This isn't just about sites like Amazon and EBay, but about those sites as harbingers of a future in which everything is connected, and software migrates away from the individual client computer.
I guess my argument is that it really doesn't make economic sense for most people to pay for their computer needs as online ASP subscriptions when hardware is dirt cheap and locally installed (Open Source) software can be had for near free. The problem with the ASP approach is that it is a return to inefficient centralization -- everyone paying one company to meet their needs -- as opposed to the Open Source approach of "lets collaborate to meet our needs collectively." ASP's return the possibility of information monopolies, whether Open Source software is used for the core stack or not. That's not to say that ASP's cannot provide other valuable data services, but I don't believe that it makes sense for critical software to migrate away from the client. (or local Intranet server) Beyond cost, there are trust, privacy, and reliability issues as well.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though SCO has absolutely no interest in consumer electronics and embedded devices. (And yet Microsoft certainly does.) So why would SCO waste time specifically targeting an upstart organization aiming to promote Linux for consumer electronics? It's not a threat to their marketshare. Seems fishy, albeit unprovable at this stage. Granted, they may only be making as much fuss as possible.
Most of the boutique hardware vendors cant afford the huge support teams to handle calls on every version of linux and all distros out there. Plus, they have a good deal of their IP in the software and they are leary of giving that away to competitors.
You are flat wrong on both counts. #1.) Hardware vendors don't need to worry about support teams for Linux. The fact is, fully documented hardware typically ends up 'just working' in Linux. If users do have trouble, that's where distributions and the community step in. There's a lot less that can go wrong with Linux driver support than Windows once the drivers are included with the mainstream kernel. #2.) The "IP" argument for closed source drivers is 100% BS. The people that worry about this kinda stuff are not engineers -- they're lawyers and management that don't understand the first thing about the technology they sell. First, there is no valuable "IP" in interfacing a piece of hardware to the OS.. that is unless you produce worthless 'dumb hardware' that is entirely software driven. Second, anyone who thinks closed source drivers keep competitors from reverse engineering products doesn't have a clue how easy it is. Heck, that's how a lot of existing Linux driver support was made possible when vendors refused to give out specs -- and this was work done by geeks in their basements, not competing hardware companies with multi-million dollar R&D labs.
My experience with every hardware vendor that I've worked with is that Linux and open source is their #1 pain in the butt.
Only for hardware vendors that choose to fight rather than embrace. Mostly this goes back to the nonsense "IP" myth that needs dispelled. When vendors open the specs of their hardware, Linux support happens quickly and automatically with no expensive or "pain in the butt" vendor involvement. And it's excellent PR at the same time.
My problem with what he says is mostly aesthetic. It's that same old silicon valley rich guy entrepeneur guru bs. He's making a lot of points that most people know -- web applications are more exciting, in many respects, than desktop applications now. Web applications are being built out of commodity pieces. The data in eBay and the customer good will is worth more than the code. All of those are good points, if not exactly earth shaking.
I think you're right on. In the buzz that Mr. O'Reilly is caught up in, it's easy to forget that that vast majority of computer users spend their days in MS Office, MS Outlook/Exchange, and XYZ customized core business application used by their workplace -- NOT Amazon and Ebay. Ordinary boring business applications are where the Open Source movement has enormous room to grow and conquer. While the core software 'stack' (OS,GUI,etc.) may be commoditized by this point, the rest isn't.
It is not uncommon for a medium sized business to spend literally millions USD on software licenses. Part of that is the M$ tax (OS, Servers, Office) and the other part is custom software that only runs on M$ platforms (accounting, ERP/CRM, etc.) Then, tack on all the support / training services needed to keep said software working. If anyone thinks there's no room for Open Source on the business desktop, they're pretty blind to reality. The issue is more how to coordinate developer-consultants such that they can collectively meet needs of their clients. (ie. free software / non-free services & customization)
But is there a market for an alternative? I challenge anyone who doesn't believe so to investigate what ordinary businesses are currently paying out for their IT needs -- both software licenses and services related.
Bad economy or not, there is always a market for better product at a better price. We don't need more eBay's and Amazon's; we need more Open Source entrepreneurs.
What I find even more shocking (and annoying) than the artificially high cartridge prices is the fact that even bulk refill ink (and refill toner for that matter) is also way overpriced. There seems to be some sort of very-well-kept secret on where all the toner and ink refill vendors buy their supplies. Taking a recent example: a mere 90 grams of refill toner should not cost anywhere near $17. And that was the best price I could find anywhere. It sure beats paying $70 for a new cartridge, but it's still a scam. Inkjet ink is far worse a scenario.
So who's the "OPEC" of ink and toner? Any why isn't anyone fighting this nonsense?
if there was an OSS replacement fine. but it isn't the be all, end all. sorry. unless you're RMS or something, everything isn't about software philosophy. there are tons of good middleware apps for linux, and more to come. whether they are oracle, notes, db2, etc. just let the best program win.
