Rather ungrateful like that, aren't they? I mean, it seems virus-scanner companies and MS have had a long relationship where they needed each other to survive. If virus scanners weren't around, Windows would probably have become unacceptable for a lot of businesses. Similarly, if Windows wasn't crap, virus scanner companies wouldn't have a market to target.
Now Microsoft is moving into their market, and will be selling both a problem and the solution to that problem. Nice.
THe problem isn't Microsoft. It's the fact that the average user believes emails that say "Please click the following link....". I think if people were a little more educated, the virus/worm issue would be a non-issue.
Even if you had a very secure system, a worm/virus would still spread.
To use it, ofcourse. But what would YOUR incentive to release it closed-source be?
to make money of course. I don't want my competitors to have an advantage.
I don't understand the point you try to make. The world today is better and optimized for the user, but that is true of software not protected by copyright too. The overall quality of software has definitely not improved, and a lot of the lower quality is a direct result of copyright (Copyright is a direct incentive to create lower-quality software in order to milk your lock-ins for their entire worth of money, and in order to create lock-in in the first place).
once again. You are not forced to use any piece of proprietary software. Feel locked in? use something else.
My point here is that without copyright, there would be software for the average user too, and the corporations are not to thank for this
There is software now for all users. The average user does not understand what a compiler is or want to look at the source. Corporations brought software into the hands of the average user.
You are confusing multiple issues. I claim that copyright should be abolished. I claim that once copyright is abolished, closed-source would become not beneficial, and closed-source apps would be unable to compete with opensource ones. This would result in an almost total annahilation of closed-source apps. I still believe you should have the freedom to release anything with or without the source. But releasing software with copyright protection is not a freedom, it is a power, and that power should be taken away.
If copyright was abolished, the closed source software business would just become more lucrative (and the average user would just get less quality software). Most companies would still sell closed-source software, but prices would go from $10-$300 a copy to $10,0000 (or a very large amount) a copy (because the person buying it will be allowed to copy and give it away to anyone they want).
or, all coporations selling software would turn their product into a web-app of sorts (with high-speed Internet becoming more and more available, this seems like the most likely outcome). It's already happening. It's a great thing from a company perspective, because it reduces copright infringement to nothing (no source = no open source).
Next, I claim that everyone would benefit from this, indirectly. Alice benefits if Bob's product is opensource even if she can't read code, because Jones will read the code and publish if it has malware in it, ruining Bob's reputation. Thus, Bob would never even dare putting malware in there in the first place.
Most spyware is attached to a company that you can contact directly. Programs released with spyware are attached to a name and a company. No reputation is hurt. People are just making money.
All these claims just say that copyright abolishment will lead to virtually everything becoming opensource software which will lead to better software and freedom for everyone. They DO NOT mean that opensource software today while copyright exists is of higher technical quality than closed-source software, and thus your claim that people don't all use opensource is moot. Its just irrelevant.
Everyone can use it. Most people just don't give a fuck about it.
Do you know how much effort was put into Openoffice in order for it to be able to read Microsoft Word? And it still doesn't do it well. Think of all the wasted man-years reverse-engineering Microsoft's secret formats. And ofcourse Openoffice will fail to read the next Office version of documents. Copyright is responsible for this huge waste of man-years
boo hoo. So people can't figure out Microsoft's format. Tough shit. Open office is a competitor to Microsoft.
Open source should be leading and not following. Too many projects are just following proprietary ones, which means they will always be a step behind.
GPL wins. A professor may not bother that people close his code, but companies do, so lots of developers never see the BSD kernels, nor work with it. And the word doesn't spread, so people don't consider it.
Most software companies don't want their code open in the first place. As a software company, it's not very smart to use the GPL license to release your own code. Your competitors can basically use your product against you and you can't do anything about it.
Free Software is normally used by companies that want to decrease the expense of building it themselves. It's much more cost effective to take someone else's code (especially if its free of charge) to build a product.
Please note that that is not a "freedom" but a "power". The difference is that by releasing it closed-source and enforcing it by copyright you are restricting the freedoms of others, not gaining any freedom yourself.
if there was no copyright, I would still release my software closed-source. Then what would you say the reason for people copying it? to learn from the binary code?
Why are you assuming that this is a bad thing? The US would have the economic advantage of being able to freely and legally copy all of the world's software, while also funding the Free Software development via a tax.
we don't need to fund the development, people enjoy releasing software for free, remember? isn't that one of the major ideals of the OSS community?
This tax's distribution to the opensource developers could be done via votes or other methods that take away the power from the government and put it in the hands of the people. This reduces the problem of bribes and other such manipulations.
