There seems to be a mistaken assumption in the article, that "open source" is a term just waiting to be snapped up by profiteering companies and whored to uneducated consumers. This is patently wrong.
The fact is, the term "open source" has very few connotations in the mind of the consumers that translate into positive market value. People may look upon it as cool, even courageous, but that's before they go to the store. Business executives still, to a large extent, view "open source" as being synonymous with "hackerware" and "unsupported". Companies that go open source (in name) are either dedicated solely to the Open Source community for a demographic (e.g. RedHat) or are quick to skip over the term when going after corporate customers. This isn't because they are trying to hide from the Knights Errant of Free Software. They just don't need the term as anything more descriptive than an advertising ploy.
Is it really the duty of the Free Software Movement to regulate the term? I don't think so. After all, the same people that are going to continue to be influenced by a company being Open source (us) are the same people who can recognize a fraud at twenty paces. "Open Source" might not be trademarked, but "BSD" and "GNU" are, and when strange new licenses start cropping up, we will take note.
When it's all said and done, is the loss of the trademark really a bad thing? I think a much more important concept, although maybe not completely independent, is maintaining the purity of the Movement. That doesn't mean that companies have to obey strict guidelines in order to release their source and get recognition for it; if anything, that would simply scare those companies away. It just means that the people already committed to the movement need to remain productive.
Oh MY! Do you mean to say that a software company is going open source for other than purely charitable motives? That they might just be trying to make money? The idea of "using open source to increase their market share" and "more and more developers will do the work of creating quality interfaces for them" is exactly why most companies get into open source. Trying to make money is not bad, nor is trying to do it through open source bad. If we want to promote the economic model of open source, we have to be understanding towards these companies, especially ones (like Macromedia) that have been in the market for a while and are firmly established.
Sure I remember. But with Jabba, there was still an austerity about the whole thing, rather than "Do you think you're a Jedi or something?" It felt like Lucas was trying to retroactively edit the Star Wars mysticism into something mundane and commonplace. I think that that scene really could have been improved by having the merchant feel, but remain unaffected by, the mind tricks. Just waving his hand uselessly had the weird, "This-isn't-really-Star-Wars" feel that, IMNSHO, colored much of the movie. Besides, Jabba easily identified the mind tricks that Luke was using.
Maybe, but the part here that I hated was how they felt this weird need to find a scientific excuse for the Force. The idea of the original trilogy drew much of its power from the meshing, NOT the equivalence, of technology and spirituality. George Lucas, in my opinion, became just a little bit too "worldcrafting;" it's almost like he was making fun of the original trilogy, like the failure of the Jedi mind tricks on the merchant. Don't get me wrong; I liked the movie. But there was far too little plot and far too much gee-whizzery.
There's a file in/etc on Redhat that specifies the name of the kernel release. You need to change this to 2.2.8, or it will continue to search in the old directory.
The idea that an organization with enough money, let alone technology, to launch a satellite and then not invest as least as much money ensuring that any mishaps would be dealt with should have their books audited. It seems that they would at least make sure that the communications system worked flawlessly, since without that, the entire satellite is just a large piece of space junk.
The problem with advertising in free programs is getting sponsors. Once the program has been sold, the only way to update sponsors is over the internet; this could be a problem for thosen of us with an intermittent connection. After all, companies who use Internet advertising are used to a very specific pay-by-the-view pricing model. They would understandably be leery of paying by the second seen. Secondly, a nice thing about banner ads is that you're already online when you see them, so you can click through without thinking about it. What happens when you kind of want to see what a banner is about, but you're not connected?
The idea that RH has some sort of obligation to uphold the tenets of Open Source is absurd. They are a company. They are first and foremost out to make money; there should be no doubt about that. Redhat at this point will have its stock skyrocket at an IPO, and they know it. Good for them. Remember, Redhat has always been somewhat helpful to the linux community, but that helpfulness has as yet been limited to making or supporting specific pieces of software.
The idea of a web site being "open sorce" implis that it's compiled. Okay, Al, so where's the SGML? Actually, Al Gore is probably the first major public figure to grab ahold of the burgeoning tide of the internet, computers, etc. The White House site still smacks of a ten minute session with Netscape Composer. I expect Gore's focus on "hip new technology" will win him support in 2000, mostly from the part of the win/mac crowd who think that AOL or Microsoft owns the internet. (I guess they bought it from Gore.) If this wins more public exposure of computer monopolies, the CDA, etc., then all power to him. The public needs a public figure to represent technology, and nobody to yet come forth (Gates, Jobs, Case, Ellison, even Linus) has captured the eye of the media, at least in the right way.