There's a flaw in your reasoning. You assume that Open Source is just a means to a free lunch (ie. If it meets the need, use it. If not, buy instead.) That's entirely missing the point. People should also be using OSS solutions when it is cheaper to develop them into meeting their needs than paying for expensive off-the-shelf proprietary stuff. Open Source should be about meeting needs in the most economically efficient means possible -- whether thats business or government or just looking at society as a whole. This BS notion that OSS is only about a free lunch, where available, needs to go.
So, for example, take the Exchange / middleware software need. How much are companies spending for this software? Now, compare to how much it would take to develop existing OSS software into a near-perfect free solution? My guess is the first number is in the billions and the second is only in the millions. Keep in mind you also have to count the underlying costs of proprietary OS licenses for certain non-free solutions. So, in the end, there needs to be collaboration to meet common needs. Geeks, wake up. There is money to be made developing free software to meet people's needs.
If that is true, and the previous paragraph is a true scenario that will be played out, then Microsoft releasing a "signed" Linux bootloader could allow for Linux on the xbox without the support of piracy.
Not true. A signed bootloader could most likely be used to boot other non-Linux software, such as bootlegged games, with minimal additional hacking. Once the authentication is bypassed, all you'd need is a second stage loader in place of Linux that would cause execution to jump to whereever else you choose. So, this whole thing is, indeed, most likely a silly bluff.
Correct me if I am wrong, but 471 programmers at 100,000 per year is only 47,100,000 isn't it? Yeah, that was the point.. that they'd have tons of money left over for other projects. I was proposing that those 471 programmers could, in one year, transform KOffice or OpenOffice into an office suite far superior to MS's.
One-tenth of that $471,000,000 would be easily enough to pay people to bring OpenOffice or KOffice well past the quality level of MS Office in a short amount of time.
Think about it! One-tenth of that amount would mean 471 Open Source programmers paid $100,000 for a year.
And yet all those tax dollars are instead being funneled into the Microsoft "Black Hole of Software License Fees" where they will never be seen again and where they will certainly not benefit the public interest. And that's just one-tenth of the contract! What about all that other money?! They could spend another four-tenths on XFree86, KDE, various security-related projects, etc. and STILL have half the contract amount left over to migrate existing army-specific software to Qt or other superior cross-platform toolkit able run native on both the new platform and any old Windoze machines that haven't been converted yet.
I propose that we need a large non-profit Open Source consulting firm that specializes in large corporate and government contracts such as these. (Non-profit in the sense of the programmers are the only ones being paid.)
Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?
Apple has made enormous strides forward since OSX, but the fact remains that they cannot, in the long term, compete with completely Free / Open Source desktop environments. It's true that OSX currently has a big eye-candy advantage over XFree86+KDE/Gnome, but that will not last forever. Work is already being done to modernize XF86 and integrate OpenGL acceleration, ala. Quartz. It's really a shame that Apple did not contribute to existing windowing projects instead of doing their own proprietary thing. The half-open/half-closed approach will buy them some time of whiz-bang product uniqueness, but between MS's Longhorn and the work of open projects, it won't last. When will that happen? Who knows. 2 years? 5? 10? But it will happen. The Open Source movement has hardly even taken off yet. But, not to be too down on Apple, I imagine they'll continue to be forward thinking and adopt more Open Source technology in the future. And maybe someday if they move enough volume their hardware prices will be more reasonable too.:-P
And, as a sidenote, I don't believe the "X11 is outdated" nonsense. From what I've seen/heard, XF86+KDE far outperforms OSX on lower end machines in terms of interface responsiveness. Once OpenGL acceleration and translucency is built-in, there will be nothing to complain about. Just my $0.02
This kind of nonsense is not going to stop until the media giants are made fully obsolete by a mass shift to independent artists/film/etc. P2P is a tool to help this happen, but it's not the end solution. We need quality musicians to stop signing record label contracts and lead the revolution against the big media middle-men. We need musicians that can think like entrepreneurs, not employees.
What we need is a movement like Open Source but for music: a legal and unstoppable alternative to the corrupt monopolies that exist.
The law is made up of people, any court shown the two games would decide that they were the same. There are too few differences between them to call freecraft an original work. Hell there were too few differences to even give the thing a whole new name.
There's no law that says you can't replicate the functionality and design of an existing product as long as you don't copy it directly or infringe on registered trademarks. Freecraft did neither. So your stupid argument falls flat from the start. And by the way, FreeCraft, if you'd ever actually tried it, does NOT look the same. All the graphics are original and the gameplay is modifiable if you choose.
Yeah, graphics are the only things they didn't copy. The code is meant to reflect the functionality of the warcraft II code.
Just because the code reflects the functionality of the original code doesn't make it the original code. It's not a copyright violation. It's not a patent or trade secret issue. Functionality of a product does not constitute a trademark. So what else could you possibly call it?
Re-created... Identically.
Not identically. Similarly. There's a big difference when it comes to the law.
