If I wanted to damage SCO, I'd make it as attractive for their employees to leave the company as possible. On the other hand, if I wanted to help SCO, I'd make sure that any people who left the company would find it very hard to find another job. Maybe an idea for Microsoft.
chrisd, you may want to blacklist people who were hired after May to discourage new people from filling vacant positions, but if anyhting you should suggest all their old employees to seek positions at your place (if you have any), and look at them favorably.
I think it is clear that data is used in a broad sense, where it includes information, knowledge and skills, a lot of which is embedded in the Linux kernal.
The target audience is the PHB's, who will hopefully be less resistent when the techies advocate a Linux based solution for the server, especially if they remember to say the magic word IBM.
IBM couldn't care less about the "majority of users", they are not targeting the home users or even the corporate desktop at this point.
The internal design wasn't a clone of anything, it was brand new. The API tended to be implementations of Posix specifications where available, and clones of SunOS 3/4 when not. SunOS was the most popular operating system in CS departments at the time, and the students wanted their home system to be similar to what they used in school.
If you believe your customers are stupid, you probably shouldn't waste time trying to deliver them anything of value. Either you assume your customers are smart, and when they fail to buy your product, find an explanation that build on that assumption. Or you assume they are stupid, and build your business on that.
The field I work in is simulating the environmental impact of agriculture, especially nitrogen leaching.
I think you need to distinguish between two different kind of artefacts. One kind is like the movies themselves each expression is new. Very little actual footage is shared between two movies. The other is more like the art of making movies, where ideas and knowledge about how to make a movie and what works is constantly refined and passed on.
Now what is software most similar to? Movies, or the art of making movies?
Some software is clearly similar to movies, this is especially true for many modern games. In general, you want a new game to be a totally new expression, even if the concept are similar.
However, for other software the user prefer stability and incremental refinement over revolutionary new expressions. I believe the desktop is one of them, very few ordinary users are happy when the new version of ms-windows look different from the old.
The first kind of artefacts is difficult to finance without a distribution monopol (i.e. as free software or free movies or whatever), because the initial investment is so high. But the second kind lend itself perfectly to the free software approach, as each stepwise refinement has a manageable cost.
This is why I believe free software will eventually win the desktop.
They don't pay for anything they can get for free.
I make money, not on support, but on development of extensions to some very specialized software which is the "best of breed" in its limited area. My customers aren't traditionel end-users, but either research institutions or consulting businesses who use my software for projects for their clients.
There are plenty of free-software business models, and the article does a good job of summrizing them, but there is no business model (based on free software or not) that guarentee you money.
For an honest busniness to be succesful you need to provide your customers with a value that is worth the price, the price need to be lower than what your competition can offer, and your customers need to be aware of both those facts. If that is true, your business will thrive, if not, forget it. Whether it is based on free software ot not is irrelevant.
You cannot patent software alone, it is explicitly stated in at least Danish law.
However, you *can* patent a system that, among other things, contain software. Which mean you can patent a system consisting of a general purpose computer plus some software. Which kind of circumvent the explicit rule against patenting software.
Once Linux will the desktop, the search for alternatives will end. Since Linux is free software, people will continue to work on it, and kernel researchers will reimplement the application interface. Some versions of "linux" may in fact be a BSD, hurd or Solaris kernel that are bug compatible with Linux. But that will not be where the action is, what matter will be the applications that run on top of the kernel. The kernel interface will for practical purposes be "done".
it means that free software can compete purely based on "value for money", which is far better news than if someone choose free software based on ideology.
"Create fewer IT jobs" is also good, if it means more efficient methods to produce the same goods and services with fewer people. It is called productivity increase, and free software has a great potential for that. Increasing productivity is the only thing that can make a society richer. It is sometimes resented by workers in fields that experience less demand, but that is a temporary effect until the job market has adjusted to the new situation.
One of the reason I release my software freely is that I hope it will be "exploited" as you call it. I just don't want to find myself in a situation where I have to compete with non-free versions of my own software, which is why I protect it with the GPL. As long as people keep their changes to themselves, that is find But if they share them, they have to share them freely.
You don't have to remind them that they want your vote (however gently), and you don't have to use paper mail. Just be polite and argue well.
The MEP's are in general toally ignored by the population at home, even the EP is gaining more and more power. They tend to be happy that anyone back home know they exist.
Part of the article is a bit confused, he complain that the IceWM site is too technical for the average desktop user who is not concerned with choice. However, why should such a user ever visit the IceWM site, appart from by accident? He will surely use whatever wm the distribution has choosen as default.
However, you can make a good case that a distribution geared towards non-technical users should hide the choices from the users, choose one window manager, one mail reader, etc., and hide any alternatives under some "advanced" configuration option. That will allow those who want to play to play, without bothering the people who just want to work.
You can further argue that there should be a reference GUI, and that there should be a reference version for most other application, to make "all work, no play" users more portable between GNU/Linux installations. I suspect this will happen eventually as the "market" mature, just as it has already happened for most of the older (server and developer oriented) applications, like GCC and the GNU tools or Apache, or the Linux kernel itself. However, this would be inappropriate for the LSB to decide, we need the market to figure out where to go first.
