John Katz states that Strange Company is making an animator program that would be prosacuted for Exactly the same reason that Napster sites are... but this is highly inaccurate. I like Jerf's distinction between ideas and expressions and I think it was the most concise explaination I have heard. The animator software Machinima would be producing what we would consider expressions, and personal ones at that. I have no idea why anyone would even contrive in a wild dream that this is the same as a form of copywrited expression distribution. I have to say I am fully unimpressed with the entire essay.
On a bright note: maybe it is only leftovers from voting seasos. A little mud and some well pasted words can actually go a long way, and although it appears to us that we were the target of the essay, it was obviously meant for computer illiterate politicians.
On a dark note: however bad that essay was and how much I have to judge in favor of the legislation, I still hate to see anything dissallowed no matter what it is. I believe that the freedom to steal and suffer the consequences is an integral part of the freedom and liberty I hold dear in America (though I choose not to steal or suffer those consequences) and making these opportunities not available to a person is cencorship which I find far more offensive. To restate this: crime is bad, but the only way to prevent crime completely is to live in an Orwellean nightmare. -Effendi
I think it is most likely that IB for Linux will ship it's entirety with Kylix. You may also see it ship with Corel Linux. I would also venture to say that some borland shared libraries, or maybe an Enterprise version of Corel Linux will contain Kylix. Of course we will have to see.
You should probably test your theory out by starting a company, hiring 50 developers and giving the product away for free. That should work out well.
Seriously, assuming that all Open Source and Free Software is made by collage kids who don't need income is completely ignorant. Until you realize that OSS/FS is just a new way to develop software and a new way to model a business, you are going to end up dissapointed over and over again.
A big point to remember here is that Borland has had a long and rich history of bad business management. The reason the company still exists today within that 10% growth curve Danny was talking about is that their development tools are extrordinary! They far exceed the MS tools as far as ease of use and grasp of good technology. I've never heard of a developer using Borland tools going to Visual Basic or somesuch because they liked it better. You notice that Danny is Senior R&D, this means you weren't getting a mouthfull or "synergy" in that article, and reguardless of how the business is carried out, eventually you will end up with a fantastic, multi-language, GUI, X application developing, enterprise grade package that will allow all those people born to computers after the command line to produce quality applications for Linux... in droves of thousands! The number one complaint I hear about Linux is, "It doesn't have all of the applications I need." Here and now, Borland and Corel are going to solve that. I say, Welcome back Borland! -Effendi
"I'm using X right now, and it's hell, but there's apps for it that I need to use, ones that would otherwise be developed for the CLI that I love." This is an awesome quote that is as intuitive as it is sad. Waht he has said is the same thing I heard my high school computer lab teacher say when windows 3.1 was getting popular. It was the same thing I was saying when my DOS games wouldn't run. The thruth that I see in this is that if more people wanted the CLI version of the program, they would have developed it before the X version. This clearly is not the case. If we look into this paralell history furter, we remember that Windows 3.1 apps weren't nessisarily standard. Some programs worked in completely different ways. The clipboard (OLE) was just a memory block that each and every program had to choose to handle or reject. It was also back then that my grandmother still wouldn't touch it. COM was developed a while later to solve this. This is still a concept that the Open Source community has to grasp before Linux can. There are so many ways of designing an application still, with Motif, Lestif, Sawmill, etc... that every person, no matter how much of a "poweruser" they are or aren't, has to learn it virtually from scratch. This may not take a long time to do, but these frustrating moments are enough to drive away a good chunk of prospective users. Now: It is impossible with the Open Source model to *force* a user to write a program within a common interface structure, this much we know. Perhaps then it can be encouraged? We have done it with some things, like the GPL itself for instance! Think about that, because it determines the direction of Open Source software; developers conform to fit the common user and succeed with the common user, or developers unbound, unleashed and uguided... to be doomed to the underground beneath smug commercial products who will. -Effendi
Very true! The Open Source movement, in my opinion, isn't a "movement" as much as a new business model. Say all that you want about it being the source of the Gods' operating system, but plain and simple it is just a superior way of developing software, and there's money to be made. The enemy is indeed anything that would like to discredit the Open Source model (Microsoft included). What we have is bold "idealists" (as we are so shamefully called) who are willing to put their code on the line, while 50-year-old executives are unwilling to risk their stocks on such a "new" and "unproven" method of managing a software product. This will turn over as we ourselves become those executives. The operating system itself is not the issue. BeOS may come into power one day and Open Source software will be threshing the software fields there as well. Believe it or not, an Open Source Windows project will have a much more visible and positive impact than any Linux project could - at this point in time! Don't forget that as Linux becomes more of a mainstay, we will have products like Delphi for Linux that will help us port those projects easily. In Summary: Linux may have been the Kernel of Open Source, but a rectangle is not a square. -Effendi
Slashdot Mirror
John Katz states that Strange Company is making an animator program that would be prosacuted for Exactly the same reason that Napster sites are... but this is highly inaccurate. I like Jerf's distinction between ideas and expressions and I think it was the most concise explaination I have heard. The animator software Machinima would be producing what we would consider expressions, and personal ones at that. I have no idea why anyone would even contrive in a wild dream that this is the same as a form of copywrited expression distribution. I have to say I am fully unimpressed with the entire essay.
