the base is laid, the "starting from scratch" hurdle is overcome, allowing in-house or consultant development to carry the rest.
Take Office as an example. Say you need 100 licenses; call it US$80,000 in licensing. $80,000 of paid, full-time developers is unlikely to get you anywhere near the functionality of an office suite.
"Office" software is a perfect example of what I described above. It's software that most everyone needs. Maybe $80,000 isn't enough to bring OpenOffice or KOffice to the sophistication of M$ Office. But then, consider that businesses and governments pay billions each year for M$ Office. If even say 1/100th of them instead contributed to a collaborative project, M$ would be out a cash cow in a year or two's time. Do the math. Say.. $5bil / 100 = $50mil. That would be 500 OSS developers for 1 year at $100,000 each! And look how far KOffice has come with about a dozen developers in only their spare time!
Take your favorite FLOS software and do a cost-of-development estimate using whatever figures you want, with whatever model you want (COCOMO is probably the best-known, albeit an old one, and there are FLOS tools that will do COCOMO analysis for you on most languages). I was astounded the first time I tried this.
I've never tried it, but honestly, I don't really believe in tools like this. They make too many pessimistic assumptions. They're too constrained by "traditional" business practices -- over-management, etc. Maybe they work fine for government labs or large corporations doing slothful in-house work where nobody gives a damn, but I'd bet according to these tools, most OSS couldn't even exist -- yet it does. Furthermore, impassioned developers and entrepreneurs tend not to fit onto bell curves.
The rest of your comment is sound, and I'm a proponent of FLOS software myself, but the idea that developing in-house is cost-effective vs. licensing proprietary software is rarely true except in the most specialized or most trivial cases.
Once again, only if you can't find somebody to collaborate with.
Strange. You seem to have reversed half your viewpoints since the parent post -- in which you stated (in essense) that OSS was an evil communist plot to rob everyone of the ability to make a living. OK, I'll bite. I'm bored so what the hey. Maybe you aren't a troll afterall.
But there needs to be an economic reward for the developers. What we need is something different from this world of mega monopolies and free software revolution against the machine. We need to figure out how to create a structure where there is both a flow of ideas and money.
There's this nasty lie floating about that OSS is just a wild-eyed revolution "against the machine" and without economic reward for those involved. I would propose that this myth is largely propagated by those with stake in the "old way" of doing software business. While OSS is indeed a revolution, it is not against the principles of business, the free market economy, and being paid for hard work. It's just a different (and incredibly more efficient) approach at arriving at the same goal. I personally do (paid) consulting using OSS solutions. The free software I use, develop and/or enhance gives me a large advantage over my competitors -- I can charge them less for the total package because all they're paying for is my labor. I could keep my own custom software closed, but then I'd be freeloading off the hard work of others and hindering the revolution from continuing. (and if it stopped, there goes my business model) And of course by staying open, I get free bug-fixes, feedback suggestions, and enhancements from other people in a similar line of work. So it's something of a 'symbiotic' relationship with other OSS developers. Not all who use my software pay me for consulting, but enough do, and that's all that matters to me. I'm doing something I love and getting paid to do it. Sure, it's a brand new business and I'm not making the big bucks, but all things start out small.
"Free Software" alone won't kick the third world's IT industry into high gear. There has to be an economic reward for the hard work it takes to become a great software developing center. Reworked revolutionary sloganeering (even with the Who playing in the background) won't create software heaven.
It depends on what you mean by "high gear." If many independent developers and small businesses can collectively accomplish more than traditional large software development firms, then that should be considered the new "high gear" even if those people aren't under the same roof in a big flashy headquarters. As for developing countries, they're just working at inching forward in first gear anyhow. So OSS is currently a great way to give them a boost because there are no barriers to entering the labor market of OSS development. "What about exports?" you may ask. Well, it's just labor. So there's no reason why US consultants can't pay overseas developers to help in meeting their clients' needs. And heck, the inverse is true as well!
I would love to be able to make a living developing OSS, however, there needs to be a way to pay rent.
Start brainstorming. Start out by finding out what the needs of local businesses are. Ask around. Right now, a career with OSS is usually about being your own boss. That'll change in the future as larger consulting firms develop, but for now it's the easiest option.
For that matter, I think software developers should make enough that on a whim they could vacate for the islands on a cruise ship, and maybe buy some trinkets.
