"1. Full disclosure of the intellectual property, including human readable, compilable source code for any algorithms covered by patent, and programs covered by copyright. (Yes, that means source code for Windows.)"
The problem is that if the source code is viewable, anybody can take it, compile it, and give it out for free (and once it's released, it would be almost impossible for the IP owner to stop it).
"2. Declared value for all intellectual property, with taxes levied based on the value. The owner could set the value at zero in order to escape taxation, but that leads to..."
Why do you want to make it more difficult for businesses? I don't understand this mentality. It will just lead to businesses moving to other countries without these asinine restrictions and there will be less jobs for people in the US. Is this what you want?
"Competitive bidding, where any person or group can offer an amount higher than the declared value to put the property in the public domain. The owner would have the option of matching the bid (and paying taxes on the new declared value), or accepting the money and releasing the property into the public domain."
So if I value my software at $1000 and somebody bids $1001 and wins, it goes into the public domain?
If these laws were in place today, you would see commercial software companies make an immediate jump to SaaS (software as a service) (Microsoft is already starting to this this). No source = no piracy:-).
"This not only encourages new work and allows derivative work, it also forces intellectual property to be used."
This does not encourage new work. It will only encourage companies to stop producing work where these laws are in place.
"No, but I do know that every amateur musician, actor, or author whom i patronize, does. They sure as hell aren't doing it for the money."
Why? because they they can't pay their bills and have to work in shitty clubs? Everyone started somewhere, even tom cruise.
"If amateur artists instead get popular through read-write channels such as YouTube and Kuro5hin and so forth, we will end up with a much more vibrant, diverse cultural landscape, and we won't have to subsidize a whole inflated, elitist, drug-addled industry to access it."
And how are these artists going to pay the bills when nobody wants to buy their music?
"See Air. Air + Breathing = Carbon Based Oxygen Breathing Life"
See Clothing. Wearing clothing has value, and everyone wearing clothing is copying others. If you want to sell software, stop wearing clothing. Except you'd be copying people by not wearing clothing too, so you are SOL."
Neither of these are valid arguments. The scarcity of software is the work it takes to create the original version, not the copies, as many people here are claiming.
If anybody could create photoshop easily, it truly would have no value...but this isn't the case.
"This nasty sumbitch called the supply-demand curve. Value is subjective."
value may be subjective, but that doesn't mean you can just take something when you feel that it isn't worth the asking price.
"The last decade has made it brutally obvious that volume is king. Among industries that whine about piracy hurting theoretical profits, how many have tried *gasp* lowering prices? Should a song really cost more than a hamburger?"
You can get songs for.99 cents on itunes now, so your argument doesn't hold up (piracy is worse than ever). It won't stop until it's price point is $0.
I think it's time to start figuring out how to pirate hamburgers.
"I'm sure Tom Cruise probably does love acting (though there's plenty of evidence against if you've ever watched him ACT) but I know for damn sure that he isn't the richest actor in the country by virtue of being the best, and I am equally sure that we could have given that money to other people who would have used it to make better art."
Again, it's not your money. He may not be the best actor, but he obviously brings in tons of money (and is paid accordingly). There are many people that are the best at what they do, but can't market themselves properly. When the vast majority of people stop paying for the tickets to see his movies, he won't be paid such exorbitant amounts of money (the free market at work once again).
"The problem that I see with the state of pop culture is that it is based on a broadcast model, where there's very few providers of content and a zillion consumers. This was a technological necessity when the press, and later radio and TV and recorded media, were the big things."
It's not the state of pop culture, it's human nature. Even look at online social bookmarking sites as an example. 10-15% of the users post 90% of the content.
In a free market, most mature industries comprise of 2 or 3 large competitors and many smaller ones. The same principals work with actors (who in a sense, are a business entity).
"Tom Cruise, for instance, is worth something close a quarter billion dollars. Would you say he has produced more cultural value than 500 actors would, if in their careers they made half a mill each?"
You didn't pay him..so what's the problem? A person is only worth the amount someone is willing to pay him. Tom Cruise obviously brings in enough revenue to the companies that produce his movies. We don't know if this would be the same with the 500 no-names that you want to put in his place. It's called the free market.
