Would you rather have nothing happen, and have the term "Open Source" be synonymous with "shareware" and the like? You can't ever have a guarantee that everything will work out perfectly, but that's no excuse to not try to do the right thing, to protect what's good.
Sure. I don't think it's a big deal if open source becomes synonymous with shareware. The concept predates the label, and we were all doing just fine without OSI.
And my question really related to Perens' claim that he was in a position to give legal advice to programmers.
They simply won't understand where the phrase "open source" originated from, even if you repeat it non-stop until you're blue in the face, since they just now the current, more generalized meaning of the phrase.
The term "open source" did not originate with OSI.
Speaking of which, what makes you think you can't be outsourced? Legal departments are one of the things companies are thinking of getting rid of, right up there with middle management. Better hang out your shingle while you can...
Ahhh, but we have a lot more pull with the legislature than you guys. Plus in most states the state's Supreme Court gets to say who practices law and who doesn't, so that's another level of protection. While we might end up outsourced, it's not going to happen for a very long while (and that's going to be a nice, long, drawn-out fight).
P.S. I wasn't "talking smack about" you, per se. At least lawyers practice a skilled trade. I was discussing the useless academics that sit around and pontificate about things they have no direct knowledge of, and aren't involved with, as though their lofty title "historian" (sometimes it's a "Philosopher") gives them some special insight. They're ridiculous people, convinced that their dusty old books contain actual knowledge. The TRUTH is, they're just regurgitating the same, tired old OPINIONS their little cadre has decided to support. It's all crap.
I agree that there are many useless academics, but I've found that the people in the history and philosophy departments tend to usually know what they're talking about (at least more than some of the other social sciences/arts/etc). And a lot of the most prominent philosophers of science come from science backgrounds; Thomas Kuhn was a physicist, Hegel was a mathematician, etc.. Historians, whatever you think of their theories, have to at least master a large field of more-or-less objective facts before they can even start on their theories. I think this guy may be wrong, but I don't think it would be the result of any hostility to technology per se; obviously he must be interested in technology, considering the career path he chose.
Oh, and I'm not posting this in a hostile mood -- I'm rather enjoying this bit of fencing. So don't take it personally, i'm just playing with you. I'm right about the arty-farty crowd, though. You know it's true.
If I didn't like arguing, I wouldn't have gone into litigation...You should see the arguments I'm trying to start on the OSI thread.
Sigh. I imagine you use some of this Open Source software sometimes. Please try to get your head around the fact that it would not be possible for such software to exist and for folks like you to benefit from it, unless it was developed. And it would not be developed without a developer community, and that community would not be able to do their work unless they had the right to modify and redistribute the software.
And this right existed, and was used, for years before either the "open source" term was used, or the OSI came into being.
Oh, accusing people who hide behind pseudonyms of breaking the law is fairly pointless. But since you insist, I insist and demand that you stop disparaging our trademark and remove your disparaging statements from Slashdot. that for a substantive response?
You're a funny little guy. First of all, disparagement of trademark isn't what you think it means. Maybe you're thinking of defamation.
Oh, and we were the first to use the mark in commerce in our field. I put it on my packet driver floppy disk distribution shortly after it was created. For only $15 you can get your own copy of our Official Evidence of First Use.
Really....that's an interesting claim. When exactly was this packet driver distribution released?
Unless I'm wrong, of course, but you'd need evidence, not pseudothings.
Well if you're so confident, give me a nice definite answer as to when you first used it in commerce, and we'll go from there.
Yeah, ok. You didn't get your lawyer job with your knowledge of Shakespeare, pal. You studied a specific TRADE in LAW SCHOOL. All that arty-farty crap you studied beforehand was just an artificial barrier to entry designed to reduce the field to people with enough money to pay for six to eight years of school.
You have a lot of opinions on something you don't have any first-hand knowledge of, don't you? I can assure you, the more arty-farty stuff you do in undergrad, the easier time you'll have in law school. And law school is expensive, which is why the vast majority of law students take out loans, so the field certainly isn't limited to people with enough money to pay their way through. By the way, I actually did study Shakespeare in law school.
