Isn't one of the implications of the Open Source model that ESR, etc. developed that software development houses/aren't/ the natural way to profit from software? I've always thought that the best way to make money from open-source software was to work for a business who was paying you to develop for the software products that they use. A business may have a difficult time profiting from OSS, but many, many individuals, working at different companies on the same project, may make a tidy living for themselves, and the bottom line of each of those companies improves because they are sharing the cost of development. no?
Say I wanted to host a porn site that featured nothing but really, freakishly tall women from all over the world, and I was going to call it something really witty like Amazon Nudes. By your reasoning, instead of going for www.amazonnudes.com, I should go for amazon.nudes.com, or nudes.amazon.com.
Assuming nudes.com exists, I might be able to work out an agreement with them. But I'm at their mercy, and have to pay what THEY ask for. My own.com name might be cheaper, and easier to remember. As for nudes.amazon.com... well, let's just say I don't like lawyers, and wouldn't invite them in by even TRYING to do that.
This is a terrible example. Your business name would be "Amazon Nudes", so your Domain Name would be amazonnudes.com. You have nothing to do with a business like "Nudes, Inc.", and wouldn't want to be associated with their Domain.
Movies and products released by Sony, however, would be better served as 3rd-level domains. playstation.sony.com is a good idea. amazon.nudes.com is not. Understand the system proposed before you criticize it.
--D
I have never read the bible, nor do i believe a word of it.
dude. I was totally with you through this whole (admittedly offtopic) thread. But you just went to the other side. If someone said to you "I've never studied C++, but it's a slow, crappy language," or, "I've never listened to industrial music, but it's all about sex and killing," you'd be on top of the dogpile pointing out the terrible logic flaws behind the statements.
Come on, man. It's people who condemn without understanding that fuel hate, in the name of a God, against one or all Gods, and without regard to any deity.
The original poster made the mistake of not understanding his position. You have just confimed that you don't understand the other position. Niether of you are in the position to debate.
Other than that, though, I agree with you, even though you don't know what you're fighting.
First, I feel like an ass for responding to you, because there's a good chance you're a troll. If your first post didn't state that obviously enough, each of your subsequent ones have served to prove it. However, if it is the case that you are serious, which I fear, then I will try to respond as such.
>and of course the notion that !Christian==Imoral.
This is fact, as substantiated in the Bible...you, knowingly or not, worship Satan.
I haven't read the bible in a while, but last time I checked, Jesus wanted you to love everyone, and spread the love of your God to the rest of the world. You obviously don't love any of us. You'd rather accuse us of unwitting Satan worship instead of trying to love and understand us. Way to follow the ways of your saviour.
Christians have an obligation to set right the wrongs of the world, and if this leads to violence...
I thought they had an obligation to spread love and compassion. And turn the other cheek. Violence? A true christian would not consider it. Look towards your savior. He never struck back, even at his crucifiers.
Your words are riddled with hypocrisy. You make me proud to have abandoned your religion years ago to search for one that doesn't inspire hate. You, and people like you, have lost yet another, by convincing me that any God that would use you as a tool of His word is a God I want nothing to do with.
Currently a proud, albeit confused, athiest, MalSyned
P.S. I'd be your friend. You wouldn't be mine. Ask Jesus how he feels about that. He was perhaps the only Christian who ever understood what He was talking about.
I'm running a clean install of Win2K (don't worry, I'm not totally hopeless, I dualboot slackware), and YES! EDLIN still comes with it. I couldn't believe it.
The question is not whether there will be alternative content. The question is whether we will know about it. Frankly, people are sheep. I'm a sheep, chances are so are you. But, that's unavoidable. There is too much out there for everyone to be an expert at everything, so we have to be mainstream somewhere in order to concentrate on what we love. So, people will start off with AOL. That's fine, though, because they can always switch once they find out that the alternative is better than the majority, right? not necessarily.
