Free Software is a proven strategy to create a community of software sharing.
Open Source is a proven strategy for getting a piece of software used by commercial vendors.
No, you're wrong again. Clearly you don't have the ability to look at this objectively. Do it again but without the agenda this time.
The only thing free software has proven is that it is a slow follower, the free software PC still doesn't exist (outside some obscure systems with Loongson processors), the free software tablet doesn't exist, the free software phone doesn't exist, the free software smartwatch doesn't exist, etc... it's proven in the Linux kernel as a base to run other software but outside of that it's just a slow follower of everybody else.
I don't see much value in Open Source.
But the reality is it is used everywhere, the same code is used in both commercial and free software and the decision is on the authors what to contribute back.
Ultimately if you don't care about the four freedoms, then the Open Source just becomes a mechanism for software becoming embedded in commercial applications.
And that's the real clincher, relatively nobody cares about Stallman's 4 freedoms, people care about good software that does the job. Free software has after 30 years still only gained popularity for the sake of convenience, not software freedom because nobody cares about that.
You can't however on the one hand object to GPLers asserting that Open Source doesn't stay meaningfully open and then act like it is no big deal when I explain how the X11 code wasn't open.
It was open, MIT released their open source code and you're just continually excusing the failings of free software on that front and trying to blame MIT and Open Source and proprietary vendors and everybody but the people who actually failed at that time. Why is that?
What you are calling a failure of the free software crew is what the GPL is designed to prevent.
Yes to try to prevent the failure of the free software crew, that's why they invented it, to try to force everybody into their ideology. MIT had different ideas, proprietary vendors had different ideas and the free software ideology is only compatible with those ideas in so far as code licensed such that they can wrap it in a license that conforms to their ideology.
The MIT code was worthless to end users as you admit since it clearly required substantial work to get it to be functional.
Right, work that the free software crew could have done a decade earlier than they did. You think MIT should have chosen Free Software instead of Open Source in an effort to force proprietary vendors to do Free Software, well I'm afraid you can't force people to do what you want and eliminate choice just because you say so.
You are basically saying you have no problem with open source software existing in a worthless form that does nothing but stimulate proprietary closed source applications.
No, you've got it wrong. I have no problem with open source software existing in a form worthless to end users that exists to build a base for additional software closed or open. What you fail to see is a distinction between Free Software and Open Source, or rather you think they should be the same thing.
Also if it did nothing but stimulate proprietary closed source applications then it wouldn't have been used by the free software crew now would it?
And of course the free software crew did add something of value.
Yes, eventually they copied the proprietary Unixes and got something decent but you're still complaining that they didn't do it earlier and that's their fault, stop trying to excuse them and blame everybody else for their failing.
I only saw one brief bit of the stream, and it was where Steve Jobs Wannabe (Tim Cook?) was explaining how no one used camcorders any more because the iPhone could take better video.
Well relatively speaking, that is true.
Which leads to the obvious question: does the iPhone have a replaceable battery and removable storage yet?
No, because provably in most cases where people want to take video they don't require such things.
Because I still have a camcorder hanging around and I use it when I want to take a video that lasts longer than a couple of minutes. The entire reason I have my camcorder is so that I can take two hour videos.
Where do you get the idea that he is saying the iPhone is the one choice for every possible application? Clearly that's not what he meant, but for the vast majority it is. Even if you want to go beyond the iPhone capabilities the camcorder is still mostly useless for example I have an iPhone and a GoPro, that covers all my video recording needs. Camcorders are niche products.
Can't do either of those with an iPhone, making it a toy at taking pictures and video.
And a camcorder is cumbersome and mostly not carried with you, making it pretty useless for capturing anything but pre-planned moments and even then it's only if those times run into the hours-worth of footage that a camcorder becomes useful. So what you characterize as "a toy" is in reality much more practical and useful in the vast majority of cases.
Yes so they sell you an oversized computer to sit in your pocket or purse and then sell you another computer to control that computer. It's marketing genius!
But then the original iPod needed an Apple Mac for it's first generation
Only to do the initial sync of music, not when you're actually out and about using it. The watch requires an iPhone for many of its functions. Regardless of that I don't think I'd be interested in it, I have an iPhone - and will most likely go for the 6 Plus - but this "fitness tracking" fad just makes me thing of all those people who make the new years resolution to get fit and sign up for the gym but never go. Aside from those actually training for events I doubt people will get much use out of all this fitness tracking, it cannot responsibly make actual recommendations anyway.
You mentioned Webkit twice. Webkit is open source because the rendering engine for Webkit is KHTML which was GPLed software.
Part of webkit is LGPL and part is BSD, the BSD parts are available.
XFree86 was BSD386 people mainly and Windows X11 vendors like Hummingbird, not "the Linux crew" for many years. The Linux team didn't fumble they just had to start 10 years behind once they finally got there.
Yes I probably should have said the "free desktop crew" and yes they are the ones that fumbled, late to the game when everybody else had already gotten ahead.
That mistake in creating a codebase that ended up closed source was the result of MIT.