This would be about as easy to enforce as charging.10 per email. If there was a law in the U.S. and I released my software as closed-source..would police come and bust down my doors to release it?
Note that Multics, UNIX, Lisp, Fortran, C compilers, etc. were all developed before software copyrights were enforced and copyright-driven money was put into the business.
true, but at that time, only universities and a very small percentage of the population had access to a computer. It took big businesses and money to bring the desktop to the average user and the Internet as we know it. It's filled with a lot of shit, but it's also a very powerful tool.
Also consider the amount of adware, spyware, DRM and other malicious behaviours users are experiencing when using their computer, and this problem is only getting worse. This problem is completely solved with opensource.
hammers and knives are used to kill people every day. They shouldn't be banned either.
Nothing is solved with open source. Most people will never look at the source. If a worm can spread by merely telling someone to open an attachemnt, how is open source going to help the situation at all?
Adaware and spyware can be prevented with education (a lot of things in life are like this). I use firefox as my main browser and haven't had an issue with spyware/adaware for at least two years.
Linux doesn't have spyware because it is not in the best interest of a business to create it (less than 20% of the desktops on the internet). If linux had just as much market share as windows, it would have just as much spyware (it's very easy to trick a user into installing something).
At this point in time, you have the freedom to release software as open or closed source. You want to take away that freedom. Closed source software is still around for a reason. I think if the people desired all open source, they would be using hurd or linux.
Businesses only like open source because it costs no money. It has nothing to do with freedom. As the GPL starts getting more restrictive, the free software movement will become more of a hobby and less of a viable model.
People would be able to use all software they could benefit from, rather than just the software they can afford. Currently, this is not true because there are huge copyright-driven companies who have a very strong incentive to make opensource software not viable. They successfully make it too expensive in order to be viable by creating and standardizing secret formats (Office), attaching their OS and software to OEM's so that everyone not in the know gets to start with their OS, etc. Without a monetary incentive to harm opensource efforts, it would become far more viable and the entire population would be exposed to vast amounts of software
Education is the key once again. Computers are cheaper than ever. I can get a new dell computer with windows and an assortmen
A software tax lets everyone keep their rights to copy anything and creates a decent incentive to create software for those pieces of software that would theoretically not be created for free. If you buy any piece of software at all today, you are already paying more than a software tax would be. Note that a software tax is not proposed in addition to closed-source software payments but instead of those. i.e: All software would become free (as in freedom) and paid by the tax.
What you are proposing is basically making software a government run monopoly. If this were to happen, most U.S. software companies would immediately go to a country where they could sell it without having to release their source.
I enjoy the freedom I have to release a piece of software closed-source, for any price that I wish (if it's too expensive, the market will let me know, and I will lower the price).
As a consumer, you do not have to buy expensive software.
You are also forgetting that money drives technology. Without big business interest, we would still be in the computer stone age.
There aren't enough people in this world that would even benefit from having all software open source.
Most people could give a flying fuck. They just want software application X to work. Even big open source projects only have a handful of developers that are actually making contributions.
They say life is like a marathon, not a sprint. Richard Stallman has his eyes on the horizon and his train is bound for glory. To those who've dissed RMS, I say: you've had your day. You've called RMS an irrelevant old hippie and a crazed zealot. But take a look at the big picture. The Linux kernel isn't everything. It's an interchangeable part of something bigger. Principles are enduring, and Stallman's license is based on enduring principles. Richard, here's to you, for standing firm.
if we didn't have the GNU license around, linux would have just been released under a different one. I think we would probably be at the same point.
You see, one of the main aims of the GPL v3 is to stop Trusted Computing from being used *against* the owner of a machine. With the previous version of the GPL, it's quite possible for the likes of IBM to build computers based around Linux, which you cannot modify. You can't recompile the kernel, because the hardware will reject it, or at the very least report that it is "untrusted". You can't recreate the software because you can't sign the binary. You have lost the right to modify that program. DRM comes into it because DRM is all about preventing the modification of code and controlling the code that can access certain data (and, btw, need I remind you that code is also digital data and subject to DRM).
This is a nice idea, but if all the major hardware manufacturers started using DRM, we would just see a major decrease in linux support. I think Stallman is trying to leverage power that he does not possess.
A free software tax is somewhat similar to a road tax. Not everybody uses roads, but most people do, and everyone does indirectly. There is a concensus that roads should be built by the government via a tax, and this is not considered evil coercion. Why is a similar software development model considered coercion?
a free software tax is just as evil as the canadian blank-CD tax.
Roads cost money to build. Supplies aren't cheap. Free software is built by people that enjoy building software..for free. If they wanted to make money on it, they should have released it a commercial application.