If you write and publish a book. Am I allowed to rephrase it sentence by sentence, so that the sentences have the same meanings, and give away for free?
No, but you can write your own book to tell the precise same story with the same events, same characters, etc. It might be regarded as a cheap knock-off, but there's nothing illegal about it. What the FreeCraft guys did was NOT a line by line copying of WarCraft code. They wrote their own code from scratch.
FreeCraft did not only have a similar name, but similar gameplay, ui, units, etc. It was trying to be an exact clone of warcraft. You could even play it with the WarCraft graphics. It you replaced the graphics with the WarCraft ones it was the same game. I can understand why Blizzard or Vivendi would be upset. Anyhow it just shows how unimaginative FreeCraft was.
Yes, FreeCraft was unimaginative. But Blizzard/Vivendi has absolutely no right to be upset or make legal threats. There is no law that says you can't clone commercial products from the ground up as long as you don't actually copy anything (which they didn't) or use the same names (which they didn't.. vaguely similar doesn't count). And there are no patent or trade secrets involved here either, so that rules out any nonsense about using similar "gameplay, ui, units, etc."
All this shows is a big company bullying around competition that threatens their outdated business model of proprietary software.
I'm not trying to say that this is a nice thing for blizzard to do. What I'm saying is that it is ethically justifiable.
Ethically justifiable? It's called competition. If you manufacture pencils and then I start manufacturing pencils, that doesn't give you the right to sue me for infringing on your marketshare. Grow up and go take a basic course in capitalist economics.
It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it. No it's not. You clearly have no understanding of relevant laws. The FreeCraft project used no WarCraft code and they did not copy any of its graphics. The C&D letter sent to the FreeCraft team was based on claims that would be entirely untenable in court. At very worst the name would get changed as a compromise, but there is nothing that says you can't clone a commercial product as long as you re-implement it yourself. The real issue is that the FreeCraft guys are just hobbyists and have no means to legally defend themselves against a mega-corporation-backed game company.
Here's a good example for you: Star/OpenOffice is nearly identical in interface design to Microsoft Office. In fact, I've switched the programs on people and many are unable to tell the difference. Does that make OpenOffice illegal? Hell no. But you won't see Microsoft trying to sue Sun because Sun has the means to legally defend themselves against bogus claims, unlike these poor FreeCraft guys.
I think it would be great if blizzard made a linux version of the game, but if they don't, that doesn't make it legal for someone else to. FreeCraft was NOT a "linux version of WarCraft". It was a entirely different beast, re-created from the ground up.
What we need are good lawyers willing to work pro-Bono to protect Free Software projects from bogus lawsuits by established proprietary software companies. There needs to be someone to turn to when this nonsense arises.
I keep my personal fun and my politics separate.I'll be one of the first ones in line to buy their next game.
That sounds all fine and good until somebody else's politics start infringing on YOUR personal fun. How would you feel if you were one of the FreeCraft developers? You and the persons that modded you up need to grow a backbone and start standing up for what's right and for your freedoms. Blizzard had no right whatsoever to target these guys. By supporting them, you support more evil and corruption. Someday, it'll turn around and bite you.
This is a big win for Linux, but is making it mandatory going too far? It would seem wiser to support a solution that favors the best tool for the job, which may not always be an open source product.
The "best tool for the job" argument completely misses the point of Open Source. It's not about getting a "free lunch" but rather meeting your needs by the most economically efficient means possible. (That's right--real capitalism without the "intellectual property" BS!)
People who make these "best tool" statements fail to take into account the fact that it is usually cheaper to do a little bit of your own development (add the missing feature(s) you need, fix bugs, etc.) than to pay megabucks for out-of-the-box proprietary solutions. (1) Development need not be in-house either. There are plenty of geeks worldwide who would love to be paid to develop free software. I do this myself with my consulting business.
For foreign governments, there is the added benefit of reduced imports. What's better for a nation's economy? Pumping money out to the US for software licenses or hiring people / companies in your own country to enhance existing Open Source solutions to meet your needs. Frankly, it's a no brainer. Congrats to the Brazilian government for following the wise lead of others.
(1) Good example: German government developing MS Exchange / Outlook replacement for KDE: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982816.html
..but it (GPL) absolutely creates restrictions on what can be done with software under it. And that isn't freedom (but then I never said total freedom was good). In response to "aren't *all* licenses imposed on users," the answer is yes. So to have total freedom, you have to have no license. We have a name for that: the public domain. That is total freedom.