On a bright note: maybe it is only leftovers from voting seasos. A little mud and some well pasted words can actually go a long way, and although it appears to us that we were the target of the essay, it was obviously meant for computer illiterate politicians.
On a dark note: however bad that essay was and how much I have to judge in favor of the legislation, I still hate to see anything dissallowed no matter what it is. I believe that the freedom to steal and suffer the consequences is an integral part of the freedom and liberty I hold dear in America (though I choose not to steal or suffer those consequences) and making these opportunities not available to a person is cencorship which I find far more offensive. To restate this: crime is bad, but the only way to prevent crime completely is to live in an Orwellean nightmare. -Effendi
I think it is most likely that IB for Linux will ship it's entirety with Kylix. You may also see it ship with Corel Linux. I would also venture to say that some borland shared libraries, or maybe an Enterprise version of Corel Linux will contain Kylix. Of course we will have to see.
-Effendi
You should probably test your theory out by starting a company, hiring 50 developers and giving the product away for free. That should work out well.
Seriously, assuming that all Open Source and Free Software is made by collage kids who don't need income is completely ignorant. Until you realize that OSS/FS is just a new way to develop software and a new way to model a business, you are going to end up dissapointed over and over again.
-Effendi
I like the choices in stocks to display. I see Inprise on there...
I wonder if SlashDot and Linsider will be checking each other's sites to see if they missed anything.
-Effendi
A big point to remember here is that Borland has had a long and rich history of bad business management. The reason the company still exists today within that 10% growth curve Danny was talking about is that their development tools are extrordinary! They far exceed the MS tools as far as ease of use and grasp of good technology. I've never heard of a developer using Borland tools going to Visual Basic or somesuch because they liked it better. You notice that Danny is Senior R&D, this means you weren't getting a mouthfull or "synergy" in that article, and reguardless of how the business is carried out, eventually you will end up with a fantastic, multi-language, GUI, X application developing, enterprise grade package that will allow all those people born to computers after the command line to produce quality applications for Linux... in droves of thousands! The number one complaint I hear about Linux is, "It doesn't have all of the applications I need." Here and now, Borland and Corel are going to solve that. I say, Welcome back Borland! -Effendi
"I'm using X right now, and it's hell, but there's apps for it that I need to use, ones that would otherwise be developed for the CLI that I love." This is an awesome quote that is as intuitive as it is sad. Waht he has said is the same thing I heard my high school computer lab teacher say when windows 3.1 was getting popular. It was the same thing I was saying when my DOS games wouldn't run. The thruth that I see in this is that if more people wanted the CLI version of the program, they would have developed it before the X version. This clearly is not the case. If we look into this paralell history furter, we remember that Windows 3.1 apps weren't nessisarily standard. Some programs worked in completely different ways. The clipboard (OLE) was just a memory block that each and every program had to choose to handle or reject. It was also back then that my grandmother still wouldn't touch it. COM was developed a while later to solve this. This is still a concept that the Open Source community has to grasp before Linux can. There are so many ways of designing an application still, with Motif, Lestif, Sawmill, etc... that every person, no matter how much of a "poweruser" they are or aren't, has to learn it virtually from scratch. This may not take a long time to do, but these frustrating moments are enough to drive away a good chunk of prospective users. Now: It is impossible with the Open Source model to *force* a user to write a program within a common interface structure, this much we know. Perhaps then it can be encouraged? We have done it with some things, like the GPL itself for instance! Think about that, because it determines the direction of Open Source software; developers conform to fit the common user and succeed with the common user, or developers unbound, unleashed and uguided... to be doomed to the underground beneath smug commercial products who will. -Effendi
Very true! The Open Source movement, in my opinion, isn't a "movement" as much as a new business model. Say all that you want about it being the source of the Gods' operating system, but plain and simple it is just a superior way of developing software, and there's money to be made. The enemy is indeed anything that would like to discredit the Open Source model (Microsoft included). What we have is bold "idealists" (as we are so shamefully called) who are willing to put their code on the line, while 50-year-old executives are unwilling to risk their stocks on such a "new" and "unproven" method of managing a software product. This will turn over as we ourselves become those executives. The operating system itself is not the issue. BeOS may come into power one day and Open Source software will be threshing the software fields there as well. Believe it or not, an Open Source Windows project will have a much more visible and positive impact than any Linux project could - at this point in time! Don't forget that as Linux becomes more of a mainstay, we will have products like Delphi for Linux that will help us port those projects easily. In Summary: Linux may have been the Kernel of Open Source, but a rectangle is not a square. -Effendi