It takes a lot less time and energy to acan a junk mail folder a couple of time a year, than to manually sort your inbox several times a day. It is a lot less aggrevating too.
I appreciate your (back-handed) point about the need of political action to stop spam, but meanwhile we have to make mail useable again, which it isn't for a lot of us.
Sun bought themselves free of the Unix license program a decade ago, so I have no idea how they should fund SCO/Caldera today. Could you please provide a reference to what you are talking about?
What do you think this is, some boy scout competition where we collect brownie points?
Government and corporations shouldn't use free software in order to make free software developers happy, they should demand that any critical software they buy is available under a free software license, in order to avoid the situation where they are at the mercy of a single provider. It is in their own interest, and tax payers and investors should demand that.
And you will find that software developers are quite willing to release their software and a free license, as long as they get paid for their work.
It isn't the free software developers who have anything at stake, we can just as well work on closed source if the clients are stupid enough to be satisfied with that. It is the users who are going to (continue to) get screwed if they don't start demaning more reasonable license conditions on the software they use.
All of these "Yet Another IRC Client" programs are written by kids trying to learn how to program, they couldn't write a payroll system if they wanted to. Obviously, they choose an application within the realm they know, where they themselves are the main target users.
The free software developers up to the task are working on real applications, like Samba, Apache, GCC, GDB, binutils, Open Office, Mozilla, or the Linux kernel, where they get paid for their work.
If you want some application for Linux, just whining about of the free software developers "should" write one isn't going to help. If it is not fun, realize that you have to pay for it. Whether you can find a free software business model for that, or have to resort to some redististribuition limited model, I don't care. Just stop whining abouyt what other people ought to do, and start paying. You have the problem, so you find the solution. (generic you).
The "hundreds of satisfied customers" is especially fun compared with the 11.000 resellers. That is approximately 100 resellers per satisfied customer.
I have never used OE, but I have suffered the poorly formatted and overly long messages that OE appear to encourage. Not to mention getting zillions of mail viruses from OE users who do not know how to protect themselves.
Maybe OE is a good client for the experienced user who know how to use it, but in the hands of the inexperenced masses it become a menace to society.
Gnus to treat various webmail providers just like another mail souce (like pop3, imap or a unix mailbox), and treat webboards just like another news server (like nntp).
Slashdot Mirror
If I wanted to damage SCO, I'd make it as attractive for their employees to leave the company as possible. On the other hand, if I wanted to help SCO, I'd make sure that any people who left the company would find it very hard to find another job. Maybe an idea for Microsoft.
chrisd, you may want to blacklist people who were hired after May to discourage new people from filling vacant positions, but if anyhting you should suggest all their old employees to seek positions at your place (if you have any), and look at them favorably.
Which hair and eye color would you expect is most common among kids born in Finland?
Just ask any Lisp programmer.
I think it is clear that data is used in a broad sense, where it includes information, knowledge and skills, a lot of which is embedded in the Linux kernal.
The target audience is the PHB's, who will hopefully be less resistent when the techies advocate a Linux based solution for the server, especially if they remember to say the magic word IBM.
IBM couldn't care less about the "majority of users", they are not targeting the home users or even the corporate desktop at this point.
The internal design wasn't a clone of anything, it was brand new. The API tended to be implementations of Posix specifications where available, and clones of SunOS 3/4 when not. SunOS was the most popular operating system in CS departments at the time, and the students wanted their home system to be similar to what they used in school.
If you believe your customers are stupid, you probably shouldn't waste time trying to deliver them anything of value. Either you assume your customers are smart, and when they fail to buy your product, find an explanation that build on that assumption. Or you assume they are stupid, and build your business on that.
The field I work in is simulating the environmental impact of agriculture, especially nitrogen leaching.
I think you need to distinguish between two different kind of artefacts. One kind is like the movies themselves each expression is new. Very little actual footage is shared between two movies. The other is more like the art of making movies, where ideas and knowledge about how to make a movie and what works is constantly refined and passed on.
Now what is software most similar to? Movies, or the art of making movies?
Some software is clearly similar to movies, this is especially true for many modern games. In general, you want a new game to be a totally new expression, even if the concept are similar.
However, for other software the user prefer stability and incremental refinement over revolutionary new expressions. I believe the desktop is one of them, very few ordinary users are happy when the new version of ms-windows look different from the old.
The first kind of artefacts is difficult to finance without a distribution monopol (i.e. as free software or free movies or whatever), because the initial investment is so high. But the second kind lend itself perfectly to the free software approach, as each stepwise refinement has a manageable cost.
This is why I believe free software will eventually win the desktop.
They don't pay for anything they can get for free.
I make money, not on support, but on development of extensions to some very specialized software which is the "best of breed" in its limited area. My customers aren't traditionel end-users, but either research institutions or consulting businesses who use my software for projects for their clients.
There are plenty of free-software business models, and the article does a good job of summrizing them, but there is no business model (based on free software or not) that guarentee you money.
For an honest busniness to be succesful you need to provide your customers with a value that is worth the price, the price need to be lower than what your competition can offer, and your customers need to be aware of both those facts. If that is true, your business will thrive, if not, forget it. Whether it is based on free software ot not is irrelevant.
