They may have left beta, but I'm not sure they've entered the 21st century. Blogger forbids the <cite> tag in reader comments. Is there some nefarious use of citations of which I'm unaware? I know this is just a small thing, but to me it speaks volumes. (I suspect <cite> isn't alone, but I don't use Blogger much so it's the only one I've run into.)
paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.
If apples are more reliable or efficient than the alternatives then in the long term it will increase your ability to satisfy other wants and needs. . . . you are arguing *against* Linux because of the initial higher cost due to retraining. Once past the retraining the cost savings come in, not before.
That apples may be more efficient has no impact on the high costs of monopoly. You're welcome to propose that a monopoly product does exist, and that it's "more reliable and efficient"; that only reinforces the need for alternatives.
As for retraining, there is an added cost for switching, as you point out, but: a) this doesn't apply to everyone, b) users of the monopoly product need to spend money on new software and training during upgrade cycles (the scenario we're envisioning, because if they're not upgrading they're not shopping), and c) those who upgrade within to a new version of the dominant product can still benefit from lower prices and/or better software (IE 7 anyone?) if other products are able to compete with the monopoly.
If in some far-fetched ultra-paranoid future a common browser began to censor communications then a need would arise and the market would provide a solution. As Firefox did when the market developed a need for a more secure browser.
Ta-da! My point exactly. MS stopped improving IE when they achieved a monopoly (80-odd percent of the market). Free software provided a choice. That choice underwrote browser improvements for everyone - including those now using IE 7. If Firefox had not done it, who would have? Would a proprietary browser with a price tag on it have been able to force fixes in IE? The success of free software is the reason that my scenario is so "far-fetched".
Incidentally, in my "far-fetched ultra-paranoid future" the browser doesn't censor you, the web hosting service does - like Blogger in China, but with different priorities. It is limited because it's built on a proprietary platform with features to reject spam, piracy, and obscene material. Small hosting outfits are rare because of the high costs of participating (software costs, costs to interoperate with the security features, and so on). In order to interconnect fully, their software needs to be certified and include proprietary patented mechanisms. There are a few alternatives on the fringes, but their services are slower and less secure; they constitute more of a shadow Internet than part of the main one. This suits the big boys just fine, because it limits competition and keeps government and Hollywood off their backs (in fact, many of them own or are owned by entertainment companies).
release your music as a DRM-free MP3 and it won't be subject to such restrictions
Uh, Zune? I didn't name it because I don't want to make this about Microsoft. All my examples are hypothetical, but they are all exaggerated variations on technologies we have today. I am arguing they cannot happen today, in no small part because we have free alternatives.
*Any* web or email client facilitates free speech. Whether it is proprietary or open source is irrelevant.
Um... no. There is extensive research into how social factors influence the development of technology. Proprietary software is subject to certain pressures and is heavily influenced by certain groups; free software is subject to different pressures and influenced by different groups. The governance structures of companies and FOSS projects differ. And the results differ too. Who innovates and who immitates more (FOSS may not win this one)? Who keeps their protocols and file formats secret, and who open? How many non-proprietary DRM technologies are in use? Who puts the most effort into "
My understanding was that it was basically a per-machine thing - once it was activated for a particular computer (a somewhat ambiguous), it was forever tied to that particular box. For most people, this doesn't matter: Windows comes with their computer. And MS allowed some flexibility: you could take it with you once; after that you needed a new copy. If there was a problem upgrading hardware (not getting a whole new machine), you could phone them to get it fixed. I guess if I wasn't a terrible liar I could use that to keep moving it to new machines.
Maybe what I decribe has changed; maybe I'm misremembering. Regardless, I walked away. Frankly, I don't think it would have made any difference. Paying MS hundreds of dollars, then asking their permission to use my own computer was just too much. The complexity of figuring out what I can and can't do - even of trying to explain it here - is already way out of hand.
Incidentally, I have some good friends at Microsoft. (Like most of the Microsoft employees I've met, they're wonderful people who don't share my perspective.) I could get Windows for tens of dollars instead of hundreds. I actually did buy a copy of XP that way, but I couldn't stomach installing it. I may have to do that one of these days just so I can test my web pages with IE 7.
I was talking about FOSS in general, but I can focus in on operating systems. Trying to be a better Windows than Windows is a losing game, on which has been lost over and over (OS/2, GeoWorks, etc.). To do that, Linux would probably have to be ten times better. To succeed, Linux needs to redefine the game - and this is what it has been doing.
When Gutenberg produced the first printing press, he felt he needed to compete with handwritten manuscripts. He put a lot of effort into producing multiple variations of each letter, producing full justification, placing dashes in the margins, and so on. The first Gutenberg Bibles are still famous for their beauty. But even then they couldn't compare to an illuminated manuscript. And what happened as print became widespread? The complex fonts, justification, and so on when out the window. Printing took over the world because it allowed for cheap copies.
Linux costs nothing. It runs on many architectures. It is compact. It is flexible and modifiable. It allows organizations to take control of their own future. It lacks the transaction costs of proprietary software (license monitoring, for example). It is based on an incredibly effective model of development and governance. These aren't just variations on what Windows or OS X are doing; they're entirely different approaches. And in many spaces they're winning: embedded devices, servers, dedicated systems. These are areas of growth. Meanwhile, it's slowly catching up on the desktop; in contrast, improvements in Windows have slowed as it appears to be reaching the limit of its development model. Remember when the Mozilla decision to toss the code and start over was a joke? It took a while, but they delivered.
For many people and organizations, Linux is a superior choice right now. Some chose it for the desktop. Not me - I'm running OS X, though I believe the day will come when I switch. As it will come for many others. For Linux, costs will only go down as quality goes up. For Windows, the opposite seems to be true. In the long term, the trends and the benefits of shared development are too overwhelming. Free software will dominate most well-understood domains - including the desktop.
they don't seem to off to a very good start, in my opinion
Seeing some of their arguments presented by other posters, I fear you may be right. Which would be a real pity, because I support the intent if not the exceution.
the only people still stuck on Windows 2000 are paranoid weirdos afraid of Microsoft activation and are probably stealing their licenses anyway
I was an MSDN Universal subscriber and Windows developer when XP came out, so I had 10 legit XP licenses. But I had no interest in being an early adopter setting a precedent for activation. Nor, now that they don't allow people to take their copy of the OS with them when they upgrade the machine, did I want to further lock myself into system whose costs increase while my freedoms decrease. I suppose I could have planned on piracy, but I have the odd conviction (one apparently not shared by a whole lot of companies) that it's unethical to make money by breaking the rules.