There's no *practical* reason why "law school" can't be an undergrad degree.
Sure, if you were willing to either a) dramatically lower the difficulty of law school, or b) accept a dropout rate about 50% in the first year.
My point about diff.eq and calculus was that techies study these things in school. I did. You did not.
No, that wasn't your point. First of all, because that doesn't really constitute a "point". Go back and read your first post again.
Congratulations on your rental successes, I'm sure you're very happy. But tell me, did you get a good price for your soul?
Oh I have no problem with what I do. Since you really don't know what that is, other than "practice law", neither do you, hmm?
There are so many lawyers getting minted these days, I can't help but think the prices may be dropping...
In other words, you have no substantive response to my statement. You do not have a trademark registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office. You have not established a common-law trademark, because you weren't the first to use it. Your statement, therefore, was false.
The problem is that if nobody enforces standards for the "Open Source" brand, then anything, whether or not it even includes permission to modify the code or redistribute it, will be called Open Source.
Then the problem is something you're just going to have to live with, because outside of advocacy there isn't much you can do to "enforce" the standard. And honestly I don't see where OSI has the moral authority to enforce THEIR standards in the first place.
Unfortunately, registration gives almost automatic 'evidence of first use'. And with someone else registering it (for maybe a different, but still-related purpose), it looks very bad in court.
I don't think it would make much of a difference, since the other trademarks have nothing to do with software. However, it definitely would be a problem that OSI didn't use the term first even when applied to software development.
Actually, we're just trying to enforce our trademark on Open Source. If you don't like our trademark or our ownership of it, use a different term, like Shared Source, or Source Available. If you want to use the term that we have spent years and dollars promoting, then you have to do it under our terms (which are very reasonable).
He's a historian; he's looking at the actual historical effects of what have previously been regarded as incredible innovations, and finding in the grand scheme of things those specific inventions they haven't really been as important as most people think. It's not an anti-technology
Seriously, this sort of story stinks of sour grapes. Most of the arty-farty crowd can barely pay their rent, and they've long envied the successes of the technical sector.
Actually all those arty-farty subjects came in real handy in law school, so don't worry, I'm doing just fine rent-wise.
Even back in school, while those of us who were able were studying differential equations and calculus (and the arty were saying things like "math is hard")
You know, my first job was as a sysadmin and I never had to do any differential equations or calculus. Don't think any of my programmer friends had to either.
it was that way. Try telling some lit major about your new file server, see how interested he is in it. Good luck; you'll be lucky if he or she sticks around for more than five minutes.
There isn't anyone on the planet who would stick around for more than five minutes to hear about your file server, technical sector or not. And if you're telling a "she" about your file server, you really have to work on your pickup skills...
After all, who thinks we'd have the copyright terms we do now if it wasn't for Disney buying off congressmen?
Myself for one. I think lobbying is very destructive in general, but it's never quite as cut-and-dried as "buying off" people. First of all, even with all the loopholes, it's very difficult for one donor to give enough money to a member of congress to severely sway them. I mean, these people are usually start out being comfortably well-off, even with the frequent pay cuts you get when you move from the private sphere to the public one.
Very few members of congress are going to let themselves be bought for a few thousand dollars. Just not worth it.
Also, there are a lot of people who are more attracted to politics because they value power over money. Not that it's any more noble a character trait, but for a lot of these people the power they wield is an end in itself. They like being able to call the shots, and a good number of them aren't going to trade that power for a little bit of money. If money was that important, a lot of them would have been better off staying in the private sector, where they would be making a hell of a lot more.
What happens with the lobbyists is that they're very, very good at their jobs. They're smart. They're friendly. They're likeable. They're charismatic. They can usually give their side of the story without any opposition. If a lobbyist comes into your office to talk about a subject you haven't really given much thought to, and lays a slick, professional presentation on you, cites a bunch of credible-sounding statistics, mentions the support of some industrial association, you're going to be naturally leaning towards their side.