Per Abrahamsen
Church of Emacs
Sounds like masturbating to erotic pictures of yourself.
You cannot patent software alone, it is explicitly stated in at least Danish law.
However, you *can* patent a system that, among other things, contain software. Which mean you can patent a system consisting of a general purpose computer plus some software. Which kind of circumvent the explicit rule against patenting software.
Once Linux will the desktop, the search for alternatives will end. Since Linux is free software, people will continue to work on it, and kernel researchers will reimplement the application interface. Some versions of "linux" may in fact be a BSD, hurd or Solaris kernel that are bug compatible with Linux. But that will not be where the action is, what matter will be the applications that run on top of the kernel. The kernel interface will for practical purposes be "done".
it means that free software can compete purely based on "value for money", which is far better news than if someone choose free software based on ideology.
"Create fewer IT jobs" is also good, if it means more efficient methods to produce the same goods and services with fewer people. It is called productivity increase, and free software has a great potential for that. Increasing productivity is the only thing that can make a society richer. It is sometimes resented by workers in fields that experience less demand, but that is a temporary effect until the job market has adjusted to the new situation.
One of the reason I release my software freely is that I hope it will be "exploited" as you call it. I just don't want to find myself in a situation where I have to compete with non-free versions of my own software, which is why I protect it with the GPL. As long as people keep their changes to themselves, that is find But if they share them, they have to share them freely.
You don't have to remind them that they want your vote (however gently), and you don't have to use paper mail. Just be polite and argue well.
The MEP's are in general toally ignored by the population at home, even the EP is gaining more and more power. They tend to be happy that anyone back home know they exist.
Part of the article is a bit confused, he complain that the IceWM site is too technical for the average desktop user who is not concerned with choice. However, why should such a user ever visit the IceWM site, appart from by accident? He will surely use whatever wm the distribution has choosen as default.
However, you can make a good case that a distribution geared towards non-technical users should hide the choices from the users, choose one window manager, one mail reader, etc., and hide any alternatives under some "advanced" configuration option. That will allow those who want to play to play, without bothering the people who just want to work.
You can further argue that there should be a reference GUI, and that there should be a reference version for most other application, to make "all work, no play" users more portable between GNU/Linux installations. I suspect this will happen eventually as the "market" mature, just as it has already happened for most of the older (server and developer oriented) applications, like GCC and the GNU tools or Apache, or the Linux kernel itself. However, this would be inappropriate for the LSB to decide, we need the market to figure out where to go first.
It takes a lot less time and energy to acan a junk mail folder a couple of time a year, than to manually sort your inbox several times a day. It is a lot less aggrevating too.
I appreciate your (back-handed) point about the need of political action to stop spam, but meanwhile we have to make mail useable again, which it isn't for a lot of us.
Sun bought themselves free of the Unix license program a decade ago, so I have no idea how they should fund SCO/Caldera today. Could you please provide a reference to what you are talking about?
Government and corporations shouldn't use free software in order to make free software developers happy, they should demand that any critical software they buy is available under a free software license, in order to avoid the situation where they are at the mercy of a single provider. It is in their own interest, and tax payers and investors should demand that.
And you will find that software developers are quite willing to release their software and a free license, as long as they get paid for their work.
It isn't the free software developers who have anything at stake, we can just as well work on closed source if the clients are stupid enough to be satisfied with that. It is the users who are going to (continue to) get screwed if they don't start demaning more reasonable license conditions on the software they use.
All of these "Yet Another IRC Client" programs are written by kids trying to learn how to program, they couldn't write a payroll system if they wanted to. Obviously, they choose an application within the realm they know, where they themselves are the main target users.
The free software developers up to the task are working on real applications, like Samba, Apache, GCC, GDB, binutils, Open Office, Mozilla, or the Linux kernel, where they get paid for their work.
If you want some application for Linux, just whining about of the free software developers "should" write one isn't going to help. If it is not fun, realize that you have to pay for it. Whether you can find a free software business model for that, or have to resort to some redististribuition limited model, I don't care. Just stop whining abouyt what other people ought to do, and start paying. You have the problem, so you find the solution. (generic you).
We are getting paid to improve free software developer tools, server software, productivity tools, and hardware support, so that is what we do.
If you want us to write accounting software, pay us to do so. It is not something we are going to do for fun.
If you want to do research, a Ph.D is a must. If not, it is a waste.
The "hundreds of satisfied customers" is especially fun compared with the 11.000 resellers. That is approximately 100 resellers per satisfied customer.
I have never used OE, but I have suffered the poorly formatted and overly long messages that OE appear to encourage. Not to mention getting zillions of mail viruses from OE users who do not know how to protect themselves.
Maybe OE is a good client for the experienced user who know how to use it, but in the hands of the inexperenced masses it become a menace to society.
Gnus to treat various webmail providers just like another mail souce (like pop3, imap or a unix mailbox), and treat webboards just like another news server (like nntp).
A/UX was just a plain SVR4 port to the Mac, and FSF software tended to work just fine if you configured it as such.