Re: Why open source is still questionable
on
Mundie Responds
·
· Score: 3
On May 17, 2001 7:34 AM PST, Craig Mundie wrote:
> COMMENTARY--On May 3 I spoke at the New York University Stern School of
> Business about Microsoft's position regarding source-code licensing. I wanted
> to articulate some of the benefits and drawbacks of the various ways
> commercial software companies could share their source code. I described
> Microsoft's shared-source philosophy, a balanced approach that enables
> commercial companies to share source code with their customers and partners
> while preserving the intellectual property rights that support a strong
> software business. I also articulated some ways in which shared source
> differs from open source.
Read:... Microsoft's shared-source philosophy, a carefully crafted approach
that enables commercial companies to recieve free software development labor
from their customers and partners while preventing those customers and partners
from gaining any reciprocal benefit.
You can now give Microsoft bugfixes for their products, and in return for that
hard work, Microsoft will give you... absolutely nothing!
> The reactions to my statements have been many and varied. I wanted an active
> debate about intellectual property and the software industry, and I certainly
> got one.
(My opinion: This is a rather arrogant statement. As if Mundie was the first
person to think of this subject, and subsequently started a debate. More like
he wanted to save face for Microsoft after the Shared Source announcement, so
he decided to join in the (already long-running) debate.)
> But this is more than just an academic debate. The commercial software
> industry is a significant driver of our global economy. It employs 1.35
> million people and produces $175 billion in worldwide revenues annually
> (sources: BSA, IDC).
Indeed. The Free Software industry is an even more significant driver of our
global economy. I have no statistics to quote, but that is because the scale of
this benefit is so exceedingly astronomical as to be entirely inestimable. To
begin to imagine what I am talking about, think of where the world economy
would be today without the World Wide Web.
Or email.
Or the entire Internet.
But this is more than just an economic debate. The point that Mundie ignores
completely in his commentary is that the Free Software development model is
simply more techinically efficient than closed development. It produces better
software, faster.
The benefit to consumers is ultimately the most important factor, and that is
where the closed development model cannot hope to compete.
> The business model for commercial software has a proven track record and is a
> key engine of economic growth for many countries. It has boosted productivity
> and efficiency in almost every sector of the economy, as businesses and
> individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools, information and other
> activities made possible in the PC era.
A proven track record? The commercial software industry is only 20 years old,
and is already beginning to fail. Compare its age and sustainability to other,
truly proven industries, such as Agriculture, Oil, Medicine. In this young
upstart field of software, who knows whether a business will really be around
for the long haul?
But don't worry! With the GPL, you as the consumer (a point of view
consistently ignored by Mundie) don't have to worry about whether your
commercial supplier goes out of business.
So much for the importance of a proven business model.
The development model for Free Software has a proven track record -- it is more
well established than that of closed source software. Also it is a key engine
of technological growth for many countries -- many more than is commercial
software. It has boosted productivity and efficiency in almost every sector of
the economy, as businesses and individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools,
information and other activities made possible in the Internet era. (Gee, that
last sentence didn't even change much, but somehow fits Free Software better
than closed source. Go figure.)
> Companies have the choice of protecting or relinquishing the intellectual
> property resulting from their research and development consistent with their
> particular customer and business needs. As the U.S. Department of Commerce
> stated in a report titled "International Science and Technology": "Innovation
> relies on a partnership between the public and private sectors in which the
> government invests in long-range science and technology and in mechanisms to
> promote private-sector risk-taking and investment."
Of course, this partnership is only necessary for fields of endeavor where
significant monetary or hardware resources are a prerequisite for development.
As this is not true for software -- the only resource required is a brain and a
computer -- the Commerce Department quote is irrelevant.
> We believe that one of these mechanisms is intellectual property rights.
The umbrella term "intellectual property rights" does not refer to a single
mechanism. It is impossible to have intelligent discourse when such vague and
meaningless terminology is used. Nevertheless...
> Without intellectual property protection, neither innovation nor a healthy
> commercial software industry is sustainable.
Half of this assertion is questionable, while the other half is simply false.
It remains to be seen whether profitability can be sustained making Free
Software, but it is obvious that innovation certainly can be! And at a much
greater rate than is seen from closed source development. After all, who
invented the Internet? Certainly not Microsoft. Or any other commercial entity,
for that matter.