I stayed with Win2k, moved my data away from Office and into open formats (mbox, Open Office), turned my attention towards FOSS development, and finally switched to Mac. Incidentally, the Mac is very pretty, but I would have been fine with W2K's "hideous" look. Apple's no saint; someday I expect I will similarly have to make the shift to Linux.
Paranoid? No. I just want control of my computer and my data, and I don't want my money to encourage schemes like DRM which erode my freedom and that of others.
Your apple shop is a monopoly, and we know monopolies reduce freedom. If freedom is the ability to satisfy wants, e.g. by choosing what to buy (a very narrow definition of freedom, but it's one you apply here) - then paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.
You say, "Don't complain unless you can tell me how to fix the thing." We know one way to fix the thing: introduce choice. That's what free software is doing. That's why we need to support it and make it better, not simply say, "it doesn't do X today, so I don't even want to know." For some people, it's a practical choice. That's why Microsoft is afraid of free software.
But there's a wider issue here, and it's the reason I really care. Speech is freedom, but it isn't just a matter of choice: it's generative. It involves creating something original. In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software. If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech.
I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows. I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays. I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified. I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set. I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key. I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene.
This isn't the world we live in. Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software. But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough? When DVRs are limiting the ability to share content; when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer, not the people who buy their software; when Microsoft and Apple are starting to lock down what their systems can do, I don't think that they are. Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own. That's what free software is about. I'm thrilled and proud of everyone who puts in the effort to make my freedom that much greater. You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do.
I can understand prefectly why you say you don't like other people telling you what's most important to you. But your argument seems incomplete to me. You're making a real trade-off here (as am I - I'm also running OS X) and I think it's important for that to be clear, so I'm going to be a bit of a pain in the neck.
You disagree that the most important aspect of owning and using a computer is control over what it does. You say the most important aspect is that it does what you want. It seems to me you're drawing very fine distinctions here, and I want to make sure I understand. So between a computer that you do not control - but that happens to do what you want - and one that you do control, but that isn't capable of everything you want, you prefer the former?
If you don't control it, someone else does. That means that even if your wants don't change, it might not continue to meet them. You seem to be willing to (potentially) sacrifice future wants for current ones. This is fine, but I'm sure you can understand why many people would feel differently - and why people who don't know there's a choice to make might appreciate finding out.
I want to pick on one last thing you say. You talk about free software not meeting your "needs". Of course freedom to satisfy these is much more serious. I wouldn't want to give up control over that, though if free software doesn't do the job I guess you don't have a choice. Or possibly they're really not needs: in a subsequent reply you write, "I'm not forced to use my computer". The point being, if they're not needs, then you really do have a choice to make. You could use free software.
The wonderful reality, of course, is that if proprietary software becomes too oppressive - as I felt Windows was when they introduced Activation - we have a choice. Long before I made the jump ship, I made sure my data was open (I used Thunderbird and OpenOffice), so that when the day came, I could make the switch. That time will likely come again. My freedom to control my computer in the future depends on free software today - even though I'm not using it.
I am sympathetic to the FSF's objectives here, but judging by the reaction here on Slashdot this isn't the way to go about it. It's pretty clear what the benefits of a well-funded PR machine are. If they'd done a couple of focus groups or surveys, this might have been shut down pretty quickly, or modified so it didn't irritate people so much. But I doubt they can afford to do that.
On the other hand, maybe the Slashdot crowd is a special case. We have advocates of free software, for whom software freedom is a political issue. We also have technical pragmatists who argue that software should be chosen solely on its technical merit and politics has no place (which is, of course, a political position). We see this campaign in political terms. Joe consumer, on the other hand, with no attachment one way or the other, may simple see this as new and potentially useful information.
Regardless, it seems to me that alienating your natural supporters is not a good approach unless there's the potential for significant gains. I guess have to see what happens.
Wouldn't this campaign fall under the definition of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt??!!
I think that depends on whether or not the claims the FSF is making are true. FUD is caused by the unknown. So if the arguments presented by the FSF are unsubstantiated or nebulous, then I would agree with you.
On the other hand, if they present a clear description of what Vista does and does not do, it seems to me they are only providing people with the information they need to make an informed choice. Given the benefits of a new upgrade cycle to Microsoft and much of the computer industry, negative information is hardly likely to be broadcast widely.
I think you're misunderstanding what he's saying about software as the "primary underlying commodity" of the 21st century. He's not suggesting that the third world should be developing software. Rather, he's saying that software is now an input to economic development in general. If a poor country is producing textiles, for example, they will need software in order to manage orders, inventory, designs, and so on.
The parallel with steel in the 20th century is that you need steel to make cars. If you don't have steel, you can't make cars - and car-making was one of the distinguishing activities of developed countries. So before you make cars, you need to make steel. If steel were free, the situation would be different: a steel industry would not be a precondition to development. So free software makes development possible where it wasn't before.
Now my example with textiles ignores another piece of the argument. Moglen is concerned with production being performed by communities, and those communities are, to a significant extent, built around software. So the key role of software is not streamlining 20th century industrial processes (such as just-in-time delivery), but in enabling new ones. That textile industry might not be industrial. Rather, it might be based around large numbers of people working from their homes making custom hand-made cloth. However, while a single individual could not integrate into the global economy, these producers are networked: they share and build on each others' designs, and cooperate to sell their products on a global scale (negotiating collectively with IKEA perhaps). The ability to work together like this depends on the network, which is (at least partly) held together by software.
Hence the speech at a Plone conference. The poor countries aren't so much developing Plone, they're using it to leverage whatever comparative advantage they have.
I do sympathize with your skepticism, however. Moglen is making extraordinary claims with little or no evidence. There is real doubt about the concept of a knowledge or information economy. Knowledge work is very hard to define, encompassing jobs as diverse as journalists, stockbrokers, and surgeons[1] who don't seem to have a lot in common. Much of the economic shift in the rich countries has been towards the service sector, but again there is ambiguity: truck drivers, for example, are considered as service providers, but that service is so tightly integrated with the production of physical goods that it doesn't seem to make sense to separate it. A further problem is that the economic benefit of knowledge work can be very hard to measure. This is a real problem in a capitalist society, because business people and investors need to be able to predict a return on investment[2]. So, we shall see just how significant community production is, and whether software really does under-gird 21st century economies. I think Moglen's right, as it happens, but there are good reasons for doubt.