It wasn't a mistake, it was intentional. The codebase created by MIT never ended up closed source, but had many proprietary derivatives, it could have had a free derivative very early on if the free desktop crew had anything of value to contribute.
Blaming the Linux team for problems that existed prior to the existence of Linux is ridiculous.
There were no problems, the free desktop crew just didn't get their act together, but it's all about blaming somebody else for that.
This was MIT's screw up.
It wasn't a screw up, I don't know why you keep saying that except that you have some entitlement complex. Don't blame MIT for the failings of the free desktop.
The goal of open source is to have open source software. MIT resulted in closed source software.
The goal of open source is to share code, whether or not you share it and how much you share is up to the author. Free software is a restrictive ideology, you do it their way your you don't work with them at all, it is an absolutist mentality.
A disaster for open source given all the technologies in IRIX that could have been in the LInuxes and BSDs of the 1990s.
It's only a disaster for open source if you take the view that the free software community could not create anything of value and instead was relying on these vendors to do it for them, they had a good code base and they still failed to do anything with it for nearly a decade. That is the failing of the free desktop crew and nobody else.
Yep. That's right. It makes it unusable for closed source unless they go to the copyright holder and get a proprietary license by writing a check and thus helping to fund the development.
And if you want to do that fine, but complaining that you want MIT's code given to you under your terms so that you can have the code of everybody else also under your terms just proves you cannot add anything of value. The free software community had the opportunity to take the MIT code, create a GPL derivative with something of added value and then - if you are indeed right - the Unix vendors would have used that code. But no, the free software movement failed spectacularly and created nothing of value.
Remember this started with your claim about "functionally useless". Clearly the MIT code which didn't even run on the systems of the 1990s was functionally useless, while the proprietary Unix vendor's X11's were much more advanced.
Right, so nothing was lost, in fact it was a net gain for open source yet you're trying to paint it as a "disaster". Nothing about it is disastrous except the Linux crew's (not the kernel team) fumbling.
So I don't think it is disingenuous. I think we have multiple cases of clear experimental evidence.
You forget or ignore that we also have a track record of many things being available via GPL but not used and proprietary versions created instead - like SGI's closed-source IRIX operating system - as well as use of BSD code that is contributed back - for example Apple's use of LLVM/Clang, Webkit and a great many others. SGI also open sourced its OpenGL implementation and performer API even though they weren't forced to. There are just as many counter-examples of either proprietary versions created or BSD code contributed back.
No one had hardware like SGI's in the late 1980s and early 1990s they could have contributed back. And once that hardware wasn't $20k but rather $200 it would have formed the basis for Linux enhancements.
But the idea that you should have been able to force them to do that is silly. Like I said, MIT created a codebase and the Unix vendors jumped on it, but the Linux crew didn't and that is entirely the fault of the Linux crew. Had MIT not created that codebase the Linux crew would be even further behind, they should be thanking MIT for what they were given, not complaining that other people didn't do all the work for them.
Features like postscript rendering, which still aren't part of X11 would be if Sun had open source
And Sun open sourced many things, yet more proof that you don't need the GPL to force people to do that. If they want to release stuff they will anyway, if they don't then they won't use GPL stuff to begin with.
The idea of the GPL is to make sure it is always common code forever. We have a track record of that working.
It's to make sure that all derivatives are restricted to be licensed under the same terms. This makes it unusable in many applications, Webkit is a great example of the flexibility that you get from permissive licensing over restrictive licensing.
No the problem with X-Windows is exactly what you outlined: "The MIT variant open source variant mostly didn't run at all on actual used hardware". The software was effectively useless already and nobody actually made it useful on any hardware. It's not as though Unix vendors came along, created a proprietary fork and suddenly the original code was useless, in fact that is exactly the basis for XFree86 and had MIT decided not to release that code (or licensed it on a proprietary basis) Linux would be even further behind.
So if you say that Linux is say 5 years behind (which may be an underestimate) that's almost 18 years of lost productivity due to a BSD style license.
Because nobody worked on it and the free software community spent years diddling about even after being given the MIT X-Windows code for free! It wasn't useful to begin with and had it not existed in the first place the other Unix vendors would have built their fully proprietary window systems themselves and Linux window managers would have had to develop that initial MIT code themselves putting them even further behind. It's disingenuous to suggest that had it been GPL these Unix vendors would have still used it and released all their code for the Linux crew to take a free ride on.
The basis was there, the free software community dropped the ball, they could have even created a GPL derivative of the original MIT code and when they finally got their shit together at least there was a code-base to work from. You can't just say you want their code and you also want them to subscribe to your ideology and only offer it on terms that restrict what others can do with it. Fair enough if it is your code but it isn't.
Having an original which is available and functionally useless is not a desirable state. It might as well be closed. The versions in use have to be open not the original.
Well the original is hardly going to be "functionally useless", if somebody creates a proprietary fork the original doesn't suddenly become useless and nothing stops anybody from keeping the original going.
However on that point all the versions of the GPL up until v3 fail too, having the code for Tivo available but functionally useless means it might as well be closed. Though I'm inclined to agree with Linus in that quid-pro-quo is more important than ideology. People are never going to agree on ideology but working together is achievable.
