Beckstein is actually Minster of the Interior of the State of Bavaria. In American terms: In the State of Bavaria, he is Governor Stoiber's Secretary of Homeland Security.
Beckstein is "well"-known for his "creative" views on security issues. Usually, he's all about fighting immigration, but since the last massacre in a German school (far away from Bavaria) he wants to outlaw Counterstrike & co.
This is a bad example of how to treat your paying customers. As a Mandrake club member I find it quite strange to hear about theses changes from their partner program area of their web page. A little announcement and explanation to their customers would have helped, but it's too late for that, now. The damage is done.
Stopping my anger for a moment, I have to admit that non-club download versions stuffed with advertisement is definitely not unfair.
Back to the previous blood preasure level though, I wonder why I have to deal with advertising as a paying user. Can somebody explain that? That is a hidden increase in the price tag to me.
As people have said in other threads, Fraunhofer deserves the 75 Cents for their efforts and from this license change mp3 will not die out.
Therefore, I would like to suggest here that we move down from our open-sourced ivory tower to the realms of reality and allow ourselves the thought of "patent-covered open source".
I would like to suggest a repository for pluggable open-source applications (no GPL here, because we *want* to link) for every patented algorithm we feel like using. That repository (much like SourceForge) would be more than just the location of the source code. When somebody wants to download the software (equals to a customer who wants to purchase a software), that somebody must make a payment to the repository people covering the license fee. If necessary, more complicated license authentication schemes (license files, license servers,...) could be implemented even stating in the corresponding software license that disabling the license authentication is not allowed.
An mp3 package could be linked whereever an open-source media player wants to play mp3s, much like most open-source image viewers use libjpeg, or XML-handling applications use libxml.
Of course it's not bad. Every big business gets to the point where it thinks about the remote possibilty of a private backbone that connects all sites for pure security reasons. I've seen it. I know people who sell such stuff every day. So the United States government has decided they want that, too. So what? Don't give me the tax money explanation. Next thing is we regulate businesses not set up cross-country backbones, too, because it increases product prices and therefore inflation. Where is the border line? If whoever runs a company or a country thinks it is worthwhile and cost-effective (ever thought of how expensive it would be without such infrastructure?) to operate a private backbone it probably is worthwhile, or the person gets booted out of office. I don't see that happening neither with businesses nor with governments.
I'm beginning to think that it might be time for someone else to lead the way. American presidents can only be in power for 8 years for good reason. Linus has lead us through an awsome 10 years. Isn't it time for a fresh perspective? Everybody knows that most distributions don't deliver a standard Linus kernel, anyway. With their experience and willingness to make decisions, wouldn't they be able to come up with somebody else? Alan Cox?
I've been waiting for the moment when companies get the idea that some people would be willing to pay for their services if only the stupid advertising was gone. Basing a business on advertising is dangerous enough especially in times when companies decide to pay less for advertising or at times when too many services want to be based on advertising. By offering a supscription type service you're also finally able to find out what your service is worth.
It's a great idea and I'd be willing to accept that model for all services I use every day e.g. like Slashdot.
This would be a good starting point to support the wine group. Their cause is to get Windows source code to compile under Linux. They haven't really done anything in the DirectX area but Loki as someone who should have a big interest in getting DirectX to work under Linux would have a good reason to join the wine group. Loki has shown itself as very open source friendly by releasing their own GPL code. I think it's just a matter of time before they start writing the DirectX interface for wine.
I believe the discussion about licensing and software patents is going in the wrong direction. We are creating two very religious sides: One side wants a patent on everything to increase profit while the other side hates software patents. Sit down and think about it. The reality is that we have software patents and I believe we should at least support those companies who allow open sourced implementation of their patents so that the free world can benefit from them. What is so wrong with buying a version of Linux that specifically has a set of open source software that requires royalties? It would still be cheaper and would still have the higher quality of open source development. It could be set up as a set of libraries that contain those algorithms (MP3, DVD decoding, FAX, soft modem,...) that require a per station license. The libraries could be developed openly and the software using those algorithms of course, too. Insisting on license fees for GIF is pretty pointless if you look at all the alternatives. It makes perfect sense though for other things.
Commercial Games under Linux
on
Civ3 For Linux
·
· Score: 1
It's great that we finally have commercial games under Linux. It was about time. There's only a few reasons I still maintain a Windows partition and games has been one the major ones.
Thanks LokiSoft
PS: I don't quite care at this point if Civilization: Call To Power is written by the original author or not if gets me hooked in the same way the first two did.