[1] This list from F. Webster in Theories of the Information Society.
[2] See Nicholas Garnham, "'Information Society' as Theory or Ideology", in Manuel Castells, edited by Webster and Dimitriou.
This (from my transcription) is what he means by social justice:
There is no moral justification for charging more for bread that costs nothing than the starving can pay.
His vision has no government or other enforcer. It is realized due to a restructuring of economic production around products based on software which is free. Here is how he describes past efforts to achieve social justice:
the greatest problem of human inequality is the extraordinary difficulty in prising wealth away from the rich to give it to the poor, without employing levels of coercion or violence which are themselves utterly corrosive to social progress. . . . We cannot make meaningful redistribution fast enough to maintain momentum politically without applying levels of coercion or violence which will destroy what we are attempting.
An information economy based on free software, however, can be different:
We find ourselves now in a very different place. . . . It's a place where the primary infrastructure is produced by sharing. The primary technology of production is unowned. . . . We have begun proving the fabric of a twenty-first century society which is egalitarian in its nature, and which is structured to produce for the common benefit more effectively than it can produced for private exclusive proprietary benefit. . . . a world in which the resources of the wealthy came to us, not because we coerced them, not because we demanded, not because we taxed, but because we shared. Even with them, sharing worked better than suing or coercing.
Wow, that's a whopper. Because according to Eben Moglen:
That OLPC is a hand-powered thick-net router. When you close the lid as a kid and put it in the shelf at night, the main CPU shuts down - but the 80211 gear stays running all night long on the last few pulls of the string. And it routes packets all night long and it keeps the mesh. The village is a mesh when the kids have green or orange or purple boxes. And all you need's a downspout somewhere, and the village is on the Net.
(Go to 41:54 in the video. Downloadable version also available.)
junk food is at least as expensive, if not more, than the "decent stuff". Don't confuse making poor choices with a lack of choice or inability to pay. Big Mac "value" meal: $5.19 A chicken breast and a can of vegetables, and a pint of milk: $3.50 tops.
I agree - I am puzzled every time I see an article claiming junk food is cheaper, because that's just not so.
However, your chicken breast and vegetables need to be cooked. Who's going to cook them? If you're a single parent, with multiple part-time jobs and several kids, you may not have the time or the energy. Even middle-class folks with more choices (daycare, nannies, cooks, spouses, quality prepared foods) often buy junk food in similar circumstances.
Also, the knowledge may not be there. Sure junk food is bad, but isn't salad good for you? (McDonald's had a sald whose dressing had 18g of fat.) Cheerios have oats in them - that's just as good as real oats, right? It says there are only 5g of fat (in a 30g serving - it's a 180g bag). What's the difference between trans fat and saturated fat - they're both fat, right? These drinks have real juice in them!
Choices are not equivalent when the factors that go into them - such as education and resources (time, cooking equipment as another response points out) are not the same.
If you want true separation, use XML for the data, and XSLT to transform it into HTML.
That's what I used to do too, until I read Zeldman. I loved it. One of the big disadvantages, however, is that you lose the semantics of HTML (such as they are). Those semantics are valuable - for search engines (clean HTML can make a big difference) and for other applications. There aren't a lot of data formats as well-understood and universal as HTML; that's worth taking advantage of. Remember, your HTML is likely to outlast whatever data source you're pulling your content from.
These days I depend on those semantics. I've been doing DOM work with Javascript to add dynamic annotation with margin notes and highlighting to web pages. I need to know the content model so I can determine where I can insert tags to add highlighting (<em> can go in <p> but not in <style>, for example). I locate highlights by counting words, so I need to know where words break. Block-level elements break words, while inline elements don't (so in your example you need a minimum of div, a, and span). I also collect other metadata, like the title and author of the annotated content, and so on. I do that by looking for elements in the document tagged with specific microformat classes.
What are the benefits? Well, if you look at my code, the output of my Javascript or my Atom feed, the information is all meaningful in a standard way. This can reduce or simplify glue code if you need to work with my data - and I think the universal experience with glue code is that although it seems simple and brainless, it gets heavier and heavier until it places serious limits on application complexity. Over time, I hope this kind of standardization can slowly lead to apps and libraries being easier to plug together. The standardization of HTML, and the shared meaning of some of its elements has already proved a huge win on the Web, messy, inconsistent, and broken as it is.
But I'm a geek of simple pleasures. Right now, I'm just thrilled that my transport format I picked - Atom (with embedded HTML) - is machine readable and shows up with sensible formatting in a generic feed reader. (I couldn't afford to use HTML if were a layout language, because then changing the look would break my machine parsing.) It's not rocket science - but that's kind of the point.
You've got me there. I don't see why it has to be so painful. I fixed a bug the other day, and honestly I don't know why what I did solved the problem: it looks to me like it should cause it. What I was doing before appears reasonable and correct. Firefox and Safari agree that I'm wrong (IE doesn't care either way), and I don't want to read half the spec to figure out why. Sometimes I drop down to table-based layouts because the practical solution means the fast solution, not the clean solution.
I don't understand why Microsoft and the W3C diverge on box models, or why (IMHO) the W3C picked such a bad one. (Why should an element with padding which appears it should be 100% the width of the page overlap on the right, creating a scroll bar you can never get rid of? There's no way of achieving the desired effect (100% width with a margin) without creating dummy block elements. Idiotic. CSS3 will fix it... someday, but the complexity will go through the roof.) I'm not convinced the best language for the problem is one where any given presentation effect could - in theory - come from any line of CSS code. Debugging CSS can be like trying to figure out the source of a GOTO.
Maybe this is just a really hard problem. Maybe it's the efficiency characteristics built into the design. Or maybe CSS is just outgrowing itself. Often I hate it, though I appreciate the need. And, like you, I find when it works it's fantastic.
"banner", "navigation bar", "links", "headings", and "columns" are some of the most common categories of tabular data used on the web. Just because the only information you, personally, want to display happen to be multiplication tables, doesn't mean you're the only one allowed to use a bunch of rectangles to display your content.
Let's hold our horses and calm down a bit. You are confusing data with presentation. HTML is for content description, CSS is for presentation. Use the right tool for the job, and you can get the effect you want - without using HTML tables. And you will gain accessibility, maintainability, and so on.
The banners, nav bars, headings etc. that you mention are not tabular data. They do not necessarily have rows and columns. A navigation bar, for example, is typically one-dimensional, not two: it's a list of links - hence current best practice is to represent it in HTML as a list (<ul> or <ol>). Because these things are not tabular data, they should not be represented in tables.
