they might not be liable for SCO IP, but what about all the GPL IP? SCO is ignoring the fact that the GPL does not apply if they ship royalty generating IP in their distro, so they cannot ship all that GPLed code. So their customers are now liable, instead, for GPL violations (although there may be obscure wiggle room for them based on the fact that it's really the act of copying that becomes prohibited, e.g. SCO is the violator).
no, when SCO copied and distributed Linus' IP to them it did so under the GPL, GPLing it's own IP. If they want to say, "oops, didn't mean to do that" then they could recall their distro. To allow their distro puts them in violation of the GPL.
Actually, I am allowed near the operating table. I know exactly what's involved, and I speak after years of finding out that a commercial product as a starting point is not nec. any better than starting from scratch. IT DEPENDS ON THE PRODUCT.
My example, of Zope, is a product that DOES have years of commercial development in it, in fact, and your post shows the kind of false thinking that I'm talking about... since it's now distributed GPL, I just must be starting from scratch (after watching a video on business tools) if I use Zope to develop a tool. But clearly you have no idea about Zope, nor any idea what it's really like to put a heavy commercial system in place. It requires a lot of custom configuration and often custom programming to exploit the features, it's not free, the work is not done once the check is signed.
You assume to much.
PS: another thing is, "people and companies"... hmmm, software companies, so a software company gets to tell, say, a beet packing company, exactly how their core functionality should work out. Yes, indeed, they are so wise they should tell you how to do all your business processes should work. What do you know! It's just your business!
The only trouble is that software engineers don't deliver. If they could all deliver to decent standards of quality and timliness then the Beet Company would trust us more. So yes, inexperienced drunks are the problem. Some of them inexperiencedly push OSS, some of them, (yourself included?) push commercial magic bullets, while others of us (me) don't push, but find.
what you forget is anyone can distribute the linux kernel, they don't have to ask linus to put it in, they can fork if they want to. That's the point, that's the idea... they would fork the open source and have control of what goes into it, and it'll instantly have 1000x the other forks.
PS: yeah, I remember being 16 and hating 12 year olds... well not really, but I remember people around me like that.
By the way, no moderators have moderated my post, they start off at 1, that's the way slashdot works. Yours start at 0 because you've been modded down a lot. Yes the mods are on crack, but that's not your problem here, you just don't understand how the GPL works.
If they thought they were bound to lose to linux, Microsoft would have their own distro.
They would own linux in that their distribution could quickly become the dominant one, because of their brand and their OEM relationships (not to mention their ability to make a WINE that could be 99% compatible with Windows).
They think they a strategy with a better margin than what they would have owning Linux, that's the only reason.
The funny part now is how with OSS you can put together systems like this, and it's more of a sure thing, it's rapid development, you are actually using mature code (personally I find the good OSS is 5+ years old, by which time it's proved itself and it's flaws, while of course present, are well understood).... and you will still get the "why invent that! we can just by xyz!"
The irony being, of course, that expensive business software is generally a platform where you still have to develop the actual thing your going to use, even just reconfiguring for your particular business is time consuming and involves just as much work as, say, starting with Zope.
shrink wrap software companies don't really understand, they think their market is threatened with evaporation... not really, it's threatened as the power shifts back to those like you that either ARE the tool's end user, or are at least, MUCH CLOSER to the end user (e.g. they are making custom applications for their clients specific needs).
the GPL is on your side, it's helping to commodotize something that is common, the good jobs will be reduced to either new things that really are hard and innovative, or to the REAL JOBS, that you mention. That is, you program for a bank... it is using the tools to do something. You program for a research lab, etc., and it's the mission you help accomplish that makes that job viable and of value.
If you make software itself, as an end point, your world is turning upside down. That's what I see happening, much like you describe.
ok, but my point is that it was useful to people that had computers, but it was still not marketable.
why? because it has to be useful to a large number of people to be marketable.
Public education is useful, but it's not particularly marketable, the market of people willing to pay to get an education is much smaller than the number that will accept public education if it's free.
The marketability of toll roads --- low. However, roads are very useful.
Air is useful, but unmarketable as it's too common.
You may think these are nitpicky, but (1) nit picking is how you get rid of lice and (2) the point is that while the market does a good job with some things of use/value, it does not cover them all... useful does not equal marketable, however much correlation you find.
Another: for a long time only governments would really make reliable universal mail delivery, it just wasn't marketable, you could not make a profit. But it was vital for communication around the world, it was useful, but there was no way to make it profitable in the market until recently.
I have not even gotten into the other side of the equivalence, which is to say there are marketable things that have little to no actual usefulness.
I guess I admit it's nitpicky, because if I stop my word play and think of LRP, you are just right. Is it really scratching an itch that needs scratching? It may be well built, but does it have a use in the real world or is it just a cool idea to use your old machine as a router?