You do realize that OpenDarwin had to close shop a few years ago after being screwed over on a continuing basis by Apple's "commitment" to opening the OSX operating system kernel?
They didn't have to close up shop and they weren't "screwed over", the problem was they had virtually no community interest and in the 4 years the project ran for the distributions created simply weren't of any use to anybody. Of course if you create a useless product nobody wants you are going to shut down.
Well personally I don't think there is one with that model, but have a browse through the comments here sometime and you'll see all manner of people advocating for adblockers and HOSTS files with the "rah rah you have no right to use my bandwidth to show me ads!" mantra. I'm not saying it can't work but certainly if you ask people here it is viewed with disdain.
There has to be some sort of business model to support open source. If it revenue doesn't come from selling software it has to come from selling something. When we talk about consumer software either consumers are going to pay for the software with money, they are going to pay for the software indirectly by buying hardware (like Android) or they are going to pay for the software via. advertising of some sort. There aren't really any other models.
Yeah fair enough. The business of "selling" free software is really non-existent and not everybody requires special hardware for their software that can offset the cost so I agree advertising is really the only option.
The most common form of software is one off individual development for a single company.
Yep, that's why FOSS is so successful in custom setups that deliver services.
Quite a lot of smaller projects, notably ones that target individuals, have voluntary donation based business models - and make enough to keep the developers' bills paid so they can write the software.
For example? I can imagine only the hugely popular ones (like the Humble Bundle) could survive on donation-ware and eve then the Humble Bundle games aren't exclusive to the Humble Bundle.
For quite a few years I maintained a project that was the market-leader in it's class for free software. I never made money out of end-users but I ran a successful business based on selling features to other business.
Yeah, like I said the features are driven by corporations.
Basically - you have no idea how many people successfully do the very things you just claimed nobody does.
And what exactly do you think I claimed nobody does?
No, running Windows does not require Exchange or SharePoint, but please find me a company of any size which doesn't run Outlook and Exchange. It's a de-facto standard in corporations.
So because they don't already it's all hopeless?
That's what I'm talking about with the "platform". It's not just Windows OS, it's the whole MS IT infrastructure that goes along with it in any corporation: Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, AD, and lots more (don't forget Office). Linux/FOSS can't replace all that, there's still too many missing or broken bits.
Again, the two are not dependent on eachother, you can run Exchange and SharePoint on a server and have your other fileservers and workstations as Linux systems, but that won't happen until the people who use those workstations can actually do their work on them, which is why you need the end user applications.
Corporations "need" Exchange because it provides them email + calendaring
There are plenty of other email servers and plenty of CalDAV servers, but like I said that is just one server in an entire corporation.
But anyway, using Exchange means also using Outlook, and Outlook only runs on Windows.
Yeah totally, none of my Exchange-connected calendars or email works at all on Thunderbird or Mail or on my iPhone or Android tablet... or maybe those all run Outlook?
Different applications. You (or was it someone else?) were talking about things like engineering, CAD, etc. applications. Those are usually standalone. They're not part of any kind of "infrastructure".
So what? You still have this deluded idea that the "IT infrastructure" running some Microsoft applications creates a dependency for the client systems when it doesn't. The real problem is even if you were right and there really was a dependency then alleviating that still does nothing because ultimately the applications for the client workstations to do any work don't exist.
You can already control the platform, you just can't do anything with it because it lacks the ability to run the required applications.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy.
But it's the practicality of it that doesn't work, the same as RMS points out in his The Javascript Trap:
"It is possible to release a JavaScript program as free software, by distributing the source code under a free software license. But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original."
Sure you can release code under the AGPL but that code can call other web services (it does not mandate that other web services - or services of any kind for that matter - be released under the same license) making it impractical to replicate everything on your own system. Moreover whilst you can use the web application from almost any web-connected device you may not even have the hardware to replicate that functionality on your machine even if you have the code.
You do not have control, all you get is the source code that they tell you is compiled into the binary the server is running.
Yes, it does. Go to any big corporation and look at their IT department. It's dominated by Windows in the server room. Exchange, probably the most prominent example, only runs on Windows Server. Same with Active Directory. Yes, it's possible to use openldap or whatever, but no one actually does that with a Windows environment.
Right, it's not that you can't, it's that the alternatives aren't advantageous. I'm not sure why you're pushing this agenda that somehow Windows systems are tied to Windows IT infrastructure because that is completely false.
Try running Exchange or SharePoint on Linux.
Those are applications which do not have viable free alternatives. Running Windows does not require that you run Exchange or Sharepoint and running Exchange or Sharepoint on your Windows server does not require that your clients run Windows. You're creating a false dependency to try and justify using Microsoft everywhere.
There's too many parts of the IT infrastructure that just aren't easily replaced by Linux/FOSS. Exchange is the biggest one, since just about every corporation out there relies on it (rightly or wrongly).
Even if you do actually need Exchange for whatever reason that is only one server, the damn thing can be virtualized too if you really want, that creates no dependency on other parts of your infrastructure or workstations.
Other networked applications frequently have the same problem, where they're made to only run on MS infrastructure, but MS components are of course the worst.