"Because I'd rather buy media produced on small scales, by people who produce for the love of it. They do a better job for less money, and there's more of them to choose from."
How do you know Tom Cruise doesn't love acting? Because he makes too much money? You sound like the kind of person that would get pissed at an indy band that decides to sign a record contract because they "sold out".
"That's why the 4yos and Youtube and so-called piracy will "win" and an archaic business model will be forced to change - you can't do business the same way with material and immaterial."
Yes, you can, because the effort it takes to create applications like photoshop hasn't changed. It still takes teams of developers and a budget.
The next step for the evolution of software (due to piracy and high-speed internet access) is all service-based software. No source-code=no piracy. It's the ultimate lock and key.
I will agree with you when software applications can automatically be created by robots.
"outdated business model viable by creating artificial scarcity who are the real thieves and leeches". And it still stands because it makes sense."
okay, create a full version of photoshop for me without the original copy from adobe. If you can't, there is scarcity.
"I'm a musician myself. I create content and release it under CC 3.0. It's free for personal use, licensable for other uses. That's because I'm a realist, and I know that content is no longer naturally scarce due to our technology."
You are selling yourself short. The scarcity isn't in the copying, it's in the creating. This is what many people fail to realize (or purposely leave out of the discussion).
"People who prefer to live in denial are just holding us all back. Get real or get lost, that's the law of nature. If you don't like it, take it up with with whomever you call god, I didn't cause it. And neither did the people you hope to criminalize with your backwards, obsolete ideas of "how the world should work"."
it's okay. Businesses will adapt. When more people like you decide to steal software, businesses will come out with better locks. The ultimate lock is software as a service.
"Well, all currency is is a symbol of scarcity. The entire point of a dollar is that there are only so many in existence, whereas an illegal copy of Photoshop will shop your photos just as effectively as a legitimate one."
This may be true, but that wasn't the point. The point was that software was difficult to copy in the past and now it's not (just like money)..and you said that it was justified because it could be done easily and at no cost.
The scarcity in something like photoshop is the act of developing and creating it, not the digital copy.
"The 4-year-olds growing up with YouTube are not going to think about data the same way. They are going to feel a deep, bellyfeel inconsistency between the notions that data has value, and that copies of data have value."
And you actually think that when the 4-year-olds are old enough that youtube will still be around in its current form? Youtube sill has yet to turn a profit and the only reason it's still around is because google can take the loss. This won't last forever.
Why is is such a stretch that something that has value costs money? Even if it is a copy, each individual person will get value from it.
"Cars and books and guns all have a physical component which, consistent with the laws of matter, must carry an element of scarcity. but they're going to balk at the notion that scarcity in the world of bits should be created where it doesn't occur naturally."
The bits aren't the scarcity with software, movies, or anything digital. The scarcity is the talent that it takes to put the bits in that order (the developers, artists, and producers create this order), which can't be replicated easily.
"The bits-for-money industries will never die completely, as people want to watch/listen to/play stuff and will pay for it. But I assert that the produce-once-sell-indefinitely model is doomed, just because it's inconsistent with what information is."
The bits-for-money industries are the sole reason why they are available for you to download and enjoy. Without any kind of commercial industry, all of the content will be gone.
"Not wrong, but maybe unrealistic. Technology has brought us to the point where bits can be duplicated to any new format or context for basically no cost. The old business model of selling "copies" of information, depended entirely on the fact that that was hard to do."
Currency, such as the US dollar can also be copied pretty easily due to technology (and technology will only get better). Should we allow this too?
"So the question is: Are we going to give up on the idea that you can produce a particular collection of bits once and then sell it as many times as you like, or are we going to outlaw the general-purpose computer?"
It can sometimes takes thousands of man hours and millions of dollars to create a particular piece of software. The reason something like Adobe Photoshop doesn't cost a million or more dollars for a copy is because it is essentially subsidized by the many people that purchase it for a couple of hundred.
We will give up on that idea of selling on a per-copy basis when:
1) people are willing to accept that there will be almost no commercial software for the masses (because it will be so expensive) or
2) all software is service based.