Eh, I don't know, it's not like they're using substandard Intel CPUs or anything. Might skimp on the motherboards or something, but most of the components in laptops come from the same small group of manufacturers.
I'm not a huge fan of Dell laptops, but I know I could get a comparable HP laptop for significantly cheaper, and I think HP makes reasonably sturdy, good quality laptops (wouldn't touch their desktops though). I think in the end system76 can't compete on price, even without the microsoft tax, just because they can't leverage economies of scale like the larger manufacturers can. If you're going to buy them to support linux and maybe get them in the long run to a point where they CAN compete on price, more power to you, I wish you luck. I just don't think everyone else would think the same way.
http://system76.com/ Great laptops, reasonable prices, Ubuntu ships on the beasts. What more could you ask for?
I tried configuring a computer on system76 and Dell, and when you put together comparable machines, the system76 one is several hundred dollars more expensive.
And while it's been ported, every port is going to bring a certain level of unnecessary bloat and inappropriate design decisions. When you're spending millions and millions of dollars on a supercomputer, why skimp on the operating system?
I do wonder why thety bother and don't just try and integrate any new ways of thinking they've come up with into pre-existing systems such as Linux or BSD.
Why would they put a 16 year old consumer-oriented, x86-based, single processor-optimized operating system on a distributed supercomputer? I dunno, maybe they're just a little dim.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to explain why you believe this?
No problem.
Would you rather have nothing happen, and have the term "Open Source" be synonymous with "shareware" and the like? You can't ever have a guarantee that everything will work out perfectly, but that's no excuse to not try to do the right thing, to protect what's good.
Sure. I don't think it's a big deal if open source becomes synonymous with shareware. The concept predates the label, and we were all doing just fine without OSI.
And my question really related to Perens' claim that he was in a position to give legal advice to programmers.
They simply won't understand where the phrase "open source" originated from, even if you repeat it non-stop until you're blue in the face, since they just now the current, more generalized meaning of the phrase.
The term "open source" did not originate with OSI.
Your argument only holds water if you ignore what he wrote after the 50's, which seems a bit of an odd way of looking at his work.
Hmmm, frequently when I've badmouthed Heinlein, his fans have suggested exactly that; that I ignore what he wrote after the 50's.
Speaking of which, what makes you think you can't be outsourced? Legal departments are one of the things companies are thinking of getting rid of, right up there with middle management. Better hang out your shingle while you can...
Ahhh, but we have a lot more pull with the legislature than you guys. Plus in most states the state's Supreme Court gets to say who practices law and who doesn't, so that's another level of protection. While we might end up outsourced, it's not going to happen for a very long while (and that's going to be a nice, long, drawn-out fight).
P.S. I wasn't "talking smack about" you, per se. At least lawyers practice a skilled trade. I was discussing the useless academics that sit around and pontificate about things they have no direct knowledge of, and aren't involved with, as though their lofty title "historian" (sometimes it's a "Philosopher") gives them some special insight. They're ridiculous people, convinced that their dusty old books contain actual knowledge. The TRUTH is, they're just regurgitating the same, tired old OPINIONS their little cadre has decided to support. It's all crap.
I agree that there are many useless academics, but I've found that the people in the history and philosophy departments tend to usually know what they're talking about (at least more than some of the other social sciences/arts/etc). And a lot of the most prominent philosophers of science come from science backgrounds; Thomas Kuhn was a physicist, Hegel was a mathematician, etc.. Historians, whatever you think of their theories, have to at least master a large field of more-or-less objective facts before they can even start on their theories. I think this guy may be wrong, but I don't think it would be the result of any hostility to technology per se; obviously he must be interested in technology, considering the career path he chose.
Oh, and I'm not posting this in a hostile mood -- I'm rather enjoying this bit of fencing. So don't take it personally, i'm just playing with you. I'm right about the arty-farty crowd, though. You know it's true.