Like what? You talk about not needing to create FOSS applications because we need to focus on controlling the "platform" yet now you tell me that the problem isn't the platform but the applications, which is precisely what I told you.
but that one program only affects that one function you do on your computer, it doesn't lock you into an entire IT ecosystem you may not want. The platform being proprietary, however, does; just look at what a lock Microsoft has in the enterprise space.
What "IT ecosystem"? These are workstations, they access file servers, internet, email and their workstation applications including Open/Libre Office that all run just fine on Windows, Linux or OS X and can all be managed with tools like LDAP.
But your use of a proprietary platform (Windows) has a huge effect on your IT systems.
No it doesn't.
What's more, we already have a Free platform with Linux (running on both servers and desktops), it just isn't in widespread use on desktops yet (and by extension, because Windows is used on corporate desktops almost exclusively, they also run Windows servers heavily to interoperate with them).
You don't need Windows Servers to interoperate with them, I'm not sure why you're saying that. What specifically is the problem you are having that you cannot overcome?
We should concentrate on taking over the infrastructure, not the applications. The applications will be ported by their vendors when there's enough demand.
We already can do that, but nobody does it because the applications aren't available. There's no demand for those vendors to port to Linux because their clients don't use Linux and their clients don't use Linux because if they did they wouldn't be able to actually get anything done because the applications they need are not available.
I thought that they made it as closed source as Windows is. Apple isn't exactly forthcoming with anything that they do.
It's all on their website, you can find all the open source components and the source code for them for the latest release of OS X here. You can find more information on other releases and products at http://www.opensource.apple.com.
Android is the most successful OS on the planet, its open.
Well only somewhat, most Android distributions use a proprietary GUI layer, or proprietary Google Play Services and pretty much every single one in use has non-free software for driving the hardware. It's open out of convenience rather than ideology.
Webkit: Firefox and Chrome.
Chrome and Firefox are supported by Google's Ad revenues so yes the end user needs are met in order to drive advertising profit.
Certainly changes are driven by corporate needs but corporate needs and end users align sometimes.
Agreed, sometimes they do though often they do not so that is why I don't think free software will ever fully supplant proprietary software.
And how much do you think you would need for engine design/development, level design, artists, animators, storywriters, voice actors, motion capture studio rental, music and sound production, etc... ? And then how much time does it take to actually get started with hiring/contracting everybody involved?
The naive approach is just to say "well design it and put it on kickstarter and everything magically happens" but the reality is that decent games requires a lot of work and a lot of people. Yes you can create dinky little flappy birds on a shoestring budget but you don't even need kickstarter for that, decent production games require a lot more.
Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source.
The real problem with his point is that he is so consumed by this idea that we must "get rid of proprietary software" but that is merely a side-effect of successful free software, attacking proprietary software by spreading FUD about it "controlling the user" doesn't make free software any better. We have the choice and by and large people choose proprietary software, not because they don't care about the possibility - however remote - that whatever particular software package they are using may do something seriously nefarious but because free software does not provide a viable alternative.
Prime examples are the content creation, visualization, architecture, engineering, simulation and product design/manufacturing domains. It's all well and good to tell people to use free software but then they wouldn't actually be able to do anything so rather than focusing on spreading Fear Uncertainty and Doubt the focus should be on making free software that is good enough and capable enough to supplant proprietary incumbents. Abolishing proprietary software will come with free software actually being better not by pontificating about what RMS feels people must have.
Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point.
For corporate software yes, not so much for end users. The most common OSS model is support contracts but end users predominantly get their support from community forums, we've seen the advertising model viewed with disdain (and mostly people use adblockers or would patch the software to remove them anyway) then there is paying for enhancements which is another thing end users don't do due to it being prohibitively expensive. Ultimately the changes and improvements to most free software is driven by corporate needs.
The regular citizens pay higher taxes to make up for the company and the politician screwing them.
Why would they be paying higher taxes? That doesn't seem to have any actual basis, what exactly are you suggesting the expense to the state out of this that the taxpayers need to "make up for"?
Microsoft employs >40K employees in the Seattle Metro area, while the other 3.6M residents (literally the 99%) get screwed.
How do they "get screwed"? If the regular citizens "pay higher taxes" then the 40k Microsoft employees are included in that bunch too as they are regular citizens and do not get tax breaks. If the company weren't there you'd have 40,000 people either not paying tax at all, not being there at all or being employed by others and paying the same tax that they already do.
But you always have options, whether that is virtual environments or updating software to the latest version. I know the defeatist attitude is popular when it comes to evangelizing one ideology over another (closed vs open, restrictive vs permissive) but you know there are ways around almost every obstacle, that's what creative thinkers do and in the absence of open source software ruling the world I'd rather look for solutions rather than throw my hands up and cry that it's hopeless.
Most people do update their software, whether they pay a vendor to do it (and that may be open or closed source) or they spend time doing it themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
The way you are using the terms....
Free Software is a proven strategy to create a community of software sharing. Open Source is a proven strategy for getting a piece of software used by commercial vendors.