#2 seems more likely. As more and more people get high-speed internet and piracy increases, more companies are going to be forced to go to service based software.
"Oh. My. GOD. You really are dumb. First, is stealing the only bad thing in the world? What a moron. I specifically said, it's not stealing but it is wrong. FAIL."
FAIL, is that how you try to win all arguments?
"Next, NO ONE in this forum wants to do away with copyrights. We are not idiots. We know that the GPL depends on copyright. Ass."
you really should re-think this statement.
"Check it: rape isn't stealing, but it is wrong. Do we disagree on that? Murder also isn't stealing, but it is wrong. Copyright infringement isn't stealing, but it is wrong. See how that works? Is your view that every crime in the world is stealing?"
No, we are talking about copyright infringement. I'm not sure why you are bringing rape and murder into our discussion.
"How dense are you? I have a feeling you know that you are flat out wrong here, but you are too proud to back down. But it's juts making you look even stupider, give it a rest, just admit that you fucked up and drastically misinterpreted something."
Are you really this narcissistic?
"No more, I'm done with you. It isn't worth it conversing with a fucking moron who is too proud to admit they are being an absolute idiot and alienating someone WHO AGREES WITH THEM. Copyright infringement is morally wrong, I said so before, but that's not good enough for you, it has to be exactly equivalent to stealing. Which is the most idiotic thing I've heard in a long time.
Fuck off."
waaah waaah..the little boy is going to take his toys and go home.
"Closed source doesn't work very well within an open/free environment such as a GNU/Linux distribution since they are distributed as binaries, these binaries are linked with libraries."
Exactly. This is one of the main problems with linux. It has too many distributions. It almost forces anybody that wants to release software for linux to open source it (if they want to support the majority of distros).
This also means that most commercial software vendors will stay away from it (this combined with the fact that the overall community is against paying for almost anything). Linux needs the support of commercial software vendors to be successful (I define success as a much larger percentage in the desktop market..maybe 20 or 30%).
"Closed source applications in GNU/Linux leads to a lot of problems, problems that the community can't fix. GNU and Linux are designed for open/free applications and it simply mixes very badly with closed source stuff."
I think the linux community should be thankful that a company is releasing software or drivers for linux in the first place (in the desktop market at least, it has a 1-3% marketshare...most companies wouldn't even bother spending the time or resources for such a small percentage of their user base). Would you rather have skype, adobe flash, ati/nvidia drivers, or nothing?
"I gave you a chance to reread what I wrote. You obviously didn't. What, exactly, do we disagree on, hmmmm?
Here's a little quiz to test your reading comprehension.
1.) Do I claim copyright infringement is moral or in any way acceptable?"
yes. Here is what you posted: "It's not stealing as copying does not deprive the original owner of anything. Copyright is an artificial monopoly provided by the government as an incentive to create and release creative works."
"2.) Do I say I want a world without copyrights?"
no, I never said you did. So many people in this forum do however (and so does the FSF). This post was an example for all to enjoy. This forum doesn't revolve around you.
"3.) Do you and I disagree over copyrights?"
If you think copyright infringement isn't considered stealing, then yes.
"Even giving you a chance to go back and correct your misinterpretations, you refused, obviously believing there was no way you could have misread what I said. No, obviously "I need to learn" that when you completely miss the point of something, it doesn't mean you missed the point of something. --"
giving me the chance? don't be so smug, it makes you look like an asshole. I read your post, I don't agree with what you said about copyright infringement and I even added something to the conversation and explained my view.
Your post offered nothing new in regards to copyright. I have been hearing the exact same thing in this forum since napster came out in 99, so get over yourself.
"I am continually amazed at the poor reading comprehension skills of most Slashdot readers. Being geeks, and used to skimming quickly through written material, said readers come to something they don't agree with, and their comprehension shuts off as they formulate a reply in their heads."
Just because I don't agree with your stance on copyright does not mean I missed your point or "skimmed quickly".
"It's not stealing as copying does not deprive the original owner of anything. Copyright is an artificial monopoly provided by the government as an incentive to create and release creative works."