If I didn't like arguing, I wouldn't have gone into litigation...You should see the arguments I'm trying to start on the OSI thread.
Sigh. I imagine you use some of this Open Source software sometimes. Please try to get your head around the fact that it would not be possible for such software to exist and for folks like you to benefit from it, unless it was developed. And it would not be developed without a developer community, and that community would not be able to do their work unless they had the right to modify and redistribute the software.
And this right existed, and was used, for years before either the "open source" term was used, or the OSI came into being.
Oh, accusing people who hide behind pseudonyms of breaking the law is fairly pointless. But since you insist, I insist and demand that you stop disparaging our trademark and remove your disparaging statements from Slashdot. that for a substantive response?
You're a funny little guy. First of all, disparagement of trademark isn't what you think it means. Maybe you're thinking of defamation.
Oh, and we were the first to use the mark in commerce in our field. I put it on my packet driver floppy disk distribution shortly after it was created. For only $15 you can get your own copy of our Official Evidence of First Use.
Really....that's an interesting claim. When exactly was this packet driver distribution released?
Unless I'm wrong, of course, but you'd need evidence, not pseudothings.
Well if you're so confident, give me a nice definite answer as to when you first used it in commerce, and we'll go from there.
Yeah, ok. You didn't get your lawyer job with your knowledge of Shakespeare, pal. You studied a specific TRADE in LAW SCHOOL. All that arty-farty crap you studied beforehand was just an artificial barrier to entry designed to reduce the field to people with enough money to pay for six to eight years of school.
You have a lot of opinions on something you don't have any first-hand knowledge of, don't you? I can assure you, the more arty-farty stuff you do in undergrad, the easier time you'll have in law school. And law school is expensive, which is why the vast majority of law students take out loans, so the field certainly isn't limited to people with enough money to pay their way through. By the way, I actually did study Shakespeare in law school.
There's no *practical* reason why "law school" can't be an undergrad degree.
Sure, if you were willing to either a) dramatically lower the difficulty of law school, or b) accept a dropout rate about 50% in the first year.
My point about diff.eq and calculus was that techies study these things in school. I did. You did not.
No, that wasn't your point. First of all, because that doesn't really constitute a "point". Go back and read your first post again. Congratulations on your rental successes, I'm sure you're very happy. But tell me, did you get a good price for your soul?
Oh I have no problem with what I do. Since you really don't know what that is, other than "practice law", neither do you, hmm?
There are so many lawyers getting minted these days, I can't help but think the prices may be dropping...
Yep, but at least we can't be outsourced.
No. On February 2, 1998, we created a brand called "Open Source".
"Open Source" isn't just your "brand", it's a development methodology that predates OSI by several years.
Pseudonyms think pseudothings.
In other words, you have no substantive response to my statement. You do not have a trademark registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office. You have not established a common-law trademark, because you weren't the first to use it. Your statement, therefore, was false.
So, we thought we'd help you with the legal stuff.
But how are we sure that you're going to get it right?
The problem is that if nobody enforces standards for the "Open Source" brand, then anything, whether or not it even includes permission to modify the code or redistribute it, will be called Open Source.
Then the problem is something you're just going to have to live with, because outside of advocacy there isn't much you can do to "enforce" the standard. And honestly I don't see where OSI has the moral authority to enforce THEIR standards in the first place.
It's not a regulation, it's an amendment to a contract.
Unfortunately, registration gives almost automatic 'evidence of first use'. And with someone else registering it (for maybe a different, but still-related purpose), it looks very bad in court.
I don't think it would make much of a difference, since the other trademarks have nothing to do with software. However, it definitely would be a problem that OSI didn't use the term first even when applied to software development.
I don't see where OSI has any legal standing to prevent someone from using the term
They don't.
Actually, we're just trying to enforce our trademark on Open Source. If you don't like our trademark or our ownership of it, use a different term, like Shared Source, or Source Available. If you want to use the term that we have spent years and dollars promoting, then you have to do it under our terms (which are very reasonable).