When you read between the lines, the FSF is just another organization that is trying to gain more power and control.
I truly believe that the only people that want "freedom" for software will release it under the public domain.
Since this would be a direct violation of the GPL. You would be using someone else's copyrighted work against their wishes.
hmm, now you are starting to sound like the BSA. I thought it was about "freedom".
anyway, I know it would be a violation, I just think it is less about freedom and more about control.
The GPL doesn't need one of the main clauses that forces a user of the source to re-release the source. There would still be lots of free software around, but with true freedom..the ability to do what you want with it.
The software has been made de facto proprietary. Only IBM can sign the binary with the correct key... only IBM can modify it and still have it run correctly (in case you are confused, pretty soon all new PCs will contain the hardware to enforce this). The GPL v3 says that you must pass on this right to the people who use the software... in this case, the key you used to sign the binary. Without the ability to modify it and still have it work as it did, it's not Free software.
I fully understand the concept of free software. I am just pointing out that if IBM (or any company for that matter) decided to take GNU software and close it up, without re-releasing their changes, it would not change the ability to use and distribute the original piece of software in any way. The freedom would still be there.
The only thing you would not have is IBM's changes, which is their code anyway.
You see, one of the main aims of the GPL v3 is to stop Trusted Computing from being used *against* the owner of a machine. With the previous version of the GPL, it's quite possible for the likes of IBM to build computers based around Linux
and this is hurting linux or open source...how? You still have the orignal source code before IBM modified it. You just don't get the changes, which weren't there anyway.
Make a deal with you. I'll hold the Mayor accountable once Bush gets held accountable for any one of the completely incompetent decisions he's made since in office. This is really a freebie for you here, get Bush held accountable for say, lying about WMDs,
only if clinton gets held responsible for 9/11. He had many chances to take out the people responsible for the attacks, yet didn't do anything about it.
He also fucked around in the whitehouse and it seemed perfectly okay to most democrats.
BTW. Bush may have lied about WMDs, but only because he didn't know any better. His operatives told him inaccurate information. The Democrats have been spreading this around for some time now. Don't you have anything new?
BTW, after I hold Nagin accountable, are you going to hold the Republicans in local office in Missippi and Alabama accountable, or does holding one Democrat accountable for each Republican held accountable the only way to avoid accusations of bias? NOLA wasn't the only place that was properly evacuated.
If they made complete moronic mistakes than endangered the lives of people, yes. I'm not biased, It just pisses me off when people are exploited by politicians. This is what happens if you only start listening to one side or the other. You have to have a balance, or you will start spreading more propaganda.
Although Pascal is fine language. It has been mostly superceded by the C-syntax languages. Its an evolutionary dead end. Only Ada and Delphi are still being somehow developed. They dont have nearly the same level of tools are C-syntax languages (C, C++, Java, C#, etc)
are you serious?
Have you used delphi lately? Delphi is more advanced than c/c++ and just as good as c#,java. It has the power of a language like c# (great ide, easy to make gui apps) with the ability to still use pointers. It also doesn't require the shitty.net runtimes (making your app just a small executable).
I have always thought java apps were slow and clunky. Even on the fastest processor available, I can always tell when a company has written their installer/app in java. When I can't tell the difference, I might consider using it.
just as applicable to traditional media? When the Katrina tapes came out, it took several stories before anyone picked up on the fact that the contents of the tapes directly contradicted Bush's claims made right after the storm that "nobody could have anticipated the levee failure". What's the point of a news outlet that manages to miss such an important element of the story?
I am sick of everyone blaming Bush alone for the mistakes made in New Orleans. Yes, Bush made mistakes, but the blame is to be shared with the mayor.
I'm sure he means that in a good way. Suits can't stand open source. It makes no sense to them that innovation is driven by creativity and passion, not hierarchy and the bottom line.
suits that are running a software company can't stand open source. It will eventually hurt their business.
Suits running any other type of company, love it because they can get applications for free, and use the money they would have spent on licenses on other areas of their business.
I'm talking mostly about stories here, you can't make Star Wars without asking Lucas and if you make something that's different enough it's not starwars any more. There is competiton from other stories, but they are not the same.
and you see this as a problem?
Lucas created star wars, he should have the rights. I think if you actually created something to copyright, you might see its purpose.
Things that are too generic shouldn't be able to be copyrighted or patented. Something as specific as Star Wars is very difficult for someone to come up with without copying it from Lucas.
Are you... Nevermind let's step trought it. Evidence that there is no software bussines in China, I mean seriously, just because there is no "Chinese Microsoft"...