No, you're wrong again. Clearly you don't have the ability to look at this objectively. Do it again but without the agenda this time.
The only thing free software has proven is that it is a slow follower, the free software PC still doesn't exist (outside some obscure systems with Loongson processors), the free software tablet doesn't exist, the free software phone doesn't exist, the free software smartwatch doesn't exist, etc ... it's proven in the Linux kernel as a base to run other software but outside of that it's just a slow follower of everybody else.
I don't see much value in Open Source.
But the reality is it is used everywhere, the same code is used in both commercial and free software and the decision is on the authors what to contribute back.
Ultimately if you don't care about the four freedoms, then the Open Source just becomes a mechanism for software becoming embedded in commercial applications.
And that's the real clincher, relatively nobody cares about Stallman's 4 freedoms, people care about good software that does the job. Free software has after 30 years still only gained popularity for the sake of convenience, not software freedom because nobody cares about that.
You can't however on the one hand object to GPLers asserting that Open Source doesn't stay meaningfully open and then act like it is no big deal when I explain how the X11 code wasn't open.
It was open, MIT released their open source code and you're just continually excusing the failings of free software on that front and trying to blame MIT and Open Source and proprietary vendors and everybody but the people who actually failed at that time. Why is that?
What you are calling a failure of the free software crew is what the GPL is designed to prevent.
Yes to try to prevent the failure of the free software crew, that's why they invented it, to try to force everybody into their ideology. MIT had different ideas, proprietary vendors had different ideas and the free software ideology is only compatible with those ideas in so far as code licensed such that they can wrap it in a license that conforms to their ideology.
The MIT code was worthless to end users as you admit since it clearly required substantial work to get it to be functional.
Right, work that the free software crew could have done a decade earlier than they did. You think MIT should have chosen Free Software instead of Open Source in an effort to force proprietary vendors to do Free Software, well I'm afraid you can't force people to do what you want and eliminate choice just because you say so.
You are basically saying you have no problem with open source software existing in a worthless form that does nothing but stimulate proprietary closed source applications.
No, you've got it wrong. I have no problem with open source software existing in a form worthless to end users that exists to build a base for additional software closed or open. What you fail to see is a distinction between Free Software and Open Source, or rather you think they should be the same thing.
Also if it did nothing but stimulate proprietary closed source applications then it wouldn't have been used by the free software crew now would it?
And of course the free software crew did add something of value.
Yes, eventually they copied the proprietary Unixes and got something decent but you're still complaining that they didn't do it earlier and that's their fault, stop trying to excuse them and blame everybody else for their failing.
I only saw one brief bit of the stream, and it was where Steve Jobs Wannabe (Tim Cook?) was explaining how no one used camcorders any more because the iPhone could take better video.
Well relatively speaking, that is true.
Which leads to the obvious question: does the iPhone have a replaceable battery and removable storage yet?
No, because provably in most cases where people want to take video they don't require such things.
Because I still have a camcorder hanging around and I use it when I want to take a video that lasts longer than a couple of minutes. The entire reason I have my camcorder is so that I can take two hour videos.
Where do you get the idea that he is saying the iPhone is the one choice for every possible application? Clearly that's not what he meant, but for the vast majority it is. Even if you want to go beyond the iPhone capabilities the camcorder is still mostly useless for example I have an iPhone and a GoPro, that covers all my video recording needs. Camcorders are niche products.
Can't do either of those with an iPhone, making it a toy at taking pictures and video.
And a camcorder is cumbersome and mostly not carried with you, making it pretty useless for capturing anything but pre-planned moments and even then it's only if those times run into the hours-worth of footage that a camcorder becomes useful. So what you characterize as "a toy" is in reality much more practical and useful in the vast majority of cases.
Yes so they sell you an oversized computer to sit in your pocket or purse and then sell you another computer to control that computer. It's marketing genius!
But then the original iPod needed an Apple Mac for it's first generation
Only to do the initial sync of music, not when you're actually out and about using it. The watch requires an iPhone for many of its functions. Regardless of that I don't think I'd be interested in it, I have an iPhone - and will most likely go for the 6 Plus - but this "fitness tracking" fad just makes me thing of all those people who make the new years resolution to get fit and sign up for the gym but never go. Aside from those actually training for events I doubt people will get much use out of all this fitness tracking, it cannot responsibly make actual recommendations anyway.
You mentioned Webkit twice. Webkit is open source because the rendering engine for Webkit is KHTML which was GPLed software.
Part of webkit is LGPL and part is BSD, the BSD parts are available.
XFree86 was BSD386 people mainly and Windows X11 vendors like Hummingbird, not "the Linux crew" for many years. The Linux team didn't fumble they just had to start 10 years behind once they finally got there.
Yes I probably should have said the "free desktop crew" and yes they are the ones that fumbled, late to the game when everybody else had already gotten ahead.
That mistake in creating a codebase that ended up closed source was the result of MIT.
It wasn't a mistake, it was intentional. The codebase created by MIT never ended up closed source, but had many proprietary derivatives, it could have had a free derivative very early on if the free desktop crew had anything of value to contribute.
Blaming the Linux team for problems that existed prior to the existence of Linux is ridiculous.