Here's an alternative argument for you: What the GPL does is essentially *force* derivative works to be under the same pseudo-public domain ownership as the original. (thereby prohibiting proprietary derivatives..) GPL turns copyright against itself to create a scenerio similiar to if copyright did not even exist for software. Or, stated differently, if there was no copyright, everything would be forced public domain (free). Would a society be less free without the ability to take freedom away using copyright? Certainly not--so it is a compromise--one that may or may not be beneficial to said society in actual implementation. Under the copyright system, using the BSD license or releasing a work as public domain opens the possibility that someone will produce non-free works using it. So GPL gives freedom and guarantees that this freedom will not be taken away using the code covered by it. (Yes, I know that derivative works of BSD code do not diminish the freedom of the original, but they do allow other people's freedoms to be taken away with the help of code originally intended to be free.) GPL is an anti-proprietary license. So the question is whether society would be a better place without proprietary software. I would argue an unqualified Yes. But that's another whole discussion. (:
Now we have Windows, which typically comes with no built-in programming language. What can be done to improve the situation?
This is Slashdot. Isn't that sorta a rhetorical question? (: On a serious note, kids should probably use "live" Linux distros until they're capable of repartitioning their parent's machines and fixing their mistakes. Python would be a good starter language.. and there is increasing use for game development, which is a good draw for youngsters.
It's pretty clear that IE's problems are slowly but surely being squashed. When you have a user base as large as IE's, it is inevitable that these problems will be found quickly and exploited and then fixed. We can take this as an indication that the larger the user base of a software product, the faster bugs will be found and eliminated.
It's pretty clear, judging by this and some of your former posts, that you work for Microsoft or at least enjoy spreading their nonsense FUD. Your assumptive argument--that a smaller user base means that OSS has more undiscovered bugs--is entirely illogical...Not to mention it flies entirely in the face of the fact that IE has the most piss-poor standards support of any modern browser. (CSS in particular).
Now take Mozilla and Opera as opposing examples. The user base for these two browsers combined is infinitesimal compared to IE. It thus stands to reason that all of the bugs and vulnerabilities of these browsers lay dormant, waiting for someone to come along and exploit them. But without a serious user base hammering away at the product all of these problems lie wide open for any hacker to come along and abuse.
There you go again. You seem to miss the point entirely that having code open for review allows "hackers" to find security holes much faster and easier. So if a problem exists, it gets fixed much sooner than a closed source program which requires a lot more prodding and guesswork to discover the vulnerabilities. And yet IE still has historically had far more security issues than Mozilla.
Just because you don't use Microsoft products doesn't mean that you aren't vulnerable. You are probably more vulnerable, when you take into account the lack of users and lack of accountability of the OSS project developers.
Yet another patently untrue statement. Microsoft products have a far worse history of vulnerabilities than Open Source alternatives. Again your comment about "lack of users" is irrelevant. And your statement that OSS developers lack accountability is entirely baseless.
The M$ dominated world is quickly coming to an end and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. For your own sake, wake up before you become entirely obsolete.
..an organisation that can both patent and fight for us. As a member of an organzation like this we would have the right to use any patents that we hold and we _CAN_ prevent M$ and TI and IBM and everyone else from using these patents
What you're proposing is a terrible idea. All this would do is continue to heat up the software patent wars--and guess who has more money to throw down the drain cranking out bogus patents and suing everybody? In reality what needs to happen is for ALL software patents to be invalidated by a change in patent law that prohibits them. Now that is a cause worth fighting / donating for.
Every band (or at least every indie label) should have their own website and take micropayments from customers direct. If you only had to pay a few pence for the rights to listen to a track you could share with your friends and if they like it they can go a pay for it as well.
Micropayments are somewhat a hastle and bringing attention to your website is no easy task. Indie bands would be much better off distributing their music freely on P2P networks and then selling merchandise and concert tickets instead. Once you start asking for customers to pay for something (music), you have to invest heavily in advertising to encourage them--and frankly, you can't compete with the advertising muscle of the big labels. The P2P route won't get you fame overnight, but if your music is truly quality, word will spread quite rapidly, and before long, your name will be known to hundreds of thousands of 20's-30's aged folks--a quite ripe market to sell concert tickets to.
But the key to this all is quality. People don't want second-rate music, even if it's free.
The only way this kind of patent-abuse nonsense is ever going to stop in the short term is if enough people get PO'ed enough to put forth strong political pressure for reform. Software and business practice patents are a serious threat to innovation and the economy in general. We need the nation's tech entrepreneurs to rise up in opposition and let their voices be heard.
If AOL can "retract" this decision, what stops them from "taking back" Mozilla? What keeps SAP from "taking back" SAPdb?
Because they publically announced the release of Mozilla and SAPdb whereas this Nullsoft thing was alledgedly leaked. If Nullsoft had made some sort of official PR release concerning waste, they would have absolutely no grounds to stand on in trying to retract it.
"I'm trying to take care of the shareholders, employees and people who have been having their rights trampled on." and "If there's a way of resolving this that is positive, then we can get back out to business and everybody is good to go, then I'm fine with that,"
What a load of crap. Nobody's "rights" are being "trampled on". SCO is a failed business about to die and that's all there is to it. If anyone buys them, they'll just be handing out golden parachutes to the unethical scum lawyers and management that have incited this fiasco. Here's to hoping IBM rips them to shreds instead.