I've been to china and taiwan. Have you? In China, you can go to almost any retail store or night market and get software that would cost $500 for $1. There are very few chinese software companies. Mostly because businesses realize it is futile to try to sell something that will just end up getting copied. Even game companies like Nintento and Sony prepare for things like this.
They simply do not produce a multi-billion product, what do the rest of us gain by having such a giant where smaller companies would do just fine with a fraction of the profits (prices aproaching costs of production and all other such economic non-sense you know...)
If you told me that google did not have a multi-billion dollar product, I might believe you. Microsoft has the largest software company in the world. Windows is on probably 70% of the worlds computers. I think it is safe to say that they have a multi-billion dollar product.
Microsoft is a company. They sell windows and office and a ton of other products. Consumers get an easy-to-use operating system and office suite. Could there be something better? maybe. But as of yet, there is nothing. Even linux, as a desktop OS, is lacking in many respects.
I realize monopolies are bad, but when a company naturally becomes a monoply by becoming the best/most popular(I'm not talking about Microsoft). It seems unfair to limit their success.
No it's popular, I hope you know the difference
There is a difference: it's popular because it's good.
If music is not good, less people will share it and less people will download it (it's human nature). Look at movies. They are sometimes shoved down our throats as much (or more). Good ones are popular, because people tell their friends about a good movie. Bad ones are not, because of the same thing (a bad movie might be popular the first opening weekend).
You may not like the latest pop group, but they have to have some kind of talent to sell millions of records. Even with the most marketing ever, you can't make someone sing well.
It's harder to make money without having a monopoly? Adam Smith, is that you? Many small companies are successful in markets where everyone can sell a product that is for all intended purposes identical to theirs, we call it competition and small, agile companies seem to be good at it, so good that big companies routinely use anti-competitive tactics against them. "Intellectual property" in all it's current forms is one of the weapons used
richard Stallman, is that you (It sure smells like it)?
are you serious? copyright does not prevent competition. You can see evidence of this in almost every area of software. If what you say was actually true, we would not have the gimp (because photoshop is there), mysql (because of oracle), and open office (because of microsoft office), need I go on.....
You keep saying "government granted monopoly". This is just not true. If this were the case, linus would have been prevented from creating linux (and redhat from selling it).
I think the correct term is "government granted protection".
Are you replying to somone else? I was saying that we might need to get rid of copyright alltogether just to make saner copyright laws, because going from life+50 to something like 20 years has a very slim chance of happening IMHO (not that getting rid of them would be easy).
The end result would be a gradual decimation of most copyright-based businesses. Most businesses would move somewhere else..where they could protect their work...which is why there aren't many software companies in china (or people buying software). The U.S. copyright is pretty much ignored there.
If you aren't producing that *shit*(tm) them the p2p networks aren't hurting you, are they? Quit your bitching and make something that people actaly want.
They are making things people want, the stuff that's on the p2p networks (I never see shitty music by some random artist on the internet shared..why ist that?). Most people using p2p like to give excuses for the fact that they don't want to shell out the cash for their music. If something is really shitty, people will not download or buy it. The only reason something is downloaded or shared, is because it is actually good. After all, why would you download something you didn't want? It would serve no purpose.
I'll take this as a big "no" answer to the question about evidence. Anyway, if selling your work is so hard that you need to sell it 50 years after your dead you need to look for another way to make money. There are even people who make a living wihout goverment granted monopolies on whatever they do!
it's a big yes, but I think you missed my point.
It's not that hard to make money. it's hard, as a small company, to prevent a larger company from taking your ideas or product out right and using it as their own without the protection of the copyright laws. I know I am just repeating myself, but you didn't seem to get it the first time.
Bullshit, I can't boycot something that isn't even sold to me. The only way I can get many-many interesting works is to order that from the net spending half of my months pay for the item+shipping. And getting non-cartel works is more not less difficult.
I find that hard to believe. The Internet has made it a lot easier to buy things from companies not associated with the cartels. Anyone can sell their music, art, or movie without signing with any company.
There is so much competition, I am sure you can find something out there that suits your needs. If not, then buy from the cartels and stop bitching. You are not entitled to getting things easily from the cartels.
Many people bitch about how the recording industry puts out shit and charges too much. The funny thing is, it's all their *shit* that's flooding the p2p networks.
What does this have to do with anything, companies will always try to make money, this has nothing to do with the accessability of currently copyrighted material.
You were ranting about how glorious the world would be without copyright laws. I was just stating that it would probably be the same. Mostly because we would have some other type of law in place.