It's worse than stealing, because one person could potentially ruin an entire companies business by making it easy for everyone to get their game, software, or movie for free (which means people aren't buying..and the company will eventually lose money). I think it's actually closer to counterfeiting.
I don't think you want to be in a world without copyrights. The GNU would not exist and companies could legally take code, close it up, and not have to give anything back. We might actually see less open source. You could freely share software, but it might still be proprietary.
I love these discussions because many of the same people that say it isn't stealing will say that people are "ripping off" code when the GNU license is violated (and the same arguments can be used in that situation..the original owner isn't deprived and therefore it isn't stealing).
"You compare 'company making money' with 'desktop market' . You never heard of servers ? They make the most difference in money , and a high percentage of those is running Linux , because it's a lot cheaper , and just as good."
I think it was obvious when I mentioned OSX, which is a desktop OS. When I talk about not being able to make money with linux, I am talking about the fact that the majority of linux users aren't willing to pay for software applications written for it (and also expect it to be open source)..which means no software market.
"Actually, they are robbing the rich and the poor, with their lock-in monopoly. And then they pass a fraction of their loot back down to the poor and say "look how good we are" after which they invest the rest of the loot in more anti-competitive practices, here and in third world countries."
How is microsoft a lock-in monopoly?
1) You can use open-office to view nearly all MS-office formats 2) many distros of linux are now available in retail stores 3)don't like exchange? go here http://opengroupware.org/ (this is one example..there are many) 4) apache/php/mysql competes with iis/asp/MSSQL
The open source community needs to stop bitching about Microsoft and start writing better software.
"Consider governments. They buy Microsoft products and the money comes from the national budgets. If they wouldn't buy the products, they could spend the money e.g. to health care (usually direct benefit for the poor) or they could even donate some of it to the countries that are more need of money."
The point is that the money could be spend on something more important. And usually at least some of it helps the poor also."
Even if governments used free software, they would still have to pay for support (which is the majority of software costs) and this wouldn't go away.
"How about a look at the big picture? Gates & co. are robbing the rich, and giving a fraction of this money to the poor. The alternative could be that we used Free software, and instead of the money going to Microsoft, it could go more directly towards helping the poor."
robbing from the rich? People choose to buy windows, they aren't forced. Microsoft is no longer a monopoly (you can find many linux distros in retail stores).
Just because the "rich" choose not to use free software, doesn't mean they are being robbed.
"No company can use the work of others on Linux to engage in adversarial, tricky, sneaky behavior."
More like, no company can use linux to make money, which is exactly the reason why OSX now has a 6% desktop market share and linux is still in the bottom 1%.
As the GNU 3 (and now the AGPL) become more popular (and more restrictive), businesses will start to reject all forms of open source.
"* Forks and other free competition can arise (the market is contestable)."
as an aside, innovation is also stifled with free software. Look at VNC as an example. Almost all of the remote viewing software packages out there are based on the original source..which is sloppy, buggy, and not very efficient. If it was closed source, many of these same companies would have been forced to develop their own version (which may have been better), which would have better for consumers.
" * Non-free software that is sufficiently good as to be worth the price can arise and/or persist.
* Once uncompetitive products have gone to the wall, terms and conditions (including price) do not change.
Protection of competition does not mean protection from competitors."
What is the point of trying to compete when you lose your edge as soon as you release your product/application?
"Oh be creative! Free software is, as far as the whole of society is concerned, much cheaper than proprietary software, because society only has to pay to solve (the software portion of) a particular problem once. Therefore, if problems are solved using free software instead of proprietary software, society will have a lot of money left over to spend on fixing disease, starvation, etc."
The cost of actual software is very little compared the cost of support, which is still a significant cost when using "free" software.
"When you consider how much money Microsoft drains from various countries' economies, it's easy to see how the money could be put to better use."
If you want someone to blame for starvation and death in various countries around the world, don't blame Microsoft..blame the countries government..they are most likely the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
"1. Full disclosure of the intellectual property, including human readable, compilable source code for any algorithms covered by patent, and programs covered by copyright. (Yes, that means source code for Windows.)"