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't just about sites like Amazon and EBay, but about those sites as harbingers of a future in which everything is connected, and software migrates away from the individual client computer.
I guess my argument is that it really doesn't make economic sense for most people to pay for their computer needs as online ASP subscriptions when hardware is dirt cheap and locally installed (Open Source) software can be had for near free. The problem with the ASP approach is that it is a return to inefficient centralization -- everyone paying one company to meet their needs -- as opposed to the Open Source approach of "lets collaborate to meet our needs collectively." ASP's return the possibility of information monopolies, whether Open Source software is used for the core stack or not. That's not to say that ASP's cannot provide other valuable data services, but I don't believe that it makes sense for critical software to migrate away from the client. (or local Intranet server) Beyond cost, there are trust, privacy, and reliability issues as well.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though SCO has absolutely no interest in consumer electronics and embedded devices. (And yet Microsoft certainly does.) So why would SCO waste time specifically targeting an upstart organization aiming to promote Linux for consumer electronics? It's not a threat to their marketshare. Seems fishy, albeit unprovable at this stage. Granted, they may only be making as much fuss as possible.
Most of the boutique hardware vendors cant afford the huge support teams to handle calls on every version of linux and all distros out there. Plus, they have a good deal of their IP in the software and they are leary of giving that away to competitors.
You are flat wrong on both counts. #1.) Hardware vendors don't need to worry about support teams for Linux. The fact is, fully documented hardware typically ends up 'just working' in Linux. If users do have trouble, that's where distributions and the community step in. There's a lot less that can go wrong with Linux driver support than Windows once the drivers are included with the mainstream kernel. #2.) The "IP" argument for closed source drivers is 100% BS. The people that worry about this kinda stuff are not engineers -- they're lawyers and management that don't understand the first thing about the technology they sell. First, there is no valuable "IP" in interfacing a piece of hardware to the OS.. that is unless you produce worthless 'dumb hardware' that is entirely software driven. Second, anyone who thinks closed source drivers keep competitors from reverse engineering products doesn't have a clue how easy it is. Heck, that's how a lot of existing Linux driver support was made possible when vendors refused to give out specs -- and this was work done by geeks in their basements, not competing hardware companies with multi-million dollar R&D labs.
My experience with every hardware vendor that I've worked with is that Linux and open source is their #1 pain in the butt.
Only for hardware vendors that choose to fight rather than embrace. Mostly this goes back to the nonsense "IP" myth that needs dispelled. When vendors open the specs of their hardware, Linux support happens quickly and automatically with no expensive or "pain in the butt" vendor involvement. And it's excellent PR at the same time.
My problem with what he says is mostly aesthetic. It's that same old silicon valley rich guy entrepeneur guru bs. He's making a lot of points that most people know -- web applications are more exciting, in many respects, than desktop applications now. Web applications are being built out of commodity pieces. The data in eBay and the customer good will is worth more than the code. All of those are good points, if not exactly earth shaking.
I think you're right on. In the buzz that Mr. O'Reilly is caught up in, it's easy to forget that that vast majority of computer users spend their days in MS Office, MS Outlook/Exchange, and XYZ customized core business application used by their workplace -- NOT Amazon and Ebay. Ordinary boring business applications are where the Open Source movement has enormous room to grow and conquer. While the core software 'stack' (OS,GUI,etc.) may be commoditized by this point, the rest isn't.
It is not uncommon for a medium sized business to spend literally millions USD on software licenses. Part of that is the M$ tax (OS, Servers, Office) and the other part is custom software that only runs on M$ platforms (accounting, ERP/CRM, etc.) Then, tack on all the support / training services needed to keep said software working. If anyone thinks there's no room for Open Source on the business desktop, they're pretty blind to reality. The issue is more how to coordinate developer-consultants such that they can collectively meet needs of their clients. (ie. free software / non-free services & customization)
But is there a market for an alternative? I challenge anyone who doesn't believe so to investigate what ordinary businesses are currently paying out for their IT needs -- both software licenses and services related.
Bad economy or not, there is always a market for better product at a better price. We don't need more eBay's and Amazon's; we need more Open Source entrepreneurs.
What I find even more shocking (and annoying) than the artificially high cartridge prices is the fact that even bulk refill ink (and refill toner for that matter) is also way overpriced. There seems to be some sort of very-well-kept secret on where all the toner and ink refill vendors buy their supplies. Taking a recent example: a mere 90 grams of refill toner should not cost anywhere near $17. And that was the best price I could find anywhere. It sure beats paying $70 for a new cartridge, but it's still a scam. Inkjet ink is far worse a scenario.
So who's the "OPEC" of ink and toner? Any why isn't anyone fighting this nonsense?
if there was an OSS replacement fine. but it isn't the be all, end all. sorry. unless you're RMS or something, everything isn't about software philosophy. there are tons of good middleware apps for linux, and more to come. whether they are oracle, notes, db2, etc. just let the best program win.