And you know this how? Can you give a percentage with data backing it. Are artists the only people wo make money on copyright? Anyway, that wan't even my point, that is what is told to many artists so that they support can be claimed for all sorts of copyright extenting laws (both in time and in power).
create a new product,art,movie, or song, and to sell it. Then tell me how long it takes, if ever, to make a profit. This is how I know most have busted their ass throughout their careers. It is damn hard to make money selling anything. Unless you win the lotto or are stealing something, making money is though...no matter what you do.
big companies may be in a position to market something and make money easily, but they pay the price in R&D, which many times is a big risk.
I have nothing against it as a matter of principle (see sig). I have something against copyright caretels. I have something about broken distribution--those of you in the US know this mostly as untranslated Japanese videogames, but at least many of you can aford to import, the rest of the world is often in a far worse state. I have something against profit inconsistent with the talent, investment and risk. And so on.
copyright cartels don't keep you from breathing, eating, or living. You don't need a cartels product. You also are not forced to use it. If the record industry is too harsh, stop buying their product. Same with anything else. If enough people get pissed, the cartels will be forced to change their ways. But, most people would rather bitch about how it's too expensive and get it for free on the Internet. What they don't realize is that it hurts the little guy even more than the big companies.
when Small companies get their music, software, and movies copied and distributed on the Internet for free, it may very well put them out of business.
That's a risk I will gladly take to see a copyrighted work released within my lifetime to naturaly fall into the public domain.
If the copyright was released, businesses would just find another model. It's not so cut and dry.
Well, I do not. People want to get paid for all sorts of stuff, should we make a law so each of them can?
There is already a law in place: The copyright law. I think the DMCA is going too far and needs to be stopped, but the original copyright laws should stay.
I don't have a problem with somone selling his creative output, I have a problem with insane copyright laws. Even if we had no copyright at all people would still live from the creation of their art, but it would be more difficult and not the "get insanely rich by doing little work" sheme that is sold to artists so that they nod their heads to another copyright extension or DMCA-style law. The question is: do we need to abolish copyright first to get away from that silly idea so we can get sane copyright?
Name an artist that is insanely rich for doing little work. Almost every artist that has money, has busted their ass for pretty much their entire career.
You may not like people making money on art and or copyrighted materials, but many of the advances we see today are a result of business interest. Without it, advances would be slow and sometimes non-existant.
And I don't but it, there is no "in general" with things like copyright, you have to look at the implementation at hand and the Berne convention is a particulary nasty one with it's life+50 copyright lenght and the fact that it allows and encourages more strict copyright laws then what it requires.
I think both extremes are wrong. I don't want a world with no copyright, yet I don't want a harsh copyright law created. I think there is a happy medium...somewhere.
I'm well aware of the effort it takes, however if you wouldn't do it without copyright laws that promise royalities to your grandchildren I would rather live without it.
it's not about "milking it for all it's worth" or "giving money to my grandchildren". I feel that if someone puts their time and effort into something and want to get paid for it, they deserve the chance.
The copyright protects the little guy too. It protects a person from getting their works taken from them by a large company with more resources and money.
Money rules the world, im afraid. Many people create art for pleasure, which is fine. But some want to make a living at it. If they have the ability, and someone is willing to pay the price that they set, it should be okay.
and on that note, the only people I see using the word "draconian" or any form of it usually don't know what the fuck they are talking about.
I am talking about copyrights in general being a good thing.
Having a 9-17 living off of your work (as are many other methods), receiving royalties is not, but there is no doubt that people enjoy receiving money while others do the actual work.
if I did the work, I get the royalties. Think of it like this: let's say I invest $1,000,000 into research and development for product X. it's sold for $19.95. I, the original creator, am protected, because another company can't come along and take my product and re-sell it for $9.95 (without having to do any R&D). It may take no effort to copy something such as art,books, software, movies, or music, but it can take months and even years to create it.
With no copyright, each copy would cost whoever bought it the amount of hours it took to develop/research it, which would be very expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
Rather ungrateful like that, aren't they? I mean, it seems virus-scanner companies and MS have had a long relationship where they needed each other to survive. If virus scanners weren't around, Windows would probably have become unacceptable for a lot of businesses. Similarly, if Windows wasn't crap, virus scanner companies wouldn't have a market to target.
Now Microsoft is moving into their market, and will be selling both a problem and the solution to that problem. Nice.
THe problem isn't Microsoft. It's the fact that the average user believes emails that say "Please click the following link....". I think if people were a little more educated, the virus/worm issue would be a non-issue.
Even if you had a very secure system, a worm/virus would still spread.
To use it, ofcourse.
But what would YOUR incentive to release it closed-source be?
to make money of course. I don't want my competitors to have an advantage.