If they think that's a worthwhile expenditure of disposable income, software developers can do what the vast majority of the world's population would have to do: save up. "On a whim" implies gratuitous wealth. Maybe possible, maybe not. Depends on how good of an entrepreneur you are. (:
The main goal of OSS is simply to end the idea of software development as a business. Software development is only one piece of the pie. But back to third world evangelizing. Most US software companies have found out that they cannot afford serious OSS development. When the flaws of the revolution become apparent, it is natural to move to the third world.
Completely wrong. OSS is about ending the idea of software development as an artificial monopoly business. It's not about "free lunch for everybody"; it's about meeting needs more efficiently. The existing proprietary software industry has hardly done that -- there are way too many middlemen, there is way too much business (management, marketing, etc.) overhead, there is too much wheel-reinventing, and closed code too often gets abandoned and never seen again. So of course most US software companies can't afford serious OSS development -- it's not their business model! Their businesses are based on: high overhead, develop once, sell millions of times for near zero marginal cost. That doesn't prove the OSS revolution is "flawed", it proves that existing software companies are obsolete as currently structured!
Preaching free software and creating a world where software is only taken and not traded, then the third world nimrods who fall for the propaganda will find their software development skills worth less than the local trinket makers.
Wrong again. Unlike software licenses, OSS development is not an ongoing cost. You develop (or enhance) the software to meet your needs, release your changes back unto the community, and then forget about it. If those development costs are less than that of proprietary licenses, you are saving money. This works whether you're a third world country, a giant US corporation, or a tiny mom-and-pop operation. From a purchasing perspective only difference is you're paying the programmers and consultants more directly and getting a better product for much cheaper.
In someways I see this little Stalin-wannabe iconoclast preaching in the third world as the ultimate act of contempt. Giving your work away for free doesn't work in the first world. So you preach to the peasantry of the glories of the revolution to the third world.
Wow. Now you're really off track. OSS draws absolutely no parallel to the failed communist movement. There is no centralization, there is no governing body saying who does what, there is no underlying evil motive of power and control, and it's about increasing personal freedoms, not taking them away. OSS is about empowering free markets and capitalism -- removing monopolies, ensuring easy entry, and encouraging diversity. It's not about giving away all your hard work; it's about making your living in the same industry but through more efficient and ethical means.
It is a fun example of history repeating itself. The fearless leader preaches the glories of revolution to the peasantry knowing full well that the dictatorship of the prolitariat intends to pave the roads of their paradise with the blood of their followers.
Now that is propaganda -- and totally unsupported propaganda at that. Your troll is almost professional enough to have come from the M$ PR team itself.
The panelists agreed that SCO is targeting companies like IBM in an attempt to raise cash. Most importantly: "if a company is not after money, suing is not the way to go."
They're just sore losers. If only there was a marketplace "poor sportsmanship" penalty. (oh wait.. there is.. it's called bad PR. nevermind.) (:
When it's all reduced to a real labor market, as you call it, programming becomes a commodity. Then it's shipped to the country with the lowest wages.
Programming is already a commodity and sometimes already is shipped to the country with the lowest wages. Who cares. That's how a free market is supposed to work. But commoditization doesn't negate the need for local programmers and consultants to install, support, customize, and tweak.
Fast-forward 20-30 years. Programming languages and tools will have become so abstract and close to natural language that entirely unskilled persons will be able to 'program'. Advance another 20-30 years and computers will be starting to write their own software with humans only to guide them. So regardless, the software industry is in for enormous changes. Just as factory laborers are increasingly being replaced by robotics, today's inefficient manufacturing-model software development will be replaced by Open Source collaboration, free labor markets, and eventually elements of AI. Progress is good.
No matter how much you call Intellectual Property a 'nonsense "IP" myth' there will continue to be highly intelligent and skillful engineers out there developing Intellectual Property and expecting renumeration from the people who use it.
... That kind of ideology only works when there's a collective goal.
Did I ever say that hardware should be free? Nope. I said that there are no valid "helping the competition" concerns in releasing specification on how a piece of hardware talks to the rest of the system. In other words, the valuable intellectual product of any hardware is hard-coded into the silicon.
No amount of handwaving about 'freedom' and propaganda about 'sharing' will amount to anything more than a stone soup swindle.
There is a collective goal: meeting technology needs efficiently. And surprise, surprise, the social institution of "intellectual property" has proven an extremely inefficient means in many cases. Hardware is an exception because a physical product must still be custom engineered and manufactured. Software, on the other hand, is now in the hands of anyone who wishes to write it.
People like you miss the point of Open Source. It's not about "fire the engineers and coders, everything should be a free lunch!". It's about meeting needs with as few middlemen as possible. It's about transforming the software industry from an artificial manufacturing market into a real labor market. And yes, everybody is still getting paid -- just by different folks.