There were no problems, the free desktop crew just didn't get their act together, but it's all about blaming somebody else for that.
This was MIT's screw up.
It wasn't a screw up, I don't know why you keep saying that except that you have some entitlement complex. Don't blame MIT for the failings of the free desktop.
The goal of open source is to have open source software. MIT resulted in closed source software.
The goal of open source is to share code, whether or not you share it and how much you share is up to the author. Free software is a restrictive ideology, you do it their way your you don't work with them at all, it is an absolutist mentality.
A disaster for open source given all the technologies in IRIX that could have been in the LInuxes and BSDs of the 1990s.
It's only a disaster for open source if you take the view that the free software community could not create anything of value and instead was relying on these vendors to do it for them, they had a good code base and they still failed to do anything with it for nearly a decade. That is the failing of the free desktop crew and nobody else.
Yep. That's right. It makes it unusable for closed source unless they go to the copyright holder and get a proprietary license by writing a check and thus helping to fund the development.
And if you want to do that fine, but complaining that you want MIT's code given to you under your terms so that you can have the code of everybody else also under your terms just proves you cannot add anything of value. The free software community had the opportunity to take the MIT code, create a GPL derivative with something of added value and then - if you are indeed right - the Unix vendors would have used that code. But no, the free software movement failed spectacularly and created nothing of value.
Remember this started with your claim about "functionally useless". Clearly the MIT code which didn't even run on the systems of the 1990s was functionally useless, while the proprietary Unix vendor's X11's were much more advanced.
Right, so nothing was lost, in fact it was a net gain for open source yet you're trying to paint it as a "disaster". Nothing about it is disastrous except the Linux crew's (not the kernel team) fumbling.
So I don't think it is disingenuous. I think we have multiple cases of clear experimental evidence.
You forget or ignore that we also have a track record of many things being available via GPL but not used and proprietary versions created instead - like SGI's closed-source IRIX operating system - as well as use of BSD code that is contributed back - for example Apple's use of LLVM/Clang, Webkit and a great many others. SGI also open sourced its OpenGL implementation and performer API even though they weren't forced to. There are just as many counter-examples of either proprietary versions created or BSD code contributed back.
No one had hardware like SGI's in the late 1980s and early 1990s they could have contributed back. And once that hardware wasn't $20k but rather $200 it would have formed the basis for Linux enhancements.
But the idea that you should have been able to force them to do that is silly. Like I said, MIT created a codebase and the Unix vendors jumped on it, but the Linux crew didn't and that is entirely the fault of the Linux crew. Had MIT not created that codebase the Linux crew would be even further behind, they should be thanking MIT for what they were given, not complaining that other people didn't do all the work for them.
Features like postscript rendering, which still aren't part of X11 would be if Sun had open source
And Sun open sourced many things, yet more proof that you don't need the GPL to force people to do that. If they want to release stuff they will anyway, if they don't then they won't use GPL stuff to begin with.
The idea of the GPL is to make sure it is always common code forever. We have a track record of that working.
It's to make sure that all derivatives are restricted to be licensed under the same terms. This makes it unusable in many applications, Webkit is a great example of the flexibility that you get from permissive licensing over restrictive licensing.
This is precisely what did happen with X-Windows.
No the problem with X-Windows is exactly what you outlined: "The MIT variant open source variant mostly didn't run at all on actual used hardware". The software was effectively useless already and nobody actually made it useful on any hardware. It's not as though Unix vendors came along, created a proprietary fork and suddenly the original code was useless, in fact that is exactly the basis for XFree86 and had MIT decided not to release that code (or licensed it on a proprietary basis) Linux would be even further behind.
So if you say that Linux is say 5 years behind (which may be an underestimate) that's almost 18 years of lost productivity due to a BSD style license.
Because nobody worked on it and the free software community spent years diddling about even after being given the MIT X-Windows code for free! It wasn't useful to begin with and had it not existed in the first place the other Unix vendors would have built their fully proprietary window systems themselves and Linux window managers would have had to develop that initial MIT code themselves putting them even further behind. It's disingenuous to suggest that had it been GPL these Unix vendors would have still used it and released all their code for the Linux crew to take a free ride on.
The basis was there, the free software community dropped the ball, they could have even created a GPL derivative of the original MIT code and when they finally got their shit together at least there was a code-base to work from. You can't just say you want their code and you also want them to subscribe to your ideology and only offer it on terms that restrict what others can do with it. Fair enough if it is your code but it isn't.
Having an original which is available and functionally useless is not a desirable state. It might as well be closed. The versions in use have to be open not the original.
Well the original is hardly going to be "functionally useless", if somebody creates a proprietary fork the original doesn't suddenly become useless and nothing stops anybody from keeping the original going.
However on that point all the versions of the GPL up until v3 fail too, having the code for Tivo available but functionally useless means it might as well be closed. Though I'm inclined to agree with Linus in that quid-pro-quo is more important than ideology. People are never going to agree on ideology but working together is achievable.
You do realize that OpenDarwin had to close shop a few years ago after being screwed over on a continuing basis by Apple's "commitment" to opening the OSX operating system kernel?