I don't understand the point you try to make. The world today is better and optimized for the user, but that is true of software not protected by copyright too. The overall quality of software has definitely not improved, and a lot of the lower quality is a direct result of copyright (Copyright is a direct incentive to create lower-quality software in order to milk your lock-ins for their entire worth of money, and in order to create lock-in in the first place).
once again. You are not forced to use any piece of proprietary software. Feel locked in? use something else.
My point here is that without copyright, there would be software for the average user too, and the corporations are not to thank for this
There is software now for all users. The average user does not understand what a compiler is or want to look at the source. Corporations brought software into the hands of the average user.
You are confusing multiple issues.
I claim that copyright should be abolished. I claim that once copyright is abolished, closed-source would become not beneficial, and closed-source apps would be unable to compete with opensource ones. This would result in an almost total annahilation of closed-source apps. I still believe you should have the freedom to release anything with or without the source. But releasing software with copyright protection is not a freedom, it is a power, and that power should be taken away.
If copyright was abolished, the closed source software business would just become more lucrative (and the average user would just get less quality software). Most companies would still sell closed-source software, but prices would go from $10-$300 a copy to $10,0000 (or a very large amount) a copy (because the person buying it will be allowed to copy and give it away to anyone they want).
or, all coporations selling software would turn their product into a web-app of sorts (with high-speed Internet becoming more and more available, this seems like the most likely outcome). It's already happening. It's a great thing from a company perspective, because it reduces copright infringement to nothing (no source = no open source).
Next, I claim that everyone would benefit from this, indirectly. Alice benefits if Bob's product is opensource even if she can't read code, because Jones will read the code and publish if it has malware in it, ruining Bob's reputation. Thus, Bob would never even dare putting malware in there in the first place.
Most spyware is attached to a company that you can contact directly. Programs released with spyware are attached to a name and a company. No reputation is hurt. People are just making money.
All these claims just say that copyright abolishment will lead to virtually everything becoming opensource software which will lead to better software and freedom for everyone. They DO NOT mean that opensource software today while copyright exists is of higher technical quality than closed-source software, and thus your claim that people don't all use opensource is moot. Its just irrelevant.
Everyone can use it. Most people just don't give a fuck about it.
Do you know how much effort was put into Openoffice in order for it to be able to read Microsoft Word? And it still doesn't do it well. Think of all the wasted man-years reverse-engineering Microsoft's secret formats. And ofcourse Openoffice will fail to read the next Office version of documents. Copyright is responsible for this huge waste of man-years
boo hoo. So people can't figure out Microsoft's format. Tough shit. Open office is a competitor to Microsoft.
Open source should be leading and not following. Too many projects are just following proprietary ones, which means they will always be a step behind.
However, a lot
GPL wins. A professor may not bother that people close his code, but companies do, so lots of developers never see the BSD kernels, nor work with it. And the word doesn't spread, so people don't consider it.
Most software companies don't want their code open in the first place. As a software company, it's not very smart to use the GPL license to release your own code. Your competitors can basically use your product against you and you can't do anything about it.
Free Software is normally used by companies that want to decrease the expense of building it themselves. It's much more cost effective to take someone else's code (especially if its free of charge) to build a product.
But corporations succeed only by offering competitive advantage. There is no such thing as a monopoly in a global economy, except governments
what happens if one company naturally becomes a monopoly (they are just better than the rest)?
Please note that that is not a "freedom" but a "power". The difference is that by releasing it closed-source and enforcing it by copyright you are restricting the freedoms of others, not gaining any freedom yourself.
.10 per email. If there was a law in the U.S. and I released my software as closed-source..would police come and bust down my doors to release it?
if there was no copyright, I would still release my software closed-source. Then what would you say the reason for people copying it? to learn from the binary code?
Why are you assuming that this is a bad thing?
The US would have the economic advantage of being able to freely and legally copy all of the world's software, while also funding the Free Software development via a tax.
we don't need to fund the development, people enjoy releasing software for free, remember? isn't that one of the major ideals of the OSS community?
This tax's distribution to the opensource developers could be done via votes or other methods that take away the power from the government and put it in the hands of the people. This reduces the problem of bribes and other such manipulations.
This would be about as easy to enforce as charging
Note that Multics, UNIX, Lisp, Fortran, C compilers, etc. were all developed before software copyrights were enforced and copyright-driven money was put into the business.
true, but at that time, only universities and a very small percentage of the population had access to a computer. It took big businesses and money to bring the desktop to the average user and the Internet as we know it. It's filled with a lot of shit, but it's also a very powerful tool.
Also consider the amount of adware, spyware, DRM and other malicious behaviours users are experiencing when using their computer, and this problem is only getting worse. This problem is completely solved with opensource.
hammers and knives are used to kill people every day. They shouldn't be banned either.