>But if something is useful then by definition it is marketable, because it creates value by the very fact that it is useful to people...
not really. There are many examples of things which are not marketable.
The problems come when the value is an investment, no immediate return. Something that can clean lead and mercury out of the Carson River would be useful but not too marketable.
Beyond that I think things which are marginally useful have to find the right timing, they are useful, but people are not ready for it. The mouse was useful years ago, long before it was really marketable, um, people didn't even have computers, but once they did, then it was in line for marketability.
maybe it could have. I don't know about it. But I do know one thing. To make a business, you need a businessman. And engineer won't do it unless he quits engineering. You need a promoter type.
The GPL isn't the impediment in that it allows many avenues for revenue, but you need a businessman to actually activate one or more of those avenues.
It's an artistic medium... that it's used for crap is a shame and abomination.
It will rise as the supreme art... why? Every good novel or movie (even non-art ones) surrounds it's viewer, brings them into it's world, largely by anticipating the emotional reaction various kinds of viewers will have to the phenomenon it presents (simulates).
In computer based games you don't have to just anticipate, or guess, the program can actually watch the user. When we learn to master this additional ability, computer games will become the most fufilling art for artist and player. I figure that will happen about 2 to 5 hundred years from now.
Re:The story travels east ...
on
My Visit to SCO
·
· Score: 1
Howsit?
I just want to say, brah, don't forget da' big island... it's sacred for god's sake.
OK, I'm the only one here thinking about the SCO case, (or celebrating the end of the GIF patent), but I count goll durn it. (Oops, slipped into mainland pidgin there.)
Slashdot Mirror
General: "Corporal, the enemy is advancing, fire another round!"
Corporal: "We can't sir."
General: "Out of ammo?"
Corporal: "no."
General: "What is it then!?"
Corporal: "We're out of feet."
PS:
General: "Well go for the knees--- ouch!"
they might not be liable for SCO IP, but what about all the GPL IP? SCO is ignoring the fact that the GPL does not apply if they ship royalty generating IP in their distro, so they cannot ship all that GPLed code. So their customers are now liable, instead, for GPL violations (although there may be obscure wiggle room for them based on the fact that it's really the act of copying that becomes prohibited, e.g. SCO is the violator).
Linus, the FSF, and RMS should all SUE!
no, when SCO copied and distributed Linus' IP to them it did so under the GPL, GPLing it's own IP. If they want to say, "oops, didn't mean to do that" then they could recall their distro. To allow their distro puts them in violation of the GPL.
They must be sued by key OSS copyright holders.
Actually, I am allowed near the operating table. I know exactly what's involved, and I speak after years of finding out that a commercial product as a starting point is not nec. any better than starting from scratch. IT DEPENDS ON THE PRODUCT.
My example, of Zope, is a product that DOES have years of commercial development in it, in fact, and your post shows the kind of false thinking that I'm talking about... since it's now distributed GPL, I just must be starting from scratch (after watching a video on business tools) if I use Zope to develop a tool. But clearly you have no idea about Zope, nor any idea what it's really like to put a heavy commercial system in place. It requires a lot of custom configuration and often custom programming to exploit the features, it's not free, the work is not done once the check is signed.
You assume to much.
PS: another thing is, "people and companies"... hmmm, software companies, so a software company gets to tell, say, a beet packing company, exactly how their core functionality should work out. Yes, indeed, they are so wise they should tell you how to do all your business processes should work. What do you know! It's just your business!
The only trouble is that software engineers don't deliver. If they could all deliver to decent standards of quality and timliness then the Beet Company would trust us more. So yes, inexperienced drunks are the problem. Some of them inexperiencedly push OSS, some of them, (yourself included?) push commercial magic bullets, while others of us (me) don't push, but find.
what you forget is anyone can distribute the linux kernel, they don't have to ask linus to put it in, they can fork if they want to. That's the point, that's the idea... they would fork the open source and have control of what goes into it, and it'll instantly have 1000x the other forks.
PS: yeah, I remember being 16 and hating 12 year olds... well not really, but I remember people around me like that.
By the way, no moderators have moderated my post, they start off at 1, that's the way slashdot works. Yours start at 0 because you've been modded down a lot. Yes the mods are on crack, but that's not your problem here, you just don't understand how the GPL works.
oops, I was redundant, I said the same thing.
the Wiki is the new real medium.
An easy way to write. Content oriented. Accessible from anywhere.
wiki wiki wiki.
it's a "burn me twice, shame on me" sort of thing, I think.
so why havn't they?
If they thought they were bound to lose to linux, Microsoft would have their own distro.