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There seems to be a mistaken assumption in the article, that "open source" is a term just waiting to be snapped up by profiteering companies and whored to uneducated consumers. This is patently wrong.
The fact is, the term "open source" has very few connotations in the mind of the consumers that translate into positive market value. People may look upon it as cool, even courageous, but that's before they go to the store. Business executives still, to a large extent, view "open source" as being synonymous with "hackerware" and "unsupported". Companies that go open source (in name) are either dedicated solely to the Open Source community for a demographic (e.g. RedHat) or are quick to skip over the term when going after corporate customers. This isn't because they are trying to hide from the Knights Errant of Free Software. They just don't need the term as anything more descriptive than an advertising ploy.
Is it really the duty of the Free Software Movement to regulate the term? I don't think so. After all, the same people that are going to continue to be influenced by a company being Open source (us) are the same people who can recognize a fraud at twenty paces. "Open Source" might not be trademarked, but "BSD" and "GNU" are, and when strange new licenses start cropping up, we will take note.
When it's all said and done, is the loss of the trademark really a bad thing? I think a much more important concept, although maybe not completely independent, is maintaining the purity of the Movement. That doesn't mean that companies have to obey strict guidelines in order to release their source and get recognition for it; if anything, that would simply scare those companies away. It just means that the people already committed to the movement need to remain productive.
Oh MY! Do you mean to say that a software company is going open source for other than purely charitable motives? That they might just be trying to make money? The idea of "using open source to increase their market share" and "more and more developers will do the work of creating quality interfaces for them" is exactly why most companies get into open source. Trying to make money is not bad, nor is trying to do it through open source bad. If we want to promote the economic model of open source, we have to be understanding towards these companies, especially ones (like Macromedia) that have been in the market for a while and are firmly established.
Sure I remember. But with Jabba, there was still an austerity about the whole thing, rather than "Do you think you're a Jedi or something?" It felt like Lucas was trying to retroactively edit the Star Wars mysticism into something mundane and commonplace. I think that that scene really could have been improved by having the merchant feel, but remain unaffected by, the mind tricks. Just waving his hand uselessly had the weird, "This-isn't-really-Star-Wars" feel that, IMNSHO, colored much of the movie. Besides, Jabba easily identified the mind tricks that Luke was using.
Maybe, but the part here that I hated was how they felt this weird need to find a scientific excuse for the Force. The idea of the original trilogy drew much of its power from the meshing, NOT the equivalence, of technology and spirituality. George Lucas, in my opinion, became just a little bit too "worldcrafting;" it's almost like he was making fun of the original trilogy, like the failure of the Jedi mind tricks on the merchant.
Don't get me wrong; I liked the movie. But there was far too little plot and far too much gee-whizzery.
There's a file in /etc on Redhat that specifies the name of the kernel release. You need to change this to 2.2.8, or it will continue to search in the old directory.
The idea that an organization with enough money, let alone technology, to launch a satellite and then not invest as least as much money ensuring that any mishaps would be dealt with should have their books audited. It seems that they would at least make sure that the communications system worked flawlessly, since without that, the entire satellite is just a large piece of space junk.
The problem with advertising in free programs is getting sponsors. Once the program has been sold, the only way to update sponsors is over the internet; this could be a problem for thosen of us with an intermittent connection. After all, companies who use Internet advertising are used to a very specific pay-by-the-view pricing model. They would understandably be leery of paying by the second seen. Secondly, a nice thing about banner ads is that you're already online when you see them, so you can click through without thinking about it. What happens when you kind of want to see what a banner is about, but you're not connected?
The idea that RH has some sort of obligation to uphold the tenets of Open Source is absurd. They are a company. They are first and foremost out to make money; there should be no doubt about that. Redhat at this point will have its stock skyrocket at an IPO, and they know it. Good for them.
Remember, Redhat has always been somewhat helpful to the linux community, but that helpfulness has as yet been limited to making or supporting specific pieces of software.
The idea of a web site being "open sorce" implis that it's compiled. Okay, Al, so where's the SGML?
Actually, Al Gore is probably the first major public figure to grab ahold of the burgeoning tide of the internet, computers, etc. The White House site still smacks of a ten minute session with Netscape Composer. I expect Gore's focus on "hip new technology" will win him support in 2000, mostly from the part of the win/mac crowd who think that AOL or Microsoft owns the internet. (I guess they bought it from Gore.) If this wins more public exposure of computer monopolies, the CDA, etc., then all power to him. The public needs a public figure to represent technology, and nobody to yet come forth (Gates, Jobs, Case, Ellison, even Linus) has captured the eye of the media, at least in the right way.