If AOL doesn't give access to Slashdot or similar "hardcore" computer sites via their front end search engine, then most internet users will never find out that there is an alternative, and that AOL's "news" is actually propaganda. Propaganda relies on people not knowing that that is what they are being subjected to.
So people will continue to get online with AOL, browse with Netscape, listen to music with WinAmp, and watch Time Warner TV over Time Warner cable lines and use Time Warner 'Net connections.
Whether any of those choices are a Bad Thing or not is not the point. The point is that by controling so much information flow, AOL has the power to censor information, and to keep us from knowing that it was censored. I try to be as apathetic as possible, and that still scares the hell out of me. Especially since the government has continually proven that they have no idea what they should do about technology, but continue to make assanine laws anyway, just to give the appearance of progress.
Actually, we are not at the mercy of Linus. That is one of the most valuable parts of open source software. If we as a comunity don't like what is happening to the linux kernel under Linus's rule, we can take the whole damn thing and give it to someone else to work with.
In our community, power is based on the respect and admiration of your peers, not how much money you can toss around, how many lawyers can protect you, or how many ideas you "own." All of the power that anyone in the open source community weilds can be taken away in a heartbeat, so anyone who has power has to use it wisely or, no matter how hard they worked to get it, they will lose it.
Patents, Copywrite protection, Intelectual property, and the control over the distribution of ideas: All of these things represent power that *cannot* be taken away, regardless of how that power is used (within the rediculous borders of the laws which allow these powers to exist in the first place.)
If enough people don't like linux, they can take over the operation themselves. But AOL will always own AOL. And Time Warner. And Netscape. And Napster (and, re: napster, btw... what kind of world do we live in where an instititution controls even the means by which you are able to undermine it?)
And the ideas that AOL owns and controls keep anyone else from producing true competition.
Well, I think that's enough of a rant for my first contribution to Slashdot. As always, post positive comments publicly, but direct all criticism to/dev/null.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't one of the implications of the Open Source model that ESR, etc. developed that software development houses /aren't/ the natural way to profit from software? I've always thought that the best way to make money from open-source software was to work for a business who was paying you to develop for the software products that they use. A business may have a difficult time profiting from OSS, but many, many individuals, working at different companies on the same project, may make a tidy living for themselves, and the bottom line of each of those companies improves because they are sharing the cost of development. no?
Say I wanted to host a porn site that featured nothing but really, freakishly tall women from all over the world, and I was going to call it something really witty like Amazon Nudes. By your reasoning, instead of going for www.amazonnudes.com, I should go for amazon.nudes.com, or nudes.amazon.com. Assuming nudes.com exists, I might be able to work out an agreement with them. But I'm at their mercy, and have to pay what THEY ask for. My own .com name might be cheaper, and easier to remember. As for nudes.amazon.com... well, let's just say I don't like lawyers, and wouldn't invite them in by even TRYING to do that.
This is a terrible example. Your business name would be "Amazon Nudes", so your Domain Name would be amazonnudes.com. You have nothing to do with a business like "Nudes, Inc.", and wouldn't want to be associated with their Domain.
Movies and products released by Sony, however, would be better served as 3rd-level domains. playstation.sony.com is a good idea. amazon.nudes.com is not. Understand the system proposed before you criticize it.
--D
I have never read the bible, nor do i believe a word of it.
dude. I was totally with you through this whole (admittedly offtopic) thread. But you just went to the other side. If someone said to you "I've never studied C++, but it's a slow, crappy language," or, "I've never listened to industrial music, but it's all about sex and killing," you'd be on top of the dogpile pointing out the terrible logic flaws behind the statements.
Come on, man. It's people who condemn without understanding that fuel hate, in the name of a God, against one or all Gods, and without regard to any deity.
The original poster made the mistake of not understanding his position. You have just confimed that you don't understand the other position. Niether of you are in the position to debate.
Other than that, though, I agree with you, even though you don't know what you're fighting.