Again, HTML is not a layout language. HTML tables are more like database tables than a grid system; like database tables, the relationship between rows and columns exists regardless of what they look like. The browser chooses how to display that information - typically in a tabular format, by applying CSS. That's right, CSS that specifies the layout, not HTML. You can use <div>s instead of <table>, <tr> and <td> tags and still display your information in a tabular format by applying the correct CSS table properties. These properties are about presentation, they say nothing about the nature of the data.
In your case, the banner should probably be something like <div class="banner">, the headings should be <h2>, <h3> etc. (that's why they're called heading tags), and the columns should probably be <div>s, located correctly with CSS (there are some very clever ways of doing this involving negative margins and the like (see A List Apart), none of which force you to misrepresent your data as tables - though in a few cases, using a table for columns is the most practical solution).
No one is telling you what your web pages should look like. They are, however, recommending the most effective, flexible, accessible, and maintainable ways of getting that look using the tools available. Using tables for layout is seldom any of those things.
There's a strong correlation between people who adhere to the W3C's specifications and people who separate content from presentation, but that doesn't mean that they are the same thing.
Good point. I simplified for clarity; maybe I shouldn't have. In the article I linked to, Zeldman talks about adhering to the spirit of the standards, not merely the letter. As your example shows, the letter sometimes violates the spirit.
For example, if the floating divs are acting different in each browser, use a table.
Standards-based design is not just about browser compatibility. It's also about separating style from content. Tables are for tabular data, not graphic design. What you describe is the HTML equivalent of spaghetti code, and it's one of the main targets of Zeldman and other of proponents of standards-based design.
HTML (unlike, say, PDF) is not a layout language. Tags are meant to describe the content they enclose, not specify how it is to be displayed. It is the job of CSS to present that content in different contexts. Violating that separation, for example using tables for layout, makes maintenance difficult because content and style cannot be modified independently. It denies users the ability to re-style your content (e.g. with custom stylesheets). It creates barriers to accessibility for those who do not interact with computers visually (e.g. those with disabilities), or who use other devices to access the web. It misrepresents the content of web pages to machine analysis - search engines, for example, use tags to determine the role and importance of text on a page.
Of course, the reality of the HTML and CSS standards and their support in popular (*cough*) browsers is somewhat different. It is sometimes necessary or practical to misuse HTML as you describe. But it should not be done without an understanding of the standards and the consequences of ignoring them. Books like Zeldman's give designers and developers the knowledge and tools they need to use HTML and CSS correctly where possible, and to minimize abuse otherwise.
For some reason, programmers seem to be trailing designers when it comes to understanding how to use HTML and CSS correctly. They figure if it looks right, it must be right. That was certainly my attitude. Perhaps it's because we don't take designers or HTML seriously ("it's not Turing complete!"). I don't know. But do read Zeldman or Eric Meyer or someone like them, either in hardcopy or online. Knowing how do this stuff right made me a much better web programmer.
Excellent point. I shouldn't have oversimplified. Reconsidering, I disagree with me too.
The nugget of truth in my oversimplification is that a narrow focus on the competition, rather than one's own strengths and convictions, would place FOSS in the inferior position of reacting instead of acting. It also limits ambition: how important is owning the desktop in the age of network?
I am hoping that the FOSS does "win" - because I care about free as in freedom, and I think FOSS (and open knowledge in general) lays the groundwork for achieving that[1]. It's a bulwark against your DRM doomsday scenario. So in the wider picture, freedom is more important than building good software. At one level we can't lose, and it's heartening and helps us play to our strengths if we keep that in mind. At another, however, we can certainly fail to win. My previous statement was a misrepresentation, because I personally care about the not winning more than I do about not losing.
[1] See Eben Moglen's speech at the Plone conference for a brilliant take on FOSS, history, and freedom: view or download.
Excellent point. I often have seen the same said of open source. It's not about beating Microsoft. As long as the software we make is useful to us, we can't lose.
You are making a whole lot of assumptions here. I only claimed that morality and economics are practically inseperable. I gave an example of an economic value judgement. I did not say what my opinion of that judgment is, or whether I even have one.
You can disagree with the logic of my argument or maybe convince me it's wrong. The fact that you take it personally - even more that you jump to political conclusions based on my even making it in the first place only shows that for you anyway economics and morality are inseperable.
Where does it say that Pareto optimality is equitable?
Nowhere. It's pretty clear it's not. Although it can reduce inequality, up to a point: it tries to give as much as possible to everyone without taking anything away. The point is that choosing to apply Pareto optimality is a value judgment.
Are you saying I should feel bad that the United States and the G7 have a bigger piece of the pie than let's say 80 or 90% of the planet? Whatever.
I didn't say that, and have no interest in arguing it here one way or the other. Based on the post I replied to (in which you talked about "your flag" and "your planes"), I didn't even think you were American. I'm not, so I don't think it's helpful for me to run around telling Americans what they should or shouldn't feel. Any response to that question, however - including yours - is a moral one.
you are basically advocating communism of sorts, or some sort of equal distribution of wealth
I didn't advocate anything. I only stated that economic choices have moral implications. The choice to pursue such a redistribution is a moral one. The choice to pursue a different outcome is also a moral one. Why are you so eager to deny the existence of these choices? Why are you so interested in lumping my argument in with socialism or communism?
Economics is inseperable from morality. Economic models try to maximize certain values or outcomes; the choice of the outcome to maximize is a moral one. You can argue that those choices are not part of economics, but then economics is an abstraction divorced from reality. What is your economics for? As soon as you apply economics, you must make value judgments.
I'll give you an example. Pareto optimality maximizes the well-being of individuals without reducing the well-being of any. How then is well-being defined? Many economists may equate it to individual preferences. But that's a value judgment. If my preference is to eat unhealthily, is doing so contributing to my well-being? Furthermore, Pareto optimality is inherently conservative (as opposed to radical) in that it does not overturn existing inequalities. That is a value judgment implied by applications of Pareto optimality. To the extent that the field of economics focuses on Pareto optimality, it is choosing to pursue a particular set of values.
As for the fluidity of morality, that itself is a judgment. Many - such as those of religious conviction - would disagree. Just as others would take a step beyond your claim that preachers and national leaders make people burn flags and fly planes into buildings and ask what makes those preachers and leaders. I won't make any claims in that debate, only say that the answers aren't so simple and clean-cut any more than is the distinction between morality and economics.
I'm just uncomfortable with society appropriating my property when "it" feels I've had it long enough.