The problem is that if the source code is viewable, anybody can take it, compile it, and give it out for free (and once it's released, it would be almost impossible for the IP owner to stop it).
"2. Declared value for all intellectual property, with taxes levied based on the value. The owner could set the value at zero in order to escape taxation, but that leads to..."
Why do you want to make it more difficult for businesses? I don't understand this mentality. It will just lead to businesses moving to other countries without these asinine restrictions and there will be less jobs for people in the US. Is this what you want?
"Competitive bidding, where any person or group can offer an amount higher than the declared value to put the property in the public domain. The owner would have the option of matching the bid (and paying taxes on the new declared value), or accepting the money and releasing the property into the public domain."
So if I value my software at $1000 and somebody bids $1001 and wins, it goes into the public domain?
If these laws were in place today, you would see commercial software companies make an immediate jump to SaaS (software as a service) (Microsoft is already starting to this this). No source = no piracy :-).
"This not only encourages new work and allows derivative work, it also forces intellectual property to be used."
This does not encourage new work. It will only encourage companies to stop producing work where these laws are in place.
"No, but I do know that every amateur musician, actor, or author whom i patronize, does. They sure as hell aren't doing it for the money."
Why? because they they can't pay their bills and have to work in shitty clubs? Everyone started somewhere, even tom cruise.
"If amateur artists instead get popular through read-write channels such as YouTube and Kuro5hin and so forth, we will end up with a much more vibrant, diverse cultural landscape, and we won't have to subsidize a whole inflated, elitist, drug-addled industry to access it."
And how are these artists going to pay the bills when nobody wants to buy their music?
"See Air. Air + Breathing = Carbon Based Oxygen Breathing Life"
See Clothing. Wearing clothing has value, and everyone wearing clothing is copying others. If you want to sell software, stop wearing clothing. Except you'd be copying people by not wearing clothing too, so you are SOL."
Neither of these are valid arguments. The scarcity of software is the work it takes to create the original version, not the copies, as many people here are claiming.
If anybody could create photoshop easily, it truly would have no value...but this isn't the case.
"This nasty sumbitch called the supply-demand curve. Value is subjective."
value may be subjective, but that doesn't mean you can just take something when you feel that it isn't worth the asking price.
"The last decade has made it brutally obvious that volume is king. Among industries that whine about piracy hurting theoretical profits, how many have tried *gasp* lowering prices? Should a song really cost more than a hamburger?"
You can get songs for .99 cents on itunes now, so your argument doesn't hold up (piracy is worse than ever). It won't stop until it's price point is $0.
I think it's time to start figuring out how to pirate hamburgers.
"I'm sure Tom Cruise probably does love acting (though there's plenty of evidence against if you've ever watched him ACT) but I know for damn sure that he isn't the richest actor in the country by virtue of being the best, and I am equally sure that we could have given that money to other people who would have used it to make better art."
Again, it's not your money. He may not be the best actor, but he obviously brings in tons of money (and is paid accordingly). There are many people that are the best at what they do, but can't market themselves properly. When the vast majority of people stop paying for the tickets to see his movies, he won't be paid such exorbitant amounts of money (the free market at work once again).
"The problem that I see with the state of pop culture is that it is based on a broadcast model, where there's very few providers of content and a zillion consumers. This was a technological necessity when the press, and later radio and TV and recorded media, were the big things."
It's not the state of pop culture, it's human nature. Even look at online social bookmarking sites as an example. 10-15% of the users post 90% of the content.
In a free market, most mature industries comprise of 2 or 3 large competitors and many smaller ones. The same principals work with actors (who in a sense, are a business entity).
"Tom Cruise, for instance, is worth something close a quarter billion dollars. Would you say he has produced more cultural value than 500 actors would, if in their careers they made half a mill each?"
You didn't pay him..so what's the problem? A person is only worth the amount someone is willing to pay him. Tom Cruise obviously brings in enough revenue to the companies that produce his movies. We don't know if this would be the same with the 500 no-names that you want to put in his place. It's called the free market.
"Because I'd rather buy media produced on small scales, by people who produce for the love of it. They do a better job for less money, and there's more of them to choose from."