They didn't have to close up shop and they weren't "screwed over", the problem was they had virtually no community interest and in the 4 years the project ran for the distributions created simply weren't of any use to anybody. Of course if you create a useless product nobody wants you are going to shut down.
What's the problem?
Well personally I don't think there is one with that model, but have a browse through the comments here sometime and you'll see all manner of people advocating for adblockers and HOSTS files with the "rah rah you have no right to use my bandwidth to show me ads!" mantra. I'm not saying it can't work but certainly if you ask people here it is viewed with disdain.
There has to be some sort of business model to support open source. If it revenue doesn't come from selling software it has to come from selling something. When we talk about consumer software either consumers are going to pay for the software with money, they are going to pay for the software indirectly by buying hardware (like Android) or they are going to pay for the software via. advertising of some sort. There aren't really any other models.
Yeah fair enough. The business of "selling" free software is really non-existent and not everybody requires special hardware for their software that can offset the cost so I agree advertising is really the only option.
The most common form of software is one off individual development for a single company.
Yep, that's why FOSS is so successful in custom setups that deliver services.
Quite a lot of smaller projects, notably ones that target individuals, have voluntary donation based business models - and make enough to keep the developers' bills paid so they can write the software.
For example? I can imagine only the hugely popular ones (like the Humble Bundle) could survive on donation-ware and eve then the Humble Bundle games aren't exclusive to the Humble Bundle.
For quite a few years I maintained a project that was the market-leader in it's class for free software. I never made money out of end-users but I ran a successful business based on selling features to other business.
Yeah, like I said the features are driven by corporations.
Basically - you have no idea how many people successfully do the very things you just claimed nobody does.
And what exactly do you think I claimed nobody does?
No, running Windows does not require Exchange or SharePoint, but please find me a company of any size which doesn't run Outlook and Exchange. It's a de-facto standard in corporations.
So because they don't already it's all hopeless?
That's what I'm talking about with the "platform". It's not just Windows OS, it's the whole MS IT infrastructure that goes along with it in any corporation: Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint, AD, and lots more (don't forget Office). Linux/FOSS can't replace all that, there's still too many missing or broken bits.
Again, the two are not dependent on eachother, you can run Exchange and SharePoint on a server and have your other fileservers and workstations as Linux systems, but that won't happen until the people who use those workstations can actually do their work on them, which is why you need the end user applications.
Corporations "need" Exchange because it provides them email + calendaring
There are plenty of other email servers and plenty of CalDAV servers, but like I said that is just one server in an entire corporation.
But anyway, using Exchange means also using Outlook, and Outlook only runs on Windows.
Yeah totally, none of my Exchange-connected calendars or email works at all on Thunderbird or Mail or on my iPhone or Android tablet ... or maybe those all run Outlook?
Different applications. You (or was it someone else?) were talking about things like engineering, CAD, etc. applications. Those are usually standalone. They're not part of any kind of "infrastructure".
So what? You still have this deluded idea that the "IT infrastructure" running some Microsoft applications creates a dependency for the client systems when it doesn't. The real problem is even if you were right and there really was a dependency then alleviating that still does nothing because ultimately the applications for the client workstations to do any work don't exist.
You can already control the platform, you just can't do anything with it because it lacks the ability to run the required applications.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was possible to deploy "service as a software substitute" in a manner consistent with free software philosophy.
But it's the practicality of it that doesn't work, the same as RMS points out in his The Javascript Trap:
"It is possible to release a JavaScript program as free software, by distributing the source code under a free software license. But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original."
Sure you can release code under the AGPL but that code can call other web services (it does not mandate that other web services - or services of any kind for that matter - be released under the same license) making it impractical to replicate everything on your own system. Moreover whilst you can use the web application from almost any web-connected device you may not even have the hardware to replicate that functionality on your machine even if you have the code.
You do not have control, all you get is the source code that they tell you is compiled into the binary the server is running.
No it doesn't.
Yes, it does. Go to any big corporation and look at their IT department. It's dominated by Windows in the server room. Exchange, probably the most prominent example, only runs on Windows Server. Same with Active Directory. Yes, it's possible to use openldap or whatever, but no one actually does that with a Windows environment.
Right, it's not that you can't, it's that the alternatives aren't advantageous. I'm not sure why you're pushing this agenda that somehow Windows systems are tied to Windows IT infrastructure because that is completely false.
Try running Exchange or SharePoint on Linux.
Those are applications which do not have viable free alternatives. Running Windows does not require that you run Exchange or Sharepoint and running Exchange or Sharepoint on your Windows server does not require that your clients run Windows. You're creating a false dependency to try and justify using Microsoft everywhere.
There's too many parts of the IT infrastructure that just aren't easily replaced by Linux/FOSS. Exchange is the biggest one, since just about every corporation out there relies on it (rightly or wrongly).
Even if you do actually need Exchange for whatever reason that is only one server, the damn thing can be virtualized too if you really want, that creates no dependency on other parts of your infrastructure or workstations.
Other networked applications frequently have the same problem, where they're made to only run on MS infrastructure, but MS components are of course the worst.