It seems to me the idea (piece of music, recording, whatever) is not and cannot be property (at least not in the sense that physical objects or land can be property). The copyright itself - i.e., the limited-time monopoly created and enforced by the government - is the property. Let me emphasize that: the property here is created by the government. As an encouragement for artists and others to produce ideas, society rewards them by creating a kind of property and granting it to them. Society moreover provides resources for the enforcement of that property right. But the right is time limited: after a certain period, society no longer recognizes or enforces the right it previously granted.
Think of it like this. You write a song. You take that song to the government, and they give you a document stating that you have an exclusive right to copy and perform that song for the next N years. The song may not be property, but the document certainly is: its ownership is enforced by the law, you can sell it, and so forth. When those N years are up, you still have the document, but the rights in conferred have expired. Did anyone take anything away from you? On the contrary, they gave you something. Oh, and incidentally, you still have the song you wrote.
These days there's no document proving your rights; the grant is automatic. I don't know if there ever was such a document, although filing used to be required. The point is, copyright is a social construct, and the right is property. Ideas, on the other hand, are not.
Slashdot Mirror
They may have left beta, but I'm not sure they've entered the 21st century. Blogger forbids the <cite> tag in reader comments. Is there some nefarious use of citations of which I'm unaware? I know this is just a small thing, but to me it speaks volumes. (I suspect <cite> isn't alone, but I don't use Blogger much so it's the only one I've run into.)
That apples may be more efficient has no impact on the high costs of monopoly. You're welcome to propose that a monopoly product does exist, and that it's "more reliable and efficient"; that only reinforces the need for alternatives.
As for retraining, there is an added cost for switching, as you point out, but: a) this doesn't apply to everyone, b) users of the monopoly product need to spend money on new software and training during upgrade cycles (the scenario we're envisioning, because if they're not upgrading they're not shopping), and c) those who upgrade within to a new version of the dominant product can still benefit from lower prices and/or better software (IE 7 anyone?) if other products are able to compete with the monopoly.
Ta-da! My point exactly. MS stopped improving IE when they achieved a monopoly (80-odd percent of the market). Free software provided a choice. That choice underwrote browser improvements for everyone - including those now using IE 7. If Firefox had not done it, who would have? Would a proprietary browser with a price tag on it have been able to force fixes in IE? The success of free software is the reason that my scenario is so "far-fetched".
Incidentally, in my "far-fetched ultra-paranoid future" the browser doesn't censor you, the web hosting service does - like Blogger in China, but with different priorities. It is limited because it's built on a proprietary platform with features to reject spam, piracy, and obscene material. Small hosting outfits are rare because of the high costs of participating (software costs, costs to interoperate with the security features, and so on). In order to interconnect fully, their software needs to be certified and include proprietary patented mechanisms. There are a few alternatives on the fringes, but their services are slower and less secure; they constitute more of a shadow Internet than part of the main one. This suits the big boys just fine, because it limits competition and keeps government and Hollywood off their backs (in fact, many of them own or are owned by entertainment companies).
Uh, Zune? I didn't name it because I don't want to make this about Microsoft. All my examples are hypothetical, but they are all exaggerated variations on technologies we have today. I am arguing they cannot happen today, in no small part because we have free alternatives.
Um... no. There is extensive research into how social factors influence the development of technology. Proprietary software is subject to certain pressures and is heavily influenced by certain groups; free software is subject to different pressures and influenced by different groups. The governance structures of companies and FOSS projects differ. And the results differ too. Who innovates and who immitates more (FOSS may not win this one)? Who keeps their protocols and file formats secret, and who open? How many non-proprietary DRM technologies are in use? Who puts the most effort into "
My understanding was that it was basically a per-machine thing - once it was activated for a particular computer (a somewhat ambiguous), it was forever tied to that particular box. For most people, this doesn't matter: Windows comes with their computer. And MS allowed some flexibility: you could take it with you once; after that you needed a new copy. If there was a problem upgrading hardware (not getting a whole new machine), you could phone them to get it fixed. I guess if I wasn't a terrible liar I could use that to keep moving it to new machines.
Maybe what I decribe has changed; maybe I'm misremembering. Regardless, I walked away. Frankly, I don't think it would have made any difference. Paying MS hundreds of dollars, then asking their permission to use my own computer was just too much. The complexity of figuring out what I can and can't do - even of trying to explain it here - is already way out of hand.
Incidentally, I have some good friends at Microsoft. (Like most of the Microsoft employees I've met, they're wonderful people who don't share my perspective.) I could get Windows for tens of dollars instead of hundreds. I actually did buy a copy of XP that way, but I couldn't stomach installing it. I may have to do that one of these days just so I can test my web pages with IE 7.
I was talking about FOSS in general, but I can focus in on operating systems. Trying to be a better Windows than Windows is a losing game, on which has been lost over and over (OS/2, GeoWorks, etc.). To do that, Linux would probably have to be ten times better. To succeed, Linux needs to redefine the game - and this is what it has been doing.
When Gutenberg produced the first printing press, he felt he needed to compete with handwritten manuscripts. He put a lot of effort into producing multiple variations of each letter, producing full justification, placing dashes in the margins, and so on. The first Gutenberg Bibles are still famous for their beauty. But even then they couldn't compare to an illuminated manuscript. And what happened as print became widespread? The complex fonts, justification, and so on when out the window. Printing took over the world because it allowed for cheap copies.
Linux costs nothing. It runs on many architectures. It is compact. It is flexible and modifiable. It allows organizations to take control of their own future. It lacks the transaction costs of proprietary software (license monitoring, for example). It is based on an incredibly effective model of development and governance. These aren't just variations on what Windows or OS X are doing; they're entirely different approaches. And in many spaces they're winning: embedded devices, servers, dedicated systems. These are areas of growth. Meanwhile, it's slowly catching up on the desktop; in contrast, improvements in Windows have slowed as it appears to be reaching the limit of its development model. Remember when the Mozilla decision to toss the code and start over was a joke? It took a while, but they delivered.
For many people and organizations, Linux is a superior choice right now. Some chose it for the desktop. Not me - I'm running OS X, though I believe the day will come when I switch. As it will come for many others. For Linux, costs will only go down as quality goes up. For Windows, the opposite seems to be true. In the long term, the trends and the benefits of shared development are too overwhelming. Free software will dominate most well-understood domains - including the desktop.
Seeing some of their arguments presented by other posters, I fear you may be right. Which would be a real pity, because I support the intent if not the exceution.