There's a flaw in your reasoning. You assume that Open Source is just a means to a free lunch (ie. If it meets the need, use it. If not, buy instead.) That's entirely missing the point. People should also be using OSS solutions when it is cheaper to develop them into meeting their needs than paying for expensive off-the-shelf proprietary stuff. Open Source should be about meeting needs in the most economically efficient means possible -- whether thats business or government or just looking at society as a whole. This BS notion that OSS is only about a free lunch, where available, needs to go.
So, for example, take the Exchange / middleware software need. How much are companies spending for this software? Now, compare to how much it would take to develop existing OSS software into a near-perfect free solution? My guess is the first number is in the billions and the second is only in the millions. Keep in mind you also have to count the underlying costs of proprietary OS licenses for certain non-free solutions. So, in the end, there needs to be collaboration to meet common needs. Geeks, wake up. There is money to be made developing free software to meet people's needs.
If that is true, and the previous paragraph is a true scenario that will be played out, then Microsoft releasing a "signed" Linux bootloader could allow for Linux on the xbox without the support of piracy.
Not true. A signed bootloader could most likely be used to boot other non-Linux software, such as bootlegged games, with minimal additional hacking. Once the authentication is bypassed, all you'd need is a second stage loader in place of Linux that would cause execution to jump to whereever else you choose. So, this whole thing is, indeed, most likely a silly bluff.
Correct me if I am wrong, but 471 programmers at 100,000 per year is only 47,100,000 isn't it?
Yeah, that was the point.. that they'd have tons of money left over for other projects. I was proposing that those 471 programmers could, in one year, transform KOffice or OpenOffice into an office suite far superior to MS's.
One-tenth of that $471,000,000 would be easily enough to pay people to bring OpenOffice or KOffice well past the quality level of MS Office in a short amount of time.
Think about it! One-tenth of that amount would mean 471 Open Source programmers paid $100,000 for a year.
And yet all those tax dollars are instead being funneled into the Microsoft "Black Hole of Software License Fees" where they will never be seen again and where they will certainly not benefit the public interest. And that's just one-tenth of the contract! What about all that other money?! They could spend another four-tenths on XFree86, KDE, various security-related projects, etc. and STILL have half the contract amount left over to migrate existing army-specific software to Qt or other superior cross-platform toolkit able run native on both the new platform and any old Windoze machines that haven't been converted yet.
I propose that we need a large non-profit Open Source consulting firm that specializes in large corporate and government contracts such as these. (Non-profit in the sense of the programmers are the only ones being paid.)
Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?
:-P
Apple has made enormous strides forward since OSX, but the fact remains that they cannot, in the long term, compete with completely Free / Open Source desktop environments. It's true that OSX currently has a big eye-candy advantage over XFree86+KDE/Gnome, but that will not last forever. Work is already being done to modernize XF86 and integrate OpenGL acceleration, ala. Quartz. It's really a shame that Apple did not contribute to existing windowing projects instead of doing their own proprietary thing. The half-open/half-closed approach will buy them some time of whiz-bang product uniqueness, but between MS's Longhorn and the work of open projects, it won't last. When will that happen? Who knows. 2 years? 5? 10? But it will happen. The Open Source movement has hardly even taken off yet. But, not to be too down on Apple, I imagine they'll continue to be forward thinking and adopt more Open Source technology in the future. And maybe someday if they move enough volume their hardware prices will be more reasonable too.
And, as a sidenote, I don't believe the "X11 is outdated" nonsense. From what I've seen/heard, XF86+KDE far outperforms OSX on lower end machines in terms of interface responsiveness. Once OpenGL acceleration and translucency is built-in, there will be nothing to complain about. Just my $0.02
This kind of nonsense is not going to stop until the media giants are made fully obsolete by a mass shift to independent artists/film/etc. P2P is a tool to help this happen, but it's not the end solution. We need quality musicians to stop signing record label contracts and lead the revolution against the big media middle-men. We need musicians that can think like entrepreneurs, not employees.
What we need is a movement like Open Source but for music: a legal and unstoppable alternative to the corrupt monopolies that exist.
The law is made up of people, any court shown the two games would decide that they were the same. There are too few differences between them to call freecraft an original work. Hell there were too few differences to even give the thing a whole new name.
There's no law that says you can't replicate the functionality and design of an existing product as long as you don't copy it directly or infringe on registered trademarks. Freecraft did neither. So your stupid argument falls flat from the start. And by the way, FreeCraft, if you'd ever actually tried it, does NOT look the same. All the graphics are original and the gameplay is modifiable if you choose.
Yeah, graphics are the only things they didn't copy. The code is meant to reflect the functionality of the warcraft II code.
Just because the code reflects the functionality of the original code doesn't make it the original code. It's not a copyright violation. It's not a patent or trade secret issue. Functionality of a product does not constitute a trademark. So what else could you possibly call it?
Re-created... Identically.
Not identically. Similarly. There's a big difference when it comes to the law.