Like what? You talk about not needing to create FOSS applications because we need to focus on controlling the "platform" yet now you tell me that the problem isn't the platform but the applications, which is precisely what I told you.
but that one program only affects that one function you do on your computer, it doesn't lock you into an entire IT ecosystem you may not want. The platform being proprietary, however, does; just look at what a lock Microsoft has in the enterprise space.
What "IT ecosystem"? These are workstations, they access file servers, internet, email and their workstation applications including Open/Libre Office that all run just fine on Windows, Linux or OS X and can all be managed with tools like LDAP.
But your use of a proprietary platform (Windows) has a huge effect on your IT systems.
No it doesn't.
What's more, we already have a Free platform with Linux (running on both servers and desktops), it just isn't in widespread use on desktops yet (and by extension, because Windows is used on corporate desktops almost exclusively, they also run Windows servers heavily to interoperate with them).
You don't need Windows Servers to interoperate with them, I'm not sure why you're saying that. What specifically is the problem you are having that you cannot overcome?
We should concentrate on taking over the infrastructure, not the applications. The applications will be ported by their vendors when there's enough demand.
We already can do that, but nobody does it because the applications aren't available. There's no demand for those vendors to port to Linux because their clients don't use Linux and their clients don't use Linux because if they did they wouldn't be able to actually get anything done because the applications they need are not available.
I thought that they made it as closed source as Windows is. Apple isn't exactly forthcoming with anything that they do.
It's all on their website, you can find all the open source components and the source code for them for the latest release of OS X here. You can find more information on other releases and products at http://www.opensource.apple.com.
Android is the most successful OS on the planet, its open.
Well only somewhat, most Android distributions use a proprietary GUI layer, or proprietary Google Play Services and pretty much every single one in use has non-free software for driving the hardware. It's open out of convenience rather than ideology.
Webkit: Firefox and Chrome.
Chrome and Firefox are supported by Google's Ad revenues so yes the end user needs are met in order to drive advertising profit.
Certainly changes are driven by corporate needs but corporate needs and end users align sometimes.
Agreed, sometimes they do though often they do not so that is why I don't think free software will ever fully supplant proprietary software.
And how much do you think you would need for engine design/development, level design, artists, animators, storywriters, voice actors, motion capture studio rental, music and sound production, etc ... ? And then how much time does it take to actually get started with hiring/contracting everybody involved?
The naive approach is just to say "well design it and put it on kickstarter and everything magically happens" but the reality is that decent games requires a lot of work and a lot of people. Yes you can create dinky little flappy birds on a shoestring budget but you don't even need kickstarter for that, decent production games require a lot more.
Plenty of OS X is open source, including the operating system kernel. Only some parts of it are closed source.
Stallman's a bit of an extremist, and wants all software to be open-source.
The real problem with his point is that he is so consumed by this idea that we must "get rid of proprietary software" but that is merely a side-effect of successful free software, attacking proprietary software by spreading FUD about it "controlling the user" doesn't make free software any better. We have the choice and by and large people choose proprietary software, not because they don't care about the possibility - however remote - that whatever particular software package they are using may do something seriously nefarious but because free software does not provide a viable alternative.
Prime examples are the content creation, visualization, architecture, engineering, simulation and product design/manufacturing domains. It's all well and good to tell people to use free software but then they wouldn't actually be able to do anything so rather than focusing on spreading Fear Uncertainty and Doubt the focus should be on making free software that is good enough and capable enough to supplant proprietary incumbents. Abolishing proprietary software will come with free software actually being better not by pontificating about what RMS feels people must have.
Its been 20 years. We've seen lots of successful open source business models by this point.
For corporate software yes, not so much for end users. The most common OSS model is support contracts but end users predominantly get their support from community forums, we've seen the advertising model viewed with disdain (and mostly people use adblockers or would patch the software to remove them anyway) then there is paying for enhancements which is another thing end users don't do due to it being prohibitively expensive. Ultimately the changes and improvements to most free software is driven by corporate needs.
The regular citizens pay higher taxes to make up for the company and the politician screwing them.
Why would they be paying higher taxes? That doesn't seem to have any actual basis, what exactly are you suggesting the expense to the state out of this that the taxpayers need to "make up for"?
Microsoft employs >40K employees in the Seattle Metro area, while the other 3.6M residents (literally the 99%) get screwed.
How do they "get screwed"? If the regular citizens "pay higher taxes" then the 40k Microsoft employees are included in that bunch too as they are regular citizens and do not get tax breaks. If the company weren't there you'd have 40,000 people either not paying tax at all, not being there at all or being employed by others and paying the same tax that they already do.
But you always have options, whether that is virtual environments or updating software to the latest version. I know the defeatist attitude is popular when it comes to evangelizing one ideology over another (closed vs open, restrictive vs permissive) but you know there are ways around almost every obstacle, that's what creative thinkers do and in the absence of open source software ruling the world I'd rather look for solutions rather than throw my hands up and cry that it's hopeless.
Most people do update their software, whether they pay a vendor to do it (and that may be open or closed source) or they spend time doing it themselves.