Nothing is solved with open source. Most people will never look at the source. If a worm can spread by merely telling someone to open an attachemnt, how is open source going to help the situation at all?
Adaware and spyware can be prevented with education (a lot of things in life are like this). I use firefox as my main browser and haven't had an issue with spyware/adaware for at least two years.
Linux doesn't have spyware because it is not in the best interest of a business to create it (less than 20% of the desktops on the internet). If linux had just as much market share as windows, it would have just as much spyware (it's very easy to trick a user into installing something).
At this point in time, you have the freedom to release software as open or closed source. You want to take away that freedom. Closed source software is still around for a reason. I think if the people desired all open source, they would be using hurd or linux.
Businesses only like open source because it costs no money. It has nothing to do with freedom. As the GPL starts getting more restrictive, the free software movement will become more of a hobby and less of a viable model.
People would be able to use all software they could benefit from, rather than just the software they can afford. Currently, this is not true because there are huge copyright-driven companies who have a very strong incentive to make opensource software not viable. They successfully make it too expensive in order to be viable by creating and standardizing secret formats (Office), attaching their OS and software to OEM's so that everyone not in the know gets to start with their OS, etc. Without a monetary incentive to harm opensource efforts, it would become far more viable and the entire population would be exposed to vast amounts of software
Education is the key once again. Computers are cheaper than ever. I can get a new dell computer with windows and an assortmen
A software tax lets everyone keep their rights to copy anything and creates a decent incentive to create software for those pieces of software that would theoretically not be created for free. If you buy any piece of software at all today, you are already paying more than a software tax would be. Note that a software tax is not proposed in addition to closed-source software payments but instead of those. i.e: All software would become free (as in freedom) and paid by the tax.
What you are proposing is basically making software a government run monopoly. If this were to happen, most U.S. software companies would immediately go to a country where they could sell it without having to release their source.
I enjoy the freedom I have to release a piece of software closed-source, for any price that I wish (if it's too expensive, the market will let me know, and I will lower the price).
As a consumer, you do not have to buy expensive software.
You are also forgetting that money drives technology. Without big business interest, we would still be in the computer stone age.
There aren't enough people in this world that would even benefit from having all software open source.
Most people could give a flying fuck. They just want software application X to work. Even big open source projects only have a handful of developers that are actually making contributions.
They say life is like a marathon, not a sprint. Richard Stallman has his eyes on the horizon and his train is bound for glory. To those who've dissed RMS, I say: you've had your day. You've called RMS an irrelevant old hippie and a crazed zealot. But take a look at the big picture. The Linux kernel isn't everything. It's an interchangeable part of something bigger. Principles are enduring, and Stallman's license is based on enduring principles. Richard, here's to you, for standing firm.
if we didn't have the GNU license around, linux would have just been released under a different one. I think we would probably be at the same point.
You see, one of the main aims of the GPL v3 is to stop Trusted Computing from being used *against* the owner of a machine. With the previous version of the GPL, it's quite possible for the likes of IBM to build computers based around Linux, which you cannot modify. You can't recompile the kernel, because the hardware will reject it, or at the very least report that it is "untrusted". You can't recreate the software because you can't sign the binary. You have lost the right to modify that program. DRM comes into it because DRM is all about preventing the modification of code and controlling the code that can access certain data (and, btw, need I remind you that code is also digital data and subject to DRM).
This is a nice idea, but if all the major hardware manufacturers started using DRM, we would just see a major decrease in linux support. I think Stallman is trying to leverage power that he does not possess.
A free software tax is somewhat similar to a road tax. Not everybody uses roads, but most people do, and everyone does indirectly.
There is a concensus that roads should be built by the government via a tax, and this is not considered evil coercion. Why is a similar software development model considered coercion?
a free software tax is just as evil as the canadian blank-CD tax.
Roads cost money to build. Supplies aren't cheap. Free software is built by people that enjoy building software..for free. If they wanted to make money on it, they should have released it a commercial application.
When you read between the lines, the FSF is just another organization that is trying to gain more power and control.
I truly believe that the only people that want "freedom" for software will release it under the public domain.
Since this would be a direct violation of the GPL. You would be using someone else's copyrighted work against their wishes.
hmm, now you are starting to sound like the BSA. I thought it was about "freedom".
anyway, I know it would be a violation, I just think it is less about freedom and more about control.
The GPL doesn't need one of the main clauses that forces a user of the source to re-release the source. There would still be lots of free software around, but with true freedom..the ability to do what you want with it.