MalSyned
First, I feel like an ass for responding to you, because there's a good chance you're a troll. If your first post didn't state that obviously enough, each of your subsequent ones have served to prove it. However, if it is the case that you are serious, which I fear, then I will try to respond as such.
>and of course the notion that !Christian==Imoral.
This is fact, as substantiated in the Bible...you, knowingly or not, worship Satan.
I haven't read the bible in a while, but last time I checked, Jesus wanted you to love everyone, and spread the love of your God to the rest of the world. You obviously don't love any of us. You'd rather accuse us of unwitting Satan worship instead of trying to love and understand us. Way to follow the ways of your saviour.
Christians have an obligation to set right the wrongs of the world, and if this leads to violence...
I thought they had an obligation to spread love and compassion. And turn the other cheek. Violence? A true christian would not consider it. Look towards your savior. He never struck back, even at his crucifiers.
Your words are riddled with hypocrisy. You make me proud to have abandoned your religion years ago to search for one that doesn't inspire hate. You, and people like you, have lost yet another, by convincing me that any God that would use you as a tool of His word is a God I want nothing to do with.
Currently a proud, albeit confused, athiest,
MalSyned
P.S. I'd be your friend. You wouldn't be mine. Ask Jesus how he feels about that. He was perhaps the only Christian who ever understood what He was talking about.
I'm running a clean install of Win2K (don't worry, I'm not totally hopeless, I dualboot slackware), and YES! EDLIN still comes with it. I couldn't believe it.
AOL doesn't own napster, does it? My Bad. I meant Nullsoft, and all their many ventures that, in one way or another, are counter-Time Warner.
The question is not whether there will be alternative content. The question is whether we will know about it. Frankly, people are sheep. I'm a sheep, chances are so are you. But, that's unavoidable. There is too much out there for everyone to be an expert at everything, so we have to be mainstream somewhere in order to concentrate on what we love. So, people will start off with AOL. That's fine, though, because they can always switch once they find out that the alternative is better than the majority, right? not necessarily.
If AOL doesn't give access to Slashdot or similar "hardcore" computer sites via their front end search engine, then most internet users will never find out that there is an alternative, and that AOL's "news" is actually propaganda. Propaganda relies on people not knowing that that is what they are being subjected to.
So people will continue to get online with AOL, browse with Netscape, listen to music with WinAmp, and watch Time Warner TV over Time Warner cable lines and use Time Warner 'Net connections.
Whether any of those choices are a Bad Thing or not is not the point. The point is that by controling so much information flow, AOL has the power to censor information, and to keep us from knowing that it was censored. I try to be as apathetic as possible, and that still scares the hell out of me. Especially since the government has continually proven that they have no idea what they should do about technology, but continue to make assanine laws anyway, just to give the appearance of progress.
Wow. I'm bitchy today.
MalSyned
Actually, we are not at the mercy of Linus. That is one of the most valuable parts of open source software. If we as a comunity don't like what is happening to the linux kernel under Linus's rule, we can take the whole damn thing and give it to someone else to work with.
/dev/null.
In our community, power is based on the respect and admiration of your peers, not how much money you can toss around, how many lawyers can protect you, or how many ideas you "own." All of the power that anyone in the open source community weilds can be taken away in a heartbeat, so anyone who has power has to use it wisely or, no matter how hard they worked to get it, they will lose it.
Patents, Copywrite protection, Intelectual property, and the control over the distribution of ideas: All of these things represent power that *cannot* be taken away, regardless of how that power is used (within the rediculous borders of the laws which allow these powers to exist in the first place.)
If enough people don't like linux, they can take over the operation themselves. But AOL will always own AOL. And Time Warner. And Netscape. And Napster (and, re: napster, btw... what kind of world do we live in where an instititution controls even the means by which you are able to undermine it?)
And the ideas that AOL owns and controls keep anyone else from producing true competition.
Well, I think that's enough of a rant for my first contribution to Slashdot. As always, post positive comments publicly, but direct all criticism to
MalSyned