They would own linux in that their distribution could quickly become the dominant one, because of their brand and their OEM relationships (not to mention their ability to make a WINE that could be 99% compatible with Windows).
They think they a strategy with a better margin than what they would have owning Linux, that's the only reason.
Red Hat could do it without danger from Sun if they built it clean and didn't call it's Java.
How many innocent companies will this technology destroy before it's done?
The funny part now is how with OSS you can put together systems like this, and it's more of a sure thing, it's rapid development, you are actually using mature code (personally I find the good OSS is 5+ years old, by which time it's proved itself and it's flaws, while of course present, are well understood). ... and you will still get the "why invent that! we can just by xyz!"
The irony being, of course, that expensive business software is generally a platform where you still have to develop the actual thing your going to use, even just reconfiguring for your particular business is time consuming and involves just as much work as, say, starting with Zope.
no you're not dreaming.
that's happening.
shrink wrap software companies don't really understand, they think their market is threatened with evaporation... not really, it's threatened as the power shifts back to those like you that either ARE the tool's end user, or are at least, MUCH CLOSER to the end user (e.g. they are making custom applications for their clients specific needs).
... the problem, it's easy to find a SE that will say he'll do that, it'll do just what you want, and be done on time.
People that fall for this find out that software engineers lie. A few good ones that are able to keep their word are lost in the noise.
Too bad they can't trust us.
essentially 1 vs. 0, that's the debate of the ages.
you see what many software engineers can't see.
the GPL is on your side, it's helping to commodotize something that is common, the good jobs will be reduced to either new things that really are hard and innovative, or to the REAL JOBS, that you mention. That is, you program for a bank... it is using the tools to do something. You program for a research lab, etc., and it's the mission you help accomplish that makes that job viable and of value.
If you make software itself, as an end point, your world is turning upside down. That's what I see happening, much like you describe.
ok, but my point is that it was useful to people that had computers, but it was still not marketable.
why? because it has to be useful to a large number of people to be marketable.
Public education is useful, but it's not particularly marketable, the market of people willing to pay to get an education is much smaller than the number that will accept public education if it's free.
The marketability of toll roads --- low. However, roads are very useful.
Air is useful, but unmarketable as it's too common.
You may think these are nitpicky, but (1) nit picking is how you get rid of lice and (2) the point is that while the market does a good job with some things of use/value, it does not cover them all... useful does not equal marketable, however much correlation you find.
Another: for a long time only governments would really make reliable universal mail delivery, it just wasn't marketable, you could not make a profit. But it was vital for communication around the world, it was useful, but there was no way to make it profitable in the market until recently.
I have not even gotten into the other side of the equivalence, which is to say there are marketable things that have little to no actual usefulness.
I guess I admit it's nitpicky, because if I stop my word play and think of LRP, you are just right. Is it really scratching an itch that needs scratching? It may be well built, but does it have a use in the real world or is it just a cool idea to use your old machine as a router?
Oh well, I'm prone to linguistic debate!
>But if something is useful then by definition it is marketable, because it creates value by the very fact that it is useful to people...
not really. There are many examples of things which are not marketable.
The problems come when the value is an investment, no immediate return. Something that can clean lead and mercury out of the Carson River would be useful but not too marketable.
Beyond that I think things which are marginally useful have to find the right timing, they are useful, but people are not ready for it. The mouse was useful years ago, long before it was really marketable, um, people didn't even have computers, but once they did, then it was in line for marketability.
I fully intend to use it for money... oh, you mean, don't write OSS for money. Gotcha.
maybe it could have. I don't know about it. But I do know one thing. To make a business, you need a businessman. And engineer won't do it unless he quits engineering. You need a promoter type.
The GPL isn't the impediment in that it allows many avenues for revenue, but you need a businessman to actually activate one or more of those avenues.
I recently was able to finish a compression algorithm on the entire universe to a single bit. It's a 1.
no, but my impression is it's only a matter of time.... :)
It's an artistic medium... that it's used for crap is a shame and abomination.
It will rise as the supreme art... why? Every good novel or movie (even non-art ones) surrounds it's viewer, brings them into it's world, largely by anticipating the emotional reaction various kinds of viewers will have to the phenomenon it presents (simulates).
In computer based games you don't have to just anticipate, or guess, the program can actually watch the user. When we learn to master this additional ability, computer games will become the most fufilling art for artist and player. I figure that will happen about 2 to 5 hundred years from now.
Howsit?
I just want to say, brah, don't forget da' big island... it's sacred for god's sake.
OK, I'm the only one here thinking about the SCO case, (or celebrating the end of the GIF patent), but I count goll durn it. (Oops, slipped into mainland pidgin there.)
... and stop calling me john.
but you can still reimpliment their algorithm, no patent.