How do you know Tom Cruise doesn't love acting? Because he makes too much money? You sound like the kind of person that would get pissed at an indy band that decides to sign a record contract because they "sold out".
This post stinks of class-envy.
"That's why the 4yos and Youtube and so-called piracy will "win" and an archaic business model will be forced to change - you can't do business the same way with material and immaterial."
Yes, you can, because the effort it takes to create applications like photoshop hasn't changed. It still takes teams of developers and a budget.
The next step for the evolution of software (due to piracy and high-speed internet access) is all service-based software. No source-code=no piracy. It's the ultimate lock and key.
I will agree with you when software applications can automatically be created by robots.
"Maybe A-list celebrities will cease to exist.
I can't wait."
Now you post makes sense. You are jealous. Why should an a-list celebrity bother you?
"outdated business model viable by creating artificial scarcity who are the real thieves and leeches". And it still stands because it makes sense."
okay, create a full version of photoshop for me without the original copy from adobe. If you can't, there is scarcity.
"I'm a musician myself. I create content and release it under CC 3.0. It's free for personal use, licensable for other uses. That's because I'm a realist, and I know that content is no longer naturally scarce due to our technology."
You are selling yourself short. The scarcity isn't in the copying, it's in the creating. This is what many people fail to realize (or purposely leave out of the discussion).
"People who prefer to live in denial are just holding us all back. Get real or get lost, that's the law of nature. If you don't like it, take it up with with whomever you call god, I didn't cause it. And neither did the people you hope to criminalize with your backwards, obsolete ideas of "how the world should work"."
it's okay. Businesses will adapt. When more people like you decide to steal software, businesses will come out with better locks. The ultimate lock is software as a service.
"Well, all currency is is a symbol of scarcity. The entire point of a dollar is that there are only so many in existence, whereas an illegal copy of Photoshop will shop your photos just as effectively as a legitimate one."
This may be true, but that wasn't the point. The point was that software was difficult to copy in the past and now it's not (just like money)..and you said that it was justified because it could be done easily and at no cost.
The scarcity in something like photoshop is the act of developing and creating it, not the digital copy.
"The 4-year-olds growing up with YouTube are not going to think about data the same way. They are going to feel a deep, bellyfeel inconsistency between the notions that data has value, and that copies of data have value."
And you actually think that when the 4-year-olds are old enough that youtube will still be around in its current form? Youtube sill has yet to turn a profit and the only reason it's still around is because google can take the loss. This won't last forever.
Why is is such a stretch that something that has value costs money? Even if it is a copy, each individual person will get value from it.
"Cars and books and guns all have a physical component which, consistent with the laws of matter, must carry an element of scarcity. but they're going to balk at the notion that scarcity in the world of bits should be created where it doesn't occur naturally."
The bits aren't the scarcity with software, movies, or anything digital. The scarcity is the talent that it takes to put the bits in that order (the developers, artists, and producers create this order), which can't be replicated easily.
"The bits-for-money industries will never die completely, as people want to watch/listen to/play stuff and will pay for it. But I assert that the produce-once-sell-indefinitely model is doomed, just because it's inconsistent with what information is."
The bits-for-money industries are the sole reason why they are available for you to download and enjoy. Without any kind of commercial industry, all of the content will be gone.
"Not wrong, but maybe unrealistic. Technology has brought us to the point where bits can be duplicated to any new format or context for basically no cost. The old business model of selling "copies" of information, depended entirely on the fact that that was hard to do."
Currency, such as the US dollar can also be copied pretty easily due to technology (and technology will only get better). Should we allow this too?
"So the question is: Are we going to give up on the idea that you can produce a particular collection of bits once and then sell it as many times as you like, or are we going to outlaw the general-purpose computer?"
It can sometimes takes thousands of man hours and millions of dollars to create a particular piece of software. The reason something like Adobe Photoshop doesn't cost a million or more dollars for a copy is because it is essentially subsidized by the many people that purchase it for a couple of hundred.
We will give up on that idea of selling on a per-copy basis when:
1) people are willing to accept that there will be almost no commercial software for the masses (because it will be so expensive) or
2) all software is service based.