I was an MSDN Universal subscriber and Windows developer when XP came out, so I had 10 legit XP licenses. But I had no interest in being an early adopter setting a precedent for activation. Nor, now that they don't allow people to take their copy of the OS with them when they upgrade the machine, did I want to further lock myself into system whose costs increase while my freedoms decrease. I suppose I could have planned on piracy, but I have the odd conviction (one apparently not shared by a whole lot of companies) that it's unethical to make money by breaking the rules.
I stayed with Win2k, moved my data away from Office and into open formats (mbox, Open Office), turned my attention towards FOSS development, and finally switched to Mac. Incidentally, the Mac is very pretty, but I would have been fine with W2K's "hideous" look. Apple's no saint; someday I expect I will similarly have to make the shift to Linux.
Paranoid? No. I just want control of my computer and my data, and I don't want my money to encourage schemes like DRM which erode my freedom and that of others.
Your apple shop is a monopoly, and we know monopolies reduce freedom. If freedom is the ability to satisfy wants, e.g. by choosing what to buy (a very narrow definition of freedom, but it's one you apply here) - then paying more for apples reduces your freedom to satisfy other wants.
You say, "Don't complain unless you can tell me how to fix the thing." We know one way to fix the thing: introduce choice. That's what free software is doing. That's why we need to support it and make it better, not simply say, "it doesn't do X today, so I don't even want to know." For some people, it's a practical choice. That's why Microsoft is afraid of free software.
But there's a wider issue here, and it's the reason I really care. Speech is freedom, but it isn't just a matter of choice: it's generative. It involves creating something original. In a world where computers have become central to communication, free speech depends on software. If that software is not free, there's a real danger to speech.
I'm a brilliant musician, but nobody knows. I want to share my music - but music players delete it after three plays. I have a video of an important political gaffe - but I can't share it all because YouTube has a 10 minute limit unless I'm certified. I have vital information about voting machine flaws - but I can't distribute it because it has the no-copy bit set. I filmed my son's first steps - but not it in high-resolution because I need a special encryption key. I tried to comment on Oedipus Rex on my blog - but the software blocked it as obscene.
This isn't the world we live in. Our freedom to speak is defended by our choice of software. But are the choices offered by proprietary software enough? When DVRs are limiting the ability to share content; when technology companies act as if Hollywood is their customer, not the people who buy their software; when Microsoft and Apple are starting to lock down what their systems can do, I don't think that they are. Because it's not enough to pick from someone else's choices: we have to be able to generate our own. That's what free software is about. I'm thrilled and proud of everyone who puts in the effort to make my freedom that much greater. You may not want that freedom. But don't tell me that's not the "domain of freedom", because I sure as hell do.
I can understand prefectly why you say you don't like other people telling you what's most important to you. But your argument seems incomplete to me. You're making a real trade-off here (as am I - I'm also running OS X) and I think it's important for that to be clear, so I'm going to be a bit of a pain in the neck.
You disagree that the most important aspect of owning and using a computer is control over what it does. You say the most important aspect is that it does what you want. It seems to me you're drawing very fine distinctions here, and I want to make sure I understand. So between a computer that you do not control - but that happens to do what you want - and one that you do control, but that isn't capable of everything you want, you prefer the former?
If you don't control it, someone else does. That means that even if your wants don't change, it might not continue to meet them. You seem to be willing to (potentially) sacrifice future wants for current ones. This is fine, but I'm sure you can understand why many people would feel differently - and why people who don't know there's a choice to make might appreciate finding out.
I want to pick on one last thing you say. You talk about free software not meeting your "needs". Of course freedom to satisfy these is much more serious. I wouldn't want to give up control over that, though if free software doesn't do the job I guess you don't have a choice. Or possibly they're really not needs: in a subsequent reply you write, "I'm not forced to use my computer". The point being, if they're not needs, then you really do have a choice to make. You could use free software.
The wonderful reality, of course, is that if proprietary software becomes too oppressive - as I felt Windows was when they introduced Activation - we have a choice. Long before I made the jump ship, I made sure my data was open (I used Thunderbird and OpenOffice), so that when the day came, I could make the switch. That time will likely come again. My freedom to control my computer in the future depends on free software today - even though I'm not using it.
I am sympathetic to the FSF's objectives here, but judging by the reaction here on Slashdot this isn't the way to go about it. It's pretty clear what the benefits of a well-funded PR machine are. If they'd done a couple of focus groups or surveys, this might have been shut down pretty quickly, or modified so it didn't irritate people so much. But I doubt they can afford to do that.
On the other hand, maybe the Slashdot crowd is a special case. We have advocates of free software, for whom software freedom is a political issue. We also have technical pragmatists who argue that software should be chosen solely on its technical merit and politics has no place (which is, of course, a political position). We see this campaign in political terms. Joe consumer, on the other hand, with no attachment one way or the other, may simple see this as new and potentially useful information.
Regardless, it seems to me that alienating your natural supporters is not a good approach unless there's the potential for significant gains. I guess have to see what happens.
I think that depends on whether or not the claims the FSF is making are true. FUD is caused by the unknown. So if the arguments presented by the FSF are unsubstantiated or nebulous, then I would agree with you.
On the other hand, if they present a clear description of what Vista does and does not do, it seems to me they are only providing people with the information they need to make an informed choice. Given the benefits of a new upgrade cycle to Microsoft and much of the computer industry, negative information is hardly likely to be broadcast widely.
I think you're misunderstanding what he's saying about software as the "primary underlying commodity" of the 21st century. He's not suggesting that the third world should be developing software. Rather, he's saying that software is now an input to economic development in general. If a poor country is producing textiles, for example, they will need software in order to manage orders, inventory, designs, and so on.
The parallel with steel in the 20th century is that you need steel to make cars. If you don't have steel, you can't make cars - and car-making was one of the distinguishing activities of developed countries. So before you make cars, you need to make steel. If steel were free, the situation would be different: a steel industry would not be a precondition to development. So free software makes development possible where it wasn't before.
Now my example with textiles ignores another piece of the argument. Moglen is concerned with production being performed by communities, and those communities are, to a significant extent, built around software. So the key role of software is not streamlining 20th century industrial processes (such as just-in-time delivery), but in enabling new ones. That textile industry might not be industrial. Rather, it might be based around large numbers of people working from their homes making custom hand-made cloth. However, while a single individual could not integrate into the global economy, these producers are networked: they share and build on each others' designs, and cooperate to sell their products on a global scale (negotiating collectively with IKEA perhaps). The ability to work together like this depends on the network, which is (at least partly) held together by software.