> The last 50 years of public- and private-sector collaboration has
> demonstrated that when intellectual property rights are protected, innovators
> are rewarded for their efforts. Furthermore, technology is advanced
> guaranteeing economic growth and a cycle of future collaboration, investment
> and innovation.
Actually, the last 50 years has seen continued innovation *despite* so-called
"intellectual property rights", rather than because of them.
A company's desire to protect its copyrights and patents prevents it from
freely sharing development work with other individuals and copmanies. Its
desire to retain revenue causes it to develop software that is not
interoperable with the rest of the world (creating vendor lock-in and ensuring
future revenue).
The mere presence of such software slows the general progress of technology by
distracting customers from the superior software which has been freely
developed. Free Software is more interoperable because the developers have no
incentive to create lock-in, and more robust and efficient as a result of
shared development and peer review.
> In my speech, I did not question the right of the open-source software model
> to compete in the marketplace. The issue at hand is choice; companies and
> individuals should be able to choose either model, and we support this right.
Likewise, no one has questioned Microsoft's legal right (under generally
accepted interpretation of current copyright and patent legislation in the US)
to compete in the marketplace with a closed source model. We simply question
whether this is a wise thing for Microsoft to do in the long term.
The issue at hand is not choice. No one has said that individuals and companies
should not be able to choose. The real issue is that we believe a real problem
exists with the new licensing model that Microsoft employs: Shared Source.
Essentially, it provides obvious benefit to Microsoft, while providing no real
benefit to any other individual or company. Microsoft now offers "Shared
Source". My question is: Why should we care?
> I did call out what I believe is a real problem in the licensing model that
> many open-source software products employ: the General Public License.
>
> The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their
> heads. Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models
> is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high
> level of legal uncertainty around the GPL--uncertainty that translates into
> business risk.
There is also a high level of legal uncertainty around Microsoft's shrink-wrap
and click-wrap licenses. This is less true now that the DMCA has passed, but
still the enforcability of many clauses in those licenses has yet to be tested
in court. But Microsoft seems to consider that an acceptable risk.
> In my opinion, the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at
> the expense of a strong commercial software business model. That's why Linus
> Torvalds said last week that "Linux is never really going to be a rich sell."
Corollary: commercial licenses are intended to build a strong commercial
software business model at the expense of a strong software community.
A strong software community is necessary for significant innovation. It is
necessary to build truly great software.
The GPL is intended to build a strong software community. Period. If this must
happen at the expense of a strong business model, then so be it, but that is
not part of the design. While the development model for Free Software is well
established, the business model is very new, and nobody's really sure how to
make it work yet. If it does work, then great. If not, then there are plenty of
other ways to make a successful business.
> This isn't to say that some companies won't find a business plan that can
> make money releasing products under the GPL. We have yet to see such
> companies emerge, but perhaps some will.
What a kind concession on the part of Mr. Mundie.
> Recent history tells us, however, that finding a business model that works is
> difficult. According to ZDNet News, "Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera
> Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL
> doesn't make much business sense."
That may or may not be true. Time will tell.
> What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the
> ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products.
"...the currency of the ideas and labor..." I must admit that after several
rereadings, I still have no idea what that is supposed to mean. It certainly
sounds very grave, but really is quite ambiguous. Does this noun phrase refer
to actual monetary currency related to ideas and labor? Perhaps it treats ideas
and labor metaphorically as currency which is then mixed with another metaphor
of transformation? Who knows?
What is certain, is that the GPL requires freer exchange of those exceptionally
important and wonderful transformative ideas and labor. That is the core of the
GPL, and it accomplishes this goal better than any other license.
> Alfred North Whitehead, the renowned British philosopher, logician and
> mathematician, observed: "It is a great mistake to think that the bare
> scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked
> up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One
> element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about bridging
> the gap between the scientific ideas and the ultimate product. It is a
> process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another."
>
> In other words, a critical flow of information and experimental data follows
> every major scientific discovery and results in the verification, refutation
> or refinement of the new idea or theory. To facilitate this process, neither
> copyright nor patent protections are available for abstract ideas or
> theories. This is as it should be.
This is perfectly agreeable as far as it goes. However it is important to be
perfectly clear when determining exactly what constitutes an abstract idea or
theory. Algorithms fall squarely into this domain. Software patents are granted
for specific implementations of algorithms, but have been interpreted to cover
any implementation of the same algorithm. So while patents themselves are not
available, patent *protections* effectively are! This is a serious problem.
> Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry
> Ford (who held thousands of patents between them) succeeded precisely because
> they were able to use funding, management and market insight to deliver their
> innovations as unique, practical and useful products. Arguably, the
> creativity and inventiveness needed to deliver their products was comparable
> to that needed for the underlying theory or discovery that made their
> business possible in the first place.
Of course, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford actually
invented things. Computer Science (along with the important parts of the
software industry) is really just a subdomain of mathematics. The important
discoveries (they are not inventions) in software cannot be owned by anyone. It
is one of the greatest swindles of this century that Microsoft has somehow
managed to fool all of its customers into paying money for a piece of math.
> When comparing the commercial software model to the open-source software
> model, look carefully at the business plans and licensing structures that
> form their foundations. This comparison leads to the conclusion that the
> commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic
> growth.
More importantly, a careful comparison leads to the conclusion that the Free
Software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real technological growth.
A closed source model actively inhibits innovation and general progress by
preventing the free exchange of ideas and development work among the worlds
developers.
> Intellectual capital has always been, and will remain, the core asset of the
> software industry, and of almost every other industry. Preserving that
> capital--and investing in its constant renewal--benefits everyone.
Of course. And the best way to preserve and invest in that capital is to ensure
that it recieves the widest possible dissemination.
> Craig Mundie is a senior vice president at Microsoft Corporation.
Keith Rarick writes code.
rpm "free list corrupt" error trying to install
on
GNOME 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Happens to me too, but I think it's a packaging problem. rpm seems to work fine on other stuff. Here is the list of gnome packages that give me this error:
Slashdot Mirror
Ha ha ha, this coming from a Windows user. :)
On May 17, 2001 7:34 AM PST, Craig Mundie wrote:
... Microsoft's shared-source philosophy, a carefully crafted approach
> COMMENTARY--On May 3 I spoke at the New York University Stern School of
> Business about Microsoft's position regarding source-code licensing. I wanted
> to articulate some of the benefits and drawbacks of the various ways
> commercial software companies could share their source code. I described
> Microsoft's shared-source philosophy, a balanced approach that enables
> commercial companies to share source code with their customers and partners
> while preserving the intellectual property rights that support a strong
> software business. I also articulated some ways in which shared source
> differs from open source.
Read:
that enables commercial companies to recieve free software development labor
from their customers and partners while preventing those customers and partners
from gaining any reciprocal benefit.
You can now give Microsoft bugfixes for their products, and in return for that
hard work, Microsoft will give you... absolutely nothing!
> The reactions to my statements have been many and varied. I wanted an active
> debate about intellectual property and the software industry, and I certainly
> got one.
(My opinion: This is a rather arrogant statement. As if Mundie was the first
person to think of this subject, and subsequently started a debate. More like
he wanted to save face for Microsoft after the Shared Source announcement, so
he decided to join in the (already long-running) debate.)
> But this is more than just an academic debate. The commercial software
> industry is a significant driver of our global economy. It employs 1.35
> million people and produces $175 billion in worldwide revenues annually
> (sources: BSA, IDC).
Indeed. The Free Software industry is an even more significant driver of our
global economy. I have no statistics to quote, but that is because the scale of
this benefit is so exceedingly astronomical as to be entirely inestimable. To
begin to imagine what I am talking about, think of where the world economy
would be today without the World Wide Web.
Or email.
Or the entire Internet.
But this is more than just an economic debate. The point that Mundie ignores
completely in his commentary is that the Free Software development model is
simply more techinically efficient than closed development. It produces better
software, faster.
The benefit to consumers is ultimately the most important factor, and that is
where the closed development model cannot hope to compete.
> The business model for commercial software has a proven track record and is a
> key engine of economic growth for many countries. It has boosted productivity
> and efficiency in almost every sector of the economy, as businesses and
> individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools, information and other
> activities made possible in the PC era.
A proven track record? The commercial software industry is only 20 years old,
and is already beginning to fail. Compare its age and sustainability to other,
truly proven industries, such as Agriculture, Oil, Medicine. In this young
upstart field of software, who knows whether a business will really be around
for the long haul?
But don't worry! With the GPL, you as the consumer (a point of view
consistently ignored by Mundie) don't have to worry about whether your
commercial supplier goes out of business.
So much for the importance of a proven business model.