If you write and publish a book. Am I allowed to rephrase it sentence by sentence, so that the sentences have the same meanings, and give away for free?
No, but you can write your own book to tell the precise same story with the same events, same characters, etc. It might be regarded as a cheap knock-off, but there's nothing illegal about it. What the FreeCraft guys did was NOT a line by line copying of WarCraft code. They wrote their own code from scratch.
FreeCraft did not only have a similar name, but similar gameplay, ui, units, etc. It was trying to be an exact clone of warcraft. You could even play it with the WarCraft graphics. It you replaced the graphics with the WarCraft ones it was the same game. I can understand why Blizzard or Vivendi would be upset. Anyhow it just shows how unimaginative FreeCraft was.
Yes, FreeCraft was unimaginative. But Blizzard/Vivendi has absolutely no right to be upset or make legal threats. There is no law that says you can't clone commercial products from the ground up as long as you don't actually copy anything (which they didn't) or use the same names (which they didn't.. vaguely similar doesn't count). And there are no patent or trade secrets involved here either, so that rules out any nonsense about using similar "gameplay, ui, units, etc."
All this shows is a big company bullying around competition that threatens their outdated business model of proprietary software.
I'm not trying to say that this is a nice thing for blizzard to do. What I'm saying is that it is ethically justifiable.
Ethically justifiable? It's called competition. If you manufacture pencils and then I start manufacturing pencils, that doesn't give you the right to sue me for infringing on your marketshare. Grow up and go take a basic course in capitalist economics.
It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it.
No it's not. You clearly have no understanding of relevant laws. The FreeCraft project used no WarCraft code and they did not copy any of its graphics. The C&D letter sent to the FreeCraft team was based on claims that would be entirely untenable in court. At very worst the name would get changed as a compromise, but there is nothing that says you can't clone a commercial product as long as you re-implement it yourself. The real issue is that the FreeCraft guys are just hobbyists and have no means to legally defend themselves against a mega-corporation-backed game company.
Here's a good example for you: Star/OpenOffice is nearly identical in interface design to Microsoft Office. In fact, I've switched the programs on people and many are unable to tell the difference. Does that make OpenOffice illegal? Hell no. But you won't see Microsoft trying to sue Sun because Sun has the means to legally defend themselves against bogus claims, unlike these poor FreeCraft guys.
I think it would be great if blizzard made a linux version of the game, but if they don't, that doesn't make it legal for someone else to.
FreeCraft was NOT a "linux version of WarCraft". It was a entirely different beast, re-created from the ground up.
What we need are good lawyers willing to work pro-Bono to protect Free Software projects from bogus lawsuits by established proprietary software companies. There needs to be someone to turn to when this nonsense arises.
I keep my personal fun and my politics separate.I'll be one of the first ones in line to buy their next game.
That sounds all fine and good until somebody else's politics start infringing on YOUR personal fun. How would you feel if you were one of the FreeCraft developers? You and the persons that modded you up need to grow a backbone and start standing up for what's right and for your freedoms. Blizzard had no right whatsoever to target these guys. By supporting them, you support more evil and corruption. Someday, it'll turn around and bite you.
This is a big win for Linux, but is making it mandatory going too far? It would seem wiser to support a solution that favors the best tool for the job, which may not always be an open source product.
The "best tool for the job" argument completely misses the point of Open Source. It's not about getting a "free lunch" but rather meeting your needs by the most economically efficient means possible. (That's right--real capitalism without the "intellectual property" BS!)
People who make these "best tool" statements fail to take into account the fact that it is usually cheaper to do a little bit of your own development (add the missing feature(s) you need, fix bugs, etc.) than to pay megabucks for out-of-the-box proprietary solutions. (1) Development need not be in-house either. There are plenty of geeks worldwide who would love to be paid to develop free software. I do this myself with my consulting business.
For foreign governments, there is the added benefit of reduced imports. What's better for a nation's economy? Pumping money out to the US for software licenses or hiring people / companies in your own country to enhance existing Open Source solutions to meet your needs. Frankly, it's a no brainer. Congrats to the Brazilian government for following the wise lead of others.
(1) Good example: German government developing MS Exchange / Outlook replacement for KDE: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982816.html
..but it (GPL) absolutely creates restrictions on what can be done with software under it. And that isn't freedom (but then I never said total freedom was good). In response to "aren't *all* licenses imposed on users," the answer is yes. So to have total freedom, you have to have no license. We have a name for that: the public domain. That is total freedom.