#2 seems more likely. As more and more people get high-speed internet and piracy increases, more companies are going to be forced to go to service based software.
"Oh. My. GOD. You really are dumb. First, is stealing the only bad thing in the world? What a moron. I specifically said, it's not stealing but it is wrong. FAIL."
FAIL, is that how you try to win all arguments?
"Next, NO ONE in this forum wants to do away with copyrights. We are not idiots. We know that the GPL depends on copyright. Ass."
you really should re-think this statement.
"Check it: rape isn't stealing, but it is wrong. Do we disagree on that? Murder also isn't stealing, but it is wrong. Copyright infringement isn't stealing, but it is wrong. See how that works? Is your view that every crime in the world is stealing?"
No, we are talking about copyright infringement. I'm not sure why you are bringing rape and murder into our discussion.
"How dense are you? I have a feeling you know that you are flat out wrong here, but you are too proud to back down. But it's juts making you look even stupider, give it a rest, just admit that you fucked up and drastically misinterpreted something."
Are you really this narcissistic?
"No more, I'm done with you. It isn't worth it conversing with a fucking moron who is too proud to admit they are being an absolute idiot and alienating someone WHO AGREES WITH THEM. Copyright infringement is morally wrong, I said so before, but that's not good enough for you, it has to be exactly equivalent to stealing. Which is the most idiotic thing I've heard in a long time.
Fuck off."
waaah waaah..the little boy is going to take his toys and go home.
FAIL (did I win the argument?)
"Closed source doesn't work very well within an open/free environment such as a GNU/Linux distribution since they are distributed as binaries, these binaries are linked with libraries."
Exactly. This is one of the main problems with linux. It has too many distributions. It almost forces anybody that wants to release software for linux to open source it (if they want to support the majority of distros).
This also means that most commercial software vendors will stay away from it (this combined with the fact that the overall community is against paying for almost anything). Linux needs the support of commercial software vendors to be successful (I define success as a much larger percentage in the desktop market..maybe 20 or 30%).
"Closed source applications in GNU/Linux leads to a lot of problems, problems that the community can't fix. GNU and Linux are designed for open/free applications and it simply mixes very badly with closed source stuff."
I think the linux community should be thankful that a company is releasing software or drivers for linux in the first place (in the desktop market at least, it has a 1-3% marketshare...most companies wouldn't even bother spending the time or resources for such a small percentage of their user base). Would you rather have skype, adobe flash, ati/nvidia drivers, or nothing?
"I gave you a chance to reread what I wrote. You obviously didn't. What, exactly, do we disagree on, hmmmm?
Here's a little quiz to test your reading comprehension.
1.) Do I claim copyright infringement is moral or in any way acceptable?"
yes. Here is what you posted: "It's not stealing as copying does not deprive the original owner of anything. Copyright is an artificial monopoly provided by the government as an incentive to create and release creative works."
"2.) Do I say I want a world without copyrights?"
no, I never said you did. So many people in this forum do however (and so does the FSF). This post was an example for all to enjoy. This forum doesn't revolve around you.
"3.) Do you and I disagree over copyrights?"
If you think copyright infringement isn't considered stealing, then yes.
"Even giving you a chance to go back and correct your misinterpretations, you refused, obviously believing there was no way you could have misread what I said. No, obviously "I need to learn" that when you completely miss the point of something, it doesn't mean you missed the point of something.
--"
giving me the chance? don't be so smug, it makes you look like an asshole. I read your post, I don't agree with what you said about copyright infringement and I even added something to the conversation and explained my view.
Your post offered nothing new in regards to copyright. I have been hearing the exact same thing in this forum since napster came out in 99, so get over yourself.
"I am continually amazed at the poor reading comprehension skills of most Slashdot readers. Being geeks, and used to skimming quickly through written material, said readers come to something they don't agree with, and their comprehension shuts off as they formulate a reply in their heads."
Just because I don't agree with your stance on copyright does not mean I missed your point or "skimmed quickly".
This is what you need to learn.
"It's not stealing as copying does not deprive the original owner of anything. Copyright is an artificial monopoly provided by the government as an incentive to create and release creative works."