The development model for Free Software has a proven track record -- it is more
well established than that of closed source software. Also it is a key engine
of technological growth for many countries -- many more than is commercial
software. It has boosted productivity and efficiency in almost every sector of
the economy, as businesses and individuals have enjoyed the wealth of tools,
information and other activities made possible in the Internet era. (Gee, that
last sentence didn't even change much, but somehow fits Free Software better
than closed source. Go figure.)
> Companies have the choice of protecting or relinquishing the intellectual
> property resulting from their research and development consistent with their
> particular customer and business needs. As the U.S. Department of Commerce
> stated in a report titled "International Science and Technology": "Innovation
> relies on a partnership between the public and private sectors in which the
> government invests in long-range science and technology and in mechanisms to
> promote private-sector risk-taking and investment."
Of course, this partnership is only necessary for fields of endeavor where
significant monetary or hardware resources are a prerequisite for development.
As this is not true for software -- the only resource required is a brain and a
computer -- the Commerce Department quote is irrelevant.
> We believe that one of these mechanisms is intellectual property rights.
The umbrella term "intellectual property rights" does not refer to a single
mechanism. It is impossible to have intelligent discourse when such vague and
meaningless terminology is used. Nevertheless...
> Without intellectual property protection, neither innovation nor a healthy
> commercial software industry is sustainable.
Half of this assertion is questionable, while the other half is simply false.
It remains to be seen whether profitability can be sustained making Free
Software, but it is obvious that innovation certainly can be! And at a much
greater rate than is seen from closed source development. After all, who
invented the Internet? Certainly not Microsoft. Or any other commercial entity,
for that matter.
> The last 50 years of public- and private-sector collaboration has
> demonstrated that when intellectual property rights are protected, innovators
> are rewarded for their efforts. Furthermore, technology is advanced
> guaranteeing economic growth and a cycle of future collaboration, investment
> and innovation.
Actually, the last 50 years has seen continued innovation *despite* so-called
"intellectual property rights", rather than because of them.
A company's desire to protect its copyrights and patents prevents it from
freely sharing development work with other individuals and copmanies. Its
desire to retain revenue causes it to develop software that is not
interoperable with the rest of the world (creating vendor lock-in and ensuring
future revenue).
The mere presence of such software slows the general progress of technology by
distracting customers from the superior software which has been freely
developed. Free Software is more interoperable because the developers have no
incentive to create lock-in, and more robust and efficient as a result of
shared development and peer review.
> In my speech, I did not question the right of the open-source software model
> to compete in the marketplace. The issue at hand is choice; companies and
> individuals should be able to choose either model, and we support this right.
Likewise, no one has questioned Microsoft's legal right (under generally
accepted interpretation of current copyright and patent legislation in the US)
to compete in the marketplace with a closed source model. We simply question
whether this is a wise thing for Microsoft to do in the long term.
The issue at hand is not choice. No one has said that individuals and companies
should not be able to choose. The real issue is that we believe a real problem
exists with the new licensing model that Microsoft employs: Shared Source.
Essentially, it provides obvious benefit to Microsoft, while providing no real
benefit to any other individual or company. Microsoft now offers "Shared
Source". My question is: Why should we care?
> I did call out what I believe is a real problem in the licensing model that
> many open-source software products employ: the General Public License.
>
> The GPL turns our existing concepts of intellectual property rights on their
> heads. Some of the tension I see between the GPL and strong business models
> is by design, and some of it is caused simply because there remains a high
> level of legal uncertainty around the GPL--uncertainty that translates into
> business risk.
There is also a high level of legal uncertainty around Microsoft's shrink-wrap
and click-wrap licenses. This is less true now that the DMCA has passed, but
still the enforcability of many clauses in those licenses has yet to be tested
in court. But Microsoft seems to consider that an acceptable risk.
> In my opinion, the GPL is intended to build a strong software community at
> the expense of a strong commercial software business model. That's why Linus
> Torvalds said last week that "Linux is never really going to be a rich sell."
Corollary: commercial licenses are intended to build a strong commercial
software business model at the expense of a strong software community.
A strong software community is necessary for significant innovation. It is
necessary to build truly great software.
The GPL is intended to build a strong software community. Period. If this must
happen at the expense of a strong business model, then so be it, but that is
not part of the design. While the development model for Free Software is well
established, the business model is very new, and nobody's really sure how to
make it work yet. If it does work, then great. If not, then there are plenty of
other ways to make a successful business.