Hence the speech at a Plone conference. The poor countries aren't so much developing Plone, they're using it to leverage whatever comparative advantage they have.
I do sympathize with your skepticism, however. Moglen is making extraordinary claims with little or no evidence. There is real doubt about the concept of a knowledge or information economy. Knowledge work is very hard to define, encompassing jobs as diverse as journalists, stockbrokers, and surgeons[1] who don't seem to have a lot in common. Much of the economic shift in the rich countries has been towards the service sector, but again there is ambiguity: truck drivers, for example, are considered as service providers, but that service is so tightly integrated with the production of physical goods that it doesn't seem to make sense to separate it. A further problem is that the economic benefit of knowledge work can be very hard to measure. This is a real problem in a capitalist society, because business people and investors need to be able to predict a return on investment[2]. So, we shall see just how significant community production is, and whether software really does under-gird 21st century economies. I think Moglen's right, as it happens, but there are good reasons for doubt.
[1] This list from F. Webster in Theories of the Information Society.
[2] See Nicholas Garnham, "'Information Society' as Theory or Ideology", in Manuel Castells, edited by Webster and Dimitriou.
If you want a non-proprietary format, I have transcribed Moglen's speech.
This (from my transcription) is what he means by social justice:
His vision has no government or other enforcer. It is realized due to a restructuring of economic production around products based on software which is free. Here is how he describes past efforts to achieve social justice:
An information economy based on free software, however, can be different:
Wow, that's a whopper. Because according to Eben Moglen:
(Go to 41:54 in the video. Downloadable version also available.)
The rest of his presentation is fantastic, BTW.
I agree - I am puzzled every time I see an article claiming junk food is cheaper, because that's just not so.
However, your chicken breast and vegetables need to be cooked. Who's going to cook them? If you're a single parent, with multiple part-time jobs and several kids, you may not have the time or the energy. Even middle-class folks with more choices (daycare, nannies, cooks, spouses, quality prepared foods) often buy junk food in similar circumstances.
Also, the knowledge may not be there. Sure junk food is bad, but isn't salad good for you? (McDonald's had a sald whose dressing had 18g of fat.) Cheerios have oats in them - that's just as good as real oats, right? It says there are only 5g of fat (in a 30g serving - it's a 180g bag). What's the difference between trans fat and saturated fat - they're both fat, right? These drinks have real juice in them!
Choices are not equivalent when the factors that go into them - such as education and resources (time, cooking equipment as another response points out) are not the same.
That's what I used to do too, until I read Zeldman. I loved it. One of the big disadvantages, however, is that you lose the semantics of HTML (such as they are). Those semantics are valuable - for search engines (clean HTML can make a big difference) and for other applications. There aren't a lot of data formats as well-understood and universal as HTML; that's worth taking advantage of. Remember, your HTML is likely to outlast whatever data source you're pulling your content from.
These days I depend on those semantics. I've been doing DOM work with Javascript to add dynamic annotation with margin notes and highlighting to web pages. I need to know the content model so I can determine where I can insert tags to add highlighting (<em> can go in <p> but not in <style>, for example). I locate highlights by counting words, so I need to know where words break. Block-level elements break words, while inline elements don't (so in your example you need a minimum of div, a, and span). I also collect other metadata, like the title and author of the annotated content, and so on. I do that by looking for elements in the document tagged with specific microformat classes.
What are the benefits? Well, if you look at my code, the output of my Javascript or my Atom feed, the information is all meaningful in a standard way. This can reduce or simplify glue code if you need to work with my data - and I think the universal experience with glue code is that although it seems simple and brainless, it gets heavier and heavier until it places serious limits on application complexity. Over time, I hope this kind of standardization can slowly lead to apps and libraries being easier to plug together. The standardization of HTML, and the shared meaning of some of its elements has already proved a huge win on the Web, messy, inconsistent, and broken as it is.
But I'm a geek of simple pleasures. Right now, I'm just thrilled that my transport format I picked - Atom (with embedded HTML) - is machine readable and shows up with sensible formatting in a generic feed reader. (I couldn't afford to use HTML if were a layout language, because then changing the look would break my machine parsing.) It's not rocket science - but that's kind of the point.
You've got me there. I don't see why it has to be so painful. I fixed a bug the other day, and honestly I don't know why what I did solved the problem: it looks to me like it should cause it. What I was doing before appears reasonable and correct. Firefox and Safari agree that I'm wrong (IE doesn't care either way), and I don't want to read half the spec to figure out why. Sometimes I drop down to table-based layouts because the practical solution means the fast solution, not the clean solution.
I don't understand why Microsoft and the W3C diverge on box models, or why (IMHO) the W3C picked such a bad one. (Why should an element with padding which appears it should be 100% the width of the page overlap on the right, creating a scroll bar you can never get rid of? There's no way of achieving the desired effect (100% width with a margin) without creating dummy block elements. Idiotic. CSS3 will fix it... someday, but the complexity will go through the roof.) I'm not convinced the best language for the problem is one where any given presentation effect could - in theory - come from any line of CSS code. Debugging CSS can be like trying to figure out the source of a GOTO.
Maybe this is just a really hard problem. Maybe it's the efficiency characteristics built into the design. Or maybe CSS is just outgrowing itself. Often I hate it, though I appreciate the need. And, like you, I find when it works it's fantastic.
Let's hold our horses and calm down a bit. You are confusing data with presentation. HTML is for content description, CSS is for presentation. Use the right tool for the job, and you can get the effect you want - without using HTML tables. And you will gain accessibility, maintainability, and so on.
The banners, nav bars, headings etc. that you mention are not tabular data. They do not necessarily have rows and columns. A navigation bar, for example, is typically one-dimensional, not two: it's a list of links - hence current best practice is to represent it in HTML as a list (<ul> or <ol>). Because these things are not tabular data, they should not be represented in tables.
Again, HTML is not a layout language. HTML tables are more like database tables than a grid system; like database tables, the relationship between rows and columns exists regardless of what they look like. The browser chooses how to display that information - typically in a tabular format, by applying CSS. That's right, CSS that specifies the layout, not HTML. You can use <div>s instead of <table>, <tr> and <td> tags and still display your information in a tabular format by applying the correct CSS table properties. These properties are about presentation, they say nothing about the nature of the data.