It's worse than stealing, because one person could potentially ruin an entire companies business by making it easy for everyone to get their game, software, or movie for free (which means people aren't buying..and the company will eventually lose money). I think it's actually closer to counterfeiting.
I don't think you want to be in a world without copyrights. The GNU would not exist and companies could legally take code, close it up, and not have to give anything back. We might actually see less open source. You could freely share software, but it might still be proprietary.
I love these discussions because many of the same people that say it isn't stealing will say that people are "ripping off" code when the GNU license is violated (and the same arguments can be used in that situation..the original owner isn't deprived and therefore it isn't stealing).
"You compare 'company making money' with 'desktop market' . You never heard of servers ? They make the most difference in money , and a high percentage of those is running Linux , because it's a lot cheaper , and just as good ."
I think it was obvious when I mentioned OSX, which is a desktop OS. When I talk about not being able to make money with linux, I am talking about the fact that the majority of linux users aren't willing to pay for software applications written for it (and also expect it to be open source)..which means no software market.
"Actually, they are robbing the rich and the poor, with their lock-in monopoly. And then they pass a fraction of their loot back down to the poor and say "look how good we are" after which they invest the rest of the loot in more anti-competitive practices, here and in third world countries."
How is microsoft a lock-in monopoly?
1) You can use open-office to view nearly all MS-office formats
2) many distros of linux are now available in retail stores
3)don't like exchange? go here http://opengroupware.org/ (this is one example..there are many)
4) apache/php/mysql competes with iis/asp/MSSQL
The open source community needs to stop bitching about Microsoft and start writing better software.
"Consider governments. They buy Microsoft products and the money comes from the national budgets. If they wouldn't buy the products, they could spend the money e.g. to health care (usually direct benefit for the poor) or they could even donate some of it to the countries that are more need of money."
The point is that the money could be spend on something more important. And usually at least some of it helps the poor also."
Even if governments used free software, they would still have to pay for support (which is the majority of software costs) and this wouldn't go away.
"How about a look at the big picture? Gates & co. are robbing the rich, and giving a fraction of this money to the poor. The alternative could be that we used Free software, and instead of the money going to Microsoft, it could go more directly towards helping the poor."
robbing from the rich? People choose to buy windows, they aren't forced. Microsoft is no longer a monopoly (you can find many linux distros in retail stores).
Just because the "rich" choose not to use free software, doesn't mean they are being robbed.
"No company can use the work of others on Linux to engage in adversarial, tricky, sneaky behavior."
More like, no company can use linux to make money, which is exactly the reason why OSX now has a 6% desktop market share and linux is still in the bottom 1%.
As the GNU 3 (and now the AGPL) become more popular (and more restrictive), businesses will start to reject all forms of open source.
"
And your statements means you must be over 50.
Given the relative number of voting years left to each of you (the "boy" and you), he's incredibly more important to the country than you are.
Kindly die before social security kicks in.
Thanks."
so was I right?
"* Forks and other free competition can arise (the market is contestable)."
as an aside, innovation is also stifled with free software. Look at VNC as an example. Almost all of the remote viewing software packages out there are based on the original source..which is sloppy, buggy, and not very efficient. If it was closed source, many of these same companies would have been forced to develop their own version (which may have been better), which would have better for consumers.
" * Non-free software that is sufficiently good as to be worth the price can arise and/or persist.
* Once uncompetitive products have gone to the wall, terms and conditions (including price) do not change.
Protection of competition does not mean protection from competitors."
What is the point of trying to compete when you lose your edge as soon as you release your product/application?
"Oh be creative! Free software is, as far as the whole of society is concerned, much cheaper than proprietary software, because society only has to pay to solve (the software portion of) a particular problem once. Therefore, if problems are solved using free software instead of proprietary software, society will have a lot of money left over to spend on fixing disease, starvation, etc."
The cost of actual software is very little compared the cost of support, which is still a significant cost when using "free" software.
"When you consider how much money Microsoft drains from various countries' economies, it's easy to see how the money could be put to better use."
If you want someone to blame for starvation and death in various countries around the world, don't blame Microsoft..blame the countries government..they are most likely the problem.