You do not have an understanding of copyright law.
Because the primary use of said product is legal, it doesn't mean that those uses must be restricted^H^H^H disallowed just because there are illegal applications for the product. This is both intuitively obvious and has been proven in court, eg. I can illegally xerox an entire book, but this doesn't stop others from legally using photo copiers.
What the DVD pigs are trying to do is to leverage their license (contract law) to force the vendor to stop doing this. Unfortunately, future licensees of the DVD license will have a clause added to handle this case and we will never see a consumer version of this device.
Presumably Valve has invested millions into the game engine. They'll recoup that investment through two primary revenue streams. First, selling the Half Life 2 game (the content). Second, licensing their game engine to other game developers. Open sourcing their engine removes the second revenue stream which means they won't be able to invest as heavily into their next generation engine.
For the strength of Valve and the industry the approach that ID Software takes makes much more sense. Open Source your game engine after 2 years or so. That way you've made money off of your investment and the industry as a whole benefits by your gift to others.
I believe the idea is to offer 80% of the features of Office for a fraction of the cost. Instead of paying several hundred dollars for MS office you simply pay a few dollars per month per user. Power users of Office will likely keep their existing packaged software, but the remainder of the staff gets to use the cheaper lighter weight solution.
TCO is further reduced because now you don't need IT staff patching/installing software updates to your productivity software - its centrally managed providing ROI by reducing costs.
IBM wants to sell this because it sells WebSphere licenses and opens the door to higher value services (e.g. Portal).
Assuming the software works well this could be a win-win situation for both customers and IBM.
Re:It will take years for these standards to settl
on
Buzzword du Jour: DRM
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· Score: 1
While the standards are settling lets work on re-branding DRM for what it actually is: Digital Restrictions Management.
I have yet to see a DRM solution that does not restrict the fair use options for consumers. Until a proposed DRM solution explicit states how fair use is protected I and other empowered consumers should stay far away from these *standards*.
You are thinking like a rational engineer. Unfortunately, many purchasing decisions are not made by logic alone. Advertising and marketing (and SCO lawsuites) play important factors when making purchasing decisions.
Nor should you forget that the cost of switching to linux is still large when the user retraining and more importantly their downtime during this period is factored into the equation.
Additionally, competing on price is a sure road to failure. M$ by jacking up its price leaves the purchaser with the sense that if this product costs twice as much as another it *must* be because it is twice as good, why else would anyone buy it? If you don't buy into that argument you'll at least realize that if M$ attempts to compete on price with Linux they'll loose.
On the flipside M$ is stating that they are going to compete against Linux where Linux can't win -- advertising.
Microsoft in buying Borland aquires not only a UML modelling tool (Borland recently aquired TogetherSoft). But, they also purchase one of the better Java vendors out there. This move is both offensive and defensive. M$ gains a UML modelling environment while simultaneously killing off a significant segment of the Java tools industry.
If Microsoft pursues Rational as well they end up with the 2 best UML tools in the industry and kill off IBM's strategic partner. The net effect is that Microsoft wins big.
However, I can't believe that M$' shareholders would agree that both purchases are necessary. I expect that if Microsoft is unable to sway Rational over then we will see them make a serious bid for Borland. After all its the UML modelling software that MS wants, and if the IBM purchase of Rational goes through then MS has no modeller for their developers.
Seeing as IBM is a large player in open source software (Apache/Eclipse/Linux) and Java I personally hope to see the Rational purchase succeed, however, M$ has a crap load of cash sitting on hand - if M$ wants to start a bidding war they certainly have the ability to.
And so the consolidation in the industry continues.
Slashdot Mirror
You do not have an understanding of copyright law.
Because the primary use of said product is legal, it doesn't mean that those uses must be restricted^H^H^H disallowed just because there are illegal applications for the product. This is both intuitively obvious and has been proven in court, eg. I can illegally xerox an entire book, but this doesn't stop others from legally using photo copiers.
What the DVD pigs are trying to do is to leverage their license (contract law) to force the vendor to stop doing this. Unfortunately, future licensees of the DVD license will have a clause added to handle this case and we will never see a consumer version of this device.
Presumably Valve has invested millions into the game engine. They'll recoup that investment through two primary revenue streams. First, selling the Half Life 2 game (the content). Second, licensing their game engine to other game developers. Open sourcing their engine removes the second revenue stream which means they won't be able to invest as heavily into their next generation engine.
For the strength of Valve and the industry the approach that ID Software takes makes much more sense. Open Source your game engine after 2 years or so. That way you've made money off of your investment and the industry as a whole benefits by your gift to others.
I believe the idea is to offer 80% of the features of Office for a fraction of the cost. Instead of paying several hundred dollars for MS office you simply pay a few dollars per month per user. Power users of Office will likely keep their existing packaged software, but the remainder of the staff gets to use the cheaper lighter weight solution.
TCO is further reduced because now you don't need IT staff patching/installing software updates to your productivity software - its centrally managed providing ROI by reducing costs.
IBM wants to sell this because it sells WebSphere licenses and opens the door to higher value services (e.g. Portal).
Assuming the software works well this could be a win-win situation for both customers and IBM.
While the standards are settling lets work on re-branding DRM for what it actually is: Digital Restrictions Management.
I have yet to see a DRM solution that does not restrict the fair use options for consumers. Until a proposed DRM solution explicit states how fair use is protected I and other empowered consumers should stay far away from these *standards*.
You are thinking like a rational engineer. Unfortunately, many purchasing decisions are not made by logic alone. Advertising and marketing (and SCO lawsuites) play important factors when making purchasing decisions.
Nor should you forget that the cost of switching to linux is still large when the user retraining and more importantly their downtime during this period is factored into the equation.
Additionally, competing on price is a sure road to failure. M$ by jacking up its price leaves the purchaser with the sense that if this product costs twice as much as another it *must* be because it is twice as good, why else would anyone buy it? If you don't buy into that argument you'll at least realize that if M$ attempts to compete on price with Linux they'll loose.
On the flipside M$ is stating that they are going to compete against Linux where Linux can't win -- advertising.
Microsoft in buying Borland aquires not only a UML modelling tool (Borland recently aquired TogetherSoft). But, they also purchase one of the better Java vendors out there. This move is both offensive and defensive. M$ gains a UML modelling environment while simultaneously killing off a significant segment of the Java tools industry.
If Microsoft pursues Rational as well they end up with the 2 best UML tools in the industry and kill off IBM's strategic partner. The net effect is that Microsoft wins big.
However, I can't believe that M$' shareholders would agree that both purchases are necessary. I expect that if Microsoft is unable to sway Rational over then we will see them make a serious bid for Borland. After all its the UML modelling software that MS wants, and if the IBM purchase of Rational goes through then MS has no modeller for their developers.
Seeing as IBM is a large player in open source software (Apache/Eclipse/Linux) and Java I personally hope to see the Rational purchase succeed, however, M$ has a crap load of cash sitting on hand - if M$ wants to start a bidding war they certainly have the ability to.
And so the consolidation in the industry continues.