> This isn't to say that some companies won't find a business plan that can
> make money releasing products under the GPL. We have yet to see such
> companies emerge, but perhaps some will.
What a kind concession on the part of Mr. Mundie.
> Recent history tells us, however, that finding a business model that works is
> difficult. According to ZDNet News, "Ransom Love, CEO of Caldera
> Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL
> doesn't make much business sense."
That may or may not be true. Time will tell.
> What is at issue with the GPL? In a nutshell, it debases the currency of the
> ideas and labor that transform great ideas into great products.
"...the currency of the ideas and labor..." I must admit that after several
rereadings, I still have no idea what that is supposed to mean. It certainly
sounds very grave, but really is quite ambiguous. Does this noun phrase refer
to actual monetary currency related to ideas and labor? Perhaps it treats ideas
and labor metaphorically as currency which is then mixed with another metaphor
of transformation? Who knows?
What is certain, is that the GPL requires freer exchange of those exceptionally
important and wonderful transformative ideas and labor. That is the core of the
GPL, and it accomplishes this goal better than any other license.
> Alfred North Whitehead, the renowned British philosopher, logician and
> mathematician, observed: "It is a great mistake to think that the bare
> scientific idea is the required invention, so that it has only to be picked
> up and used. An intense period of imaginative design lies between. One
> element in the new method is just the discovery of how to set about bridging
> the gap between the scientific ideas and the ultimate product. It is a
> process of disciplined attack upon one difficulty after another."
>
> In other words, a critical flow of information and experimental data follows
> every major scientific discovery and results in the verification, refutation
> or refinement of the new idea or theory. To facilitate this process, neither
> copyright nor patent protections are available for abstract ideas or
> theories. This is as it should be.
This is perfectly agreeable as far as it goes. However it is important to be
perfectly clear when determining exactly what constitutes an abstract idea or
theory. Algorithms fall squarely into this domain. Software patents are granted
for specific implementations of algorithms, but have been interpreted to cover
any implementation of the same algorithm. So while patents themselves are not
available, patent *protections* effectively are! This is a serious problem.
> Legendary inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry
> Ford (who held thousands of patents between them) succeeded precisely because
> they were able to use funding, management and market insight to deliver their
> innovations as unique, practical and useful products. Arguably, the
> creativity and inventiveness needed to deliver their products was comparable
> to that needed for the underlying theory or discovery that made their
> business possible in the first place.
Of course, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford actually
invented things. Computer Science (along with the important parts of the
software industry) is really just a subdomain of mathematics. The important
discoveries (they are not inventions) in software cannot be owned by anyone. It
is one of the greatest swindles of this century that Microsoft has somehow
managed to fool all of its customers into paying money for a piece of math.
> When comparing the commercial software model to the open-source software
> model, look carefully at the business plans and licensing structures that
> form their foundations. This comparison leads to the conclusion that the
> commercial software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real economic
> growth.
More importantly, a careful comparison leads to the conclusion that the Free
Software model alone has the capacity for sustaining real technological growth.
A closed source model actively inhibits innovation and general progress by
preventing the free exchange of ideas and development work among the worlds
developers.
> Intellectual capital has always been, and will remain, the core asset of the
> software industry, and of almost every other industry. Preserving that
> capital--and investing in its constant renewal--benefits everyone.
Of course. And the best way to preserve and invest in that capital is to ensure
that it recieves the widest possible dissemination.
> Craig Mundie is a senior vice president at Microsoft Corporation.
Keith Rarick writes code.
Happens to me too, but I think it's a packaging problem. rpm seems to work fine on other stuff. Here is the list of gnome packages that give me this error:
ee-0.3.8-1.i386.rpm
imlib-1.9.4-1.i386.rpm
gnumeric-0.15-1.i386.rpm
libgtop-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
gtk+-devel-1.2.0-1.i386.rpm
mc-4.5.23-1.i386.rpm
gtk-engines-0.5-1.i386.rpm
pygnome-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm
gtop-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
pygtk-0.5.11-1.i386.rpm
guile-1.3-2.i386.rpm
xscreensaver-3.07-1.i386.rpm
guile-devel-1.3-2.i386.rpm
Anyone have a definitive answer? Is this a config issue or a packaging issue? Will these packages be re-released?
cheers,
keith