You don't have a trademark on Open Source.
He's a historian; he's looking at the actual historical effects of what have previously been regarded as incredible innovations, and finding in the grand scheme of things those specific inventions they haven't really been as important as most people think. It's not an anti-technology
Seriously, this sort of story stinks of sour grapes. Most of the arty-farty crowd can barely pay their rent, and they've long envied the successes of the technical sector.
Actually all those arty-farty subjects came in real handy in law school, so don't worry, I'm doing just fine rent-wise.
Even back in school, while those of us who were able were studying differential equations and calculus (and the arty were saying things like "math is hard")
You know, my first job was as a sysadmin and I never had to do any differential equations or calculus. Don't think any of my programmer friends had to either.
it was that way. Try telling some lit major about your new file server, see how interested he is in it. Good luck; you'll be lucky if he or she sticks around for more than five minutes.
There isn't anyone on the planet who would stick around for more than five minutes to hear about your file server, technical sector or not. And if you're telling a "she" about your file server, you really have to work on your pickup skills...
After all, who thinks we'd have the copyright terms we do now if it wasn't for Disney buying off congressmen?
Myself for one. I think lobbying is very destructive in general, but it's never quite as cut-and-dried as "buying off" people. First of all, even with all the loopholes, it's very difficult for one donor to give enough money to a member of congress to severely sway them. I mean, these people are usually start out being comfortably well-off, even with the frequent pay cuts you get when you move from the private sphere to the public one.
Very few members of congress are going to let themselves be bought for a few thousand dollars. Just not worth it.
Also, there are a lot of people who are more attracted to politics because they value power over money. Not that it's any more noble a character trait, but for a lot of these people the power they wield is an end in itself. They like being able to call the shots, and a good number of them aren't going to trade that power for a little bit of money. If money was that important, a lot of them would have been better off staying in the private sector, where they would be making a hell of a lot more.
What happens with the lobbyists is that they're very, very good at their jobs. They're smart. They're friendly. They're likeable. They're charismatic. They can usually give their side of the story without any opposition. If a lobbyist comes into your office to talk about a subject you haven't really given much thought to, and lays a slick, professional presentation on you, cites a bunch of credible-sounding statistics, mentions the support of some industrial association, you're going to be naturally leaning towards their side.
As the saying goes.... You get what you pay for.
Eh, I don't know, it's not like they're using substandard Intel CPUs or anything. Might skimp on the motherboards or something, but most of the components in laptops come from the same small group of manufacturers.
I'm not a huge fan of Dell laptops, but I know I could get a comparable HP laptop for significantly cheaper, and I think HP makes reasonably sturdy, good quality laptops (wouldn't touch their desktops though). I think in the end system76 can't compete on price, even without the microsoft tax, just because they can't leverage economies of scale like the larger manufacturers can. If you're going to buy them to support linux and maybe get them in the long run to a point where they CAN compete on price, more power to you, I wish you luck. I just don't think everyone else would think the same way.
http://system76.com/ Great laptops, reasonable prices, Ubuntu ships on the beasts. What more could you ask for?
I tried configuring a computer on system76 and Dell, and when you put together comparable machines, the system76 one is several hundred dollars more expensive.
No, but it was designed specifically for distributed computing.
Well it does work on 486s.
And while it's been ported, every port is going to bring a certain level of unnecessary bloat and inappropriate design decisions. When you're spending millions and millions of dollars on a supercomputer, why skimp on the operating system?
If I had been talking about Windows, I would have said a 22-year old operating system.
I'ts in my title and job description. 'Till I die or you find someone better. What's in yours?
Olympic Gold Medal Rocket Sled Champion.
I do wonder why thety bother and don't just try and integrate any new ways of thinking they've come up with into pre-existing systems such as Linux or BSD.
Why would they put a 16 year old consumer-oriented, x86-based, single processor-optimized operating system on a distributed supercomputer? I dunno, maybe they're just a little dim.