Here's an alternative argument for you: What the GPL does is essentially *force* derivative works to be under the same pseudo-public domain ownership as the original. (thereby prohibiting proprietary derivatives..) GPL turns copyright against itself to create a scenerio similiar to if copyright did not even exist for software. Or, stated differently, if there was no copyright, everything would be forced public domain (free). Would a society be less free without the ability to take freedom away using copyright? Certainly not--so it is a compromise--one that may or may not be beneficial to said society in actual implementation. Under the copyright system, using the BSD license or releasing a work as public domain opens the possibility that someone will produce non-free works using it. So GPL gives freedom and guarantees that this freedom will not be taken away using the code covered by it. (Yes, I know that derivative works of BSD code do not diminish the freedom of the original, but they do allow other people's freedoms to be taken away with the help of code originally intended to be free.) GPL is an anti-proprietary license. So the question is whether society would be a better place without proprietary software. I would argue an unqualified Yes. But that's another whole discussion. (:
Now we have Windows, which typically comes with no built-in programming language. What can be done to improve the situation?
This is Slashdot. Isn't that sorta a rhetorical question? (: On a serious note, kids should probably use "live" Linux distros until they're capable of repartitioning their parent's machines and fixing their mistakes. Python would be a good starter language.. and there is increasing use for game development, which is a good draw for youngsters.
It's pretty clear that IE's problems are slowly but surely being squashed. When you have a user base as large as IE's, it is inevitable that these problems will be found quickly and exploited and then fixed. We can take this as an indication that the larger the user base of a software product, the faster bugs will be found and eliminated.
..Not to mention it flies entirely in the face of the fact that IE has the most piss-poor standards support of any modern browser. (CSS in particular).
It's pretty clear, judging by this and some of your former posts, that you work for Microsoft or at least enjoy spreading their nonsense FUD. Your assumptive argument--that a smaller user base means that OSS has more undiscovered bugs--is entirely illogical.
Now take Mozilla and Opera as opposing examples. The user base for these two browsers combined is infinitesimal compared to IE. It thus stands to reason that all of the bugs and vulnerabilities of these browsers lay dormant, waiting for someone to come along and exploit them. But without a serious user base hammering away at the product all of these problems lie wide open for any hacker to come along and abuse.
There you go again. You seem to miss the point entirely that having code open for review allows "hackers" to find security holes much faster and easier. So if a problem exists, it gets fixed much sooner than a closed source program which requires a lot more prodding and guesswork to discover the vulnerabilities. And yet IE still has historically had far more security issues than Mozilla.
Just because you don't use Microsoft products doesn't mean that you aren't vulnerable. You are probably more vulnerable, when you take into account the lack of users and lack of accountability of the OSS project developers.
Yet another patently untrue statement. Microsoft products have a far worse history of vulnerabilities than Open Source alternatives. Again your comment about "lack of users" is irrelevant. And your statement that OSS developers lack accountability is entirely baseless.
The M$ dominated world is quickly coming to an end and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. For your own sake, wake up before you become entirely obsolete.
..an organisation that can both patent and fight for us. As a member of an organzation like this we would have the right to use any patents that we hold and we _CAN_ prevent M$ and TI and IBM and everyone else from using these patents
What you're proposing is a terrible idea. All this would do is continue to heat up the software patent wars--and guess who has more money to throw down the drain cranking out bogus patents and suing everybody? In reality what needs to happen is for ALL software patents to be invalidated by a change in patent law that prohibits them. Now that is a cause worth fighting / donating for.
Every band (or at least every indie label) should have their own website and take micropayments from customers direct. If you only had to pay a few pence for the rights to listen to a track you could share with your friends and if they like it they can go a pay for it as well.
Micropayments are somewhat a hastle and bringing attention to your website is no easy task. Indie bands would be much better off distributing their music freely on P2P networks and then selling merchandise and concert tickets instead. Once you start asking for customers to pay for something (music), you have to invest heavily in advertising to encourage them--and frankly, you can't compete with the advertising muscle of the big labels. The P2P route won't get you fame overnight, but if your music is truly quality, word will spread quite rapidly, and before long, your name will be known to hundreds of thousands of 20's-30's aged folks--a quite ripe market to sell concert tickets to.
But the key to this all is quality. People don't want second-rate music, even if it's free.
The only way this kind of patent-abuse nonsense is ever going to stop in the short term is if enough people get PO'ed enough to put forth strong political pressure for reform. Software and business practice patents are a serious threat to innovation and the economy in general. We need the nation's tech entrepreneurs to rise up in opposition and let their voices be heard.
If AOL can "retract" this decision, what stops them from "taking back" Mozilla? What keeps SAP from "taking back" SAPdb?
Because they publically announced the release of Mozilla and SAPdb whereas this Nullsoft thing was alledgedly leaked. If Nullsoft had made some sort of official PR release concerning waste, they would have absolutely no grounds to stand on in trying to retract it.
"I'm trying to take care of the shareholders, employees and people who have been having their rights trampled on." and "If there's a way of resolving this that is positive, then we can get back out to business and everybody is good to go, then I'm fine with that,"
What a load of crap. Nobody's "rights" are being "trampled on". SCO is a failed business about to die and that's all there is to it. If anyone buys them, they'll just be handing out golden parachutes to the unethical scum lawyers and management that have incited this fiasco. Here's to hoping IBM rips them to shreds instead.