In your case, the banner should probably be something like <div class="banner">, the headings should be <h2>, <h3> etc. (that's why they're called heading tags), and the columns should probably be <div>s, located correctly with CSS (there are some very clever ways of doing this involving negative margins and the like (see A List Apart), none of which force you to misrepresent your data as tables - though in a few cases, using a table for columns is the most practical solution).
No one is telling you what your web pages should look like. They are, however, recommending the most effective, flexible, accessible, and maintainable ways of getting that look using the tools available. Using tables for layout is seldom any of those things.
Good point. I simplified for clarity; maybe I shouldn't have. In the article I linked to, Zeldman talks about adhering to the spirit of the standards, not merely the letter. As your example shows, the letter sometimes violates the spirit.
Standards-based design is not just about browser compatibility. It's also about separating style from content. Tables are for tabular data, not graphic design. What you describe is the HTML equivalent of spaghetti code, and it's one of the main targets of Zeldman and other of proponents of standards-based design.
HTML (unlike, say, PDF) is not a layout language. Tags are meant to describe the content they enclose, not specify how it is to be displayed. It is the job of CSS to present that content in different contexts. Violating that separation, for example using tables for layout, makes maintenance difficult because content and style cannot be modified independently. It denies users the ability to re-style your content (e.g. with custom stylesheets). It creates barriers to accessibility for those who do not interact with computers visually (e.g. those with disabilities), or who use other devices to access the web. It misrepresents the content of web pages to machine analysis - search engines, for example, use tags to determine the role and importance of text on a page.
Of course, the reality of the HTML and CSS standards and their support in popular (*cough*) browsers is somewhat different. It is sometimes necessary or practical to misuse HTML as you describe. But it should not be done without an understanding of the standards and the consequences of ignoring them. Books like Zeldman's give designers and developers the knowledge and tools they need to use HTML and CSS correctly where possible, and to minimize abuse otherwise.
For some reason, programmers seem to be trailing designers when it comes to understanding how to use HTML and CSS correctly. They figure if it looks right, it must be right. That was certainly my attitude. Perhaps it's because we don't take designers or HTML seriously ("it's not Turing complete!"). I don't know. But do read Zeldman or Eric Meyer or someone like them, either in hardcopy or online. Knowing how do this stuff right made me a much better web programmer.
Excellent point. I shouldn't have oversimplified. Reconsidering, I disagree with me too.
The nugget of truth in my oversimplification is that a narrow focus on the competition, rather than one's own strengths and convictions, would place FOSS in the inferior position of reacting instead of acting. It also limits ambition: how important is owning the desktop in the age of network?
I am hoping that the FOSS does "win" - because I care about free as in freedom, and I think FOSS (and open knowledge in general) lays the groundwork for achieving that[1]. It's a bulwark against your DRM doomsday scenario. So in the wider picture, freedom is more important than building good software. At one level we can't lose, and it's heartening and helps us play to our strengths if we keep that in mind. At another, however, we can certainly fail to win. My previous statement was a misrepresentation, because I personally care about the not winning more than I do about not losing.
[1] See Eben Moglen's speech at the Plone conference for a brilliant take on FOSS, history, and freedom: view or download.
Excellent point. I often have seen the same said of open source. It's not about beating Microsoft. As long as the software we make is useful to us, we can't lose.
You are making a whole lot of assumptions here. I only claimed that morality and economics are practically inseperable. I gave an example of an economic value judgement. I did not say what my opinion of that judgment is, or whether I even have one.
You can disagree with the logic of my argument or maybe convince me it's wrong. The fact that you take it personally - even more that you jump to political conclusions based on my even making it in the first place only shows that for you anyway economics and morality are inseperable.
Nowhere. It's pretty clear it's not. Although it can reduce inequality, up to a point: it tries to give as much as possible to everyone without taking anything away. The point is that choosing to apply Pareto optimality is a value judgment.
I didn't say that, and have no interest in arguing it here one way or the other. Based on the post I replied to (in which you talked about "your flag" and "your planes"), I didn't even think you were American. I'm not, so I don't think it's helpful for me to run around telling Americans what they should or shouldn't feel. Any response to that question, however - including yours - is a moral one.
I didn't advocate anything. I only stated that economic choices have moral implications. The choice to pursue such a redistribution is a moral one. The choice to pursue a different outcome is also a moral one. Why are you so eager to deny the existence of these choices? Why are you so interested in lumping my argument in with socialism or communism?
Economics is inseperable from morality. Economic models try to maximize certain values or outcomes; the choice of the outcome to maximize is a moral one. You can argue that those choices are not part of economics, but then economics is an abstraction divorced from reality. What is your economics for? As soon as you apply economics, you must make value judgments.
I'll give you an example. Pareto optimality maximizes the well-being of individuals without reducing the well-being of any. How then is well-being defined? Many economists may equate it to individual preferences. But that's a value judgment. If my preference is to eat unhealthily, is doing so contributing to my well-being? Furthermore, Pareto optimality is inherently conservative (as opposed to radical) in that it does not overturn existing inequalities. That is a value judgment implied by applications of Pareto optimality. To the extent that the field of economics focuses on Pareto optimality, it is choosing to pursue a particular set of values.
As for the fluidity of morality, that itself is a judgment. Many - such as those of religious conviction - would disagree. Just as others would take a step beyond your claim that preachers and national leaders make people burn flags and fly planes into buildings and ask what makes those preachers and leaders. I won't make any claims in that debate, only say that the answers aren't so simple and clean-cut any more than is the distinction between morality and economics.
It seems to me the idea (piece of music, recording, whatever) is not and cannot be property (at least not in the sense that physical objects or land can be property). The copyright itself - i.e., the limited-time monopoly created and enforced by the government - is the property. Let me emphasize that: the property here is created by the government. As an encouragement for artists and others to produce ideas, society rewards them by creating a kind of property and granting it to them. Society moreover provides resources for the enforcement of that property right. But the right is time limited: after a certain period, society no longer recognizes or enforces the right it previously granted.
Think of it like this. You write a song. You take that song to the government, and they give you a document stating that you have an exclusive right to copy and perform that song for the next N years. The song may not be property, but the document certainly is: its ownership is enforced by the law, you can sell it, and so forth. When those N years are up, you still have the document, but the rights in conferred have expired. Did anyone take anything away from you? On the contrary, they gave you something. Oh, and incidentally, you still have the song you wrote.
These days there's no document proving your rights; the grant is automatic. I don't know if there ever was such a document, although filing used to be required. The point is, copyright is a social construct, and the right is property. Ideas, on the other hand, are not.