Slashdot Mirror
Beckstein is actually Minster of the Interior of the State of Bavaria. In American terms: In the State of Bavaria, he is Governor Stoiber's Secretary of Homeland Security.
Beckstein is "well"-known for his "creative" views on security issues. Usually, he's all about fighting immigration, but since the last massacre in a German school (far away from Bavaria) he wants to outlaw Counterstrike & co.
This is a bad example of how to treat your paying customers. As a Mandrake club member I find it quite strange to hear about theses changes from their partner program area of their web page. A little announcement and explanation to their customers would have helped, but it's too late for that, now. The damage is done.
Stopping my anger for a moment, I have to admit that non-club download versions stuffed with advertisement is definitely not unfair.
Back to the previous blood preasure level though, I wonder why I have to deal with advertising as a paying user. Can somebody explain that? That is a hidden increase in the price tag to me.
As people have said in other threads, Fraunhofer deserves the 75 Cents for their efforts and from this license change mp3 will not die out.
...) could be implemented even stating in the corresponding software license that disabling the license authentication is not allowed.
:-)
Therefore, I would like to suggest here that we move down from our open-sourced ivory tower to the realms of reality and allow ourselves the thought of "patent-covered open source".
I would like to suggest a repository for pluggable open-source applications (no GPL here, because we *want* to link) for every patented algorithm we feel like using. That repository (much like SourceForge) would be more than just the location of the source code. When somebody wants to download the software (equals to a customer who wants to purchase a software), that somebody must make a payment to the repository people covering the license fee. If necessary, more complicated license authentication schemes (license files, license servers,
An mp3 package could be linked whereever an open-source media player wants to play mp3s, much like most open-source image viewers use libjpeg, or XML-handling applications use libxml.
Happy flaming
Of course it's not bad. Every big business gets to the point where it thinks about the remote possibilty of a private backbone that connects all sites for pure security reasons. I've seen it. I know people who sell such stuff every day. So the United States government has decided they want that, too. So what? Don't give me the tax money explanation. Next thing is we regulate businesses not set up cross-country backbones, too, because it increases product prices and therefore inflation. Where is the border line? If whoever runs a company or a country thinks it is worthwhile and cost-effective (ever thought of how expensive it would be without such infrastructure?) to operate a private backbone it probably is worthwhile, or the person gets booted out of office. I don't see that happening neither with businesses nor with governments.
I'm beginning to think that it might be time for someone else to lead the way. American presidents can only be in power for 8 years for good reason. Linus has lead us through an awsome 10 years. Isn't it time for a fresh perspective? Everybody knows that most distributions don't deliver a standard Linus kernel, anyway. With their experience and willingness to make decisions, wouldn't they be able to come up with somebody else? Alan Cox?
I've been waiting for the moment when companies get the idea that some people would be willing to pay for their services if only the stupid advertising was gone. Basing a business on advertising is dangerous enough especially in times when companies decide to pay less for advertising or at times when too many services want to be based on advertising. By offering a supscription type service you're also finally able to find out what your service is worth. It's a great idea and I'd be willing to accept that model for all services I use every day e.g. like Slashdot.
This would be a good starting point to support the wine group. Their cause is to get Windows source code to compile under Linux. They haven't really done anything in the DirectX area but Loki as someone who should have a big interest in getting DirectX to work under Linux would have a good reason to join the wine group. Loki has shown itself as very open source friendly by releasing their own GPL code. I think it's just a matter of time before they start writing the DirectX interface for wine.
I believe the discussion about licensing and software patents is going in the wrong direction. We are creating two very religious sides: One side wants a patent on everything to increase profit while the other side hates software patents. Sit down and think about it. The reality is that we have software patents and I believe we should at least support those companies who allow open sourced implementation of their patents so that the free world can benefit from them. What is so wrong with buying a version of Linux that specifically has a set of open source software that requires royalties? It would still be cheaper and would still have the higher quality of open source development. It could be set up as a set of libraries that contain those algorithms (MP3, DVD decoding, FAX, soft modem, ...) that require a per station license. The libraries could be developed openly and the software using those algorithms of course, too. Insisting on license fees for GIF is pretty pointless if you look at all the alternatives. It makes perfect sense though for other things.
It's great that we finally have commercial games under Linux. It was about time. There's only a few reasons I still maintain a Windows partition and games has been one the major ones.
Thanks LokiSoft
PS: I don't quite care at this point if Civilization: Call To Power is written by the original author or not if gets me hooked in the same way the first two did.