The software has been made de facto proprietary. Only IBM can sign the binary with the correct key... only IBM can modify it and still have it run correctly (in case you are confused, pretty soon all new PCs will contain the hardware to enforce this). The GPL v3 says that you must pass on this right to the people who use the software... in this case, the key you used to sign the binary. Without the ability to modify it and still have it work as it did, it's not Free software.
I fully understand the concept of free software. I am just pointing out that if IBM (or any company for that matter) decided to take GNU software and close it up, without re-releasing their changes, it would not change the ability to use and distribute the original piece of software in any way. The freedom would still be there.
The only thing you would not have is IBM's changes, which is their code anyway.
You see, one of the main aims of the GPL v3 is to stop Trusted Computing from being used *against* the owner of a machine. With the previous version of the GPL, it's quite possible for the likes of IBM to build computers based around Linux
and this is hurting linux or open source...how? You still have the orignal source code before IBM modified it. You just don't get the changes, which weren't there anyway.
So you just put windows in everyone's cubicle. Problem solved
Why not have a corporate live "outside the window" cam and allow anyone to have it up on their desktop to stare out into.
Make a deal with you. I'll hold the Mayor accountable once Bush gets held accountable for any one of the completely incompetent decisions he's made since in office. This is really a freebie for you here, get Bush held accountable for say, lying about WMDs,
only if clinton gets held responsible for 9/11. He had many chances to take out the people responsible for the attacks, yet didn't do anything about it.
He also fucked around in the whitehouse and it seemed perfectly okay to most democrats.
BTW. Bush may have lied about WMDs, but only because he didn't know any better. His operatives told him inaccurate information. The Democrats have been spreading this around for some time now. Don't you have anything new?
BTW, after I hold Nagin accountable, are you going to hold the Republicans in local office in Missippi and Alabama accountable, or does holding one Democrat accountable for each Republican held accountable the only way to avoid accusations of bias? NOLA wasn't the only place that was properly evacuated.
If they made complete moronic mistakes than endangered the lives of people, yes. I'm not biased, It just pisses me off when people are exploited by politicians. This is what happens if you only start listening to one side or the other. You have to have a balance, or you will start spreading more propaganda.
Although Pascal is fine language. It has been mostly superceded by the C-syntax languages. Its an evolutionary dead end. Only Ada and Delphi are still being somehow developed. They dont have nearly the same level of tools are C-syntax languages (C, C++, Java, C#, etc)
.net runtimes (making your app just a small executable).
are you serious?
Have you used delphi lately? Delphi is more advanced than c/c++ and just as good as c#,java. It has the power of a language like c# (great ide, easy to make gui apps) with the ability to still use pointers. It also doesn't require the shitty
I have always thought java apps were slow and clunky. Even on the fastest processor available, I can always tell when a company has written their installer/app in java. When I can't tell the difference, I might consider using it.
just as applicable to traditional media? When the Katrina tapes came out, it took several stories before anyone picked up on the fact that the contents of the tapes directly contradicted Bush's claims made right after the storm that "nobody could have anticipated the levee failure". What's the point of a news outlet that manages to miss such an important element of the story?
I am sick of everyone blaming Bush alone for the mistakes made in New Orleans. Yes, Bush made mistakes, but the blame is to be shared with the mayor.
I'm sure he means that in a good way. Suits can't stand open source. It makes no sense to them that innovation is driven by creativity and passion, not hierarchy and the bottom line.
suits that are running a software company can't stand open source. It will eventually hurt their business.
Suits running any other type of company, love it because they can get applications for free, and use the money they would have spent on licenses on other areas of their business.
I'm talking mostly about stories here, you can't make Star Wars without asking Lucas and if you make something that's different enough it's not starwars any more. There is competiton from other stories, but they are not the same.
...
and you see this as a problem?
Lucas created star wars, he should have the rights. I think if you actually created something to copyright, you might see its purpose.
Things that are too generic shouldn't be able to be copyrighted or patented. Something as specific as Star Wars is very difficult for someone to come up with without copying it from Lucas.
Are you... Nevermind let's step trought it.
Evidence that there is no software bussines in China, I mean seriously, just because there is no "Chinese Microsoft"
I've been to china and taiwan. Have you? In China, you can go to almost any retail store or night market and get software that would cost $500 for $1. There are very few chinese software companies. Mostly because businesses realize it is futile to try to sell something that will just end up getting copied. Even game companies like Nintento and Sony prepare for things like this.
They simply do not produce a multi-billion product, what do the rest of us gain by having such a giant where smaller companies would do just fine with a fraction of the profits (prices aproaching costs of production and all other such economic non-sense you know...)
If you told me that google did not have a multi-billion dollar product, I might believe you. Microsoft has the largest software company in the world. Windows is on probably 70% of the worlds computers. I think it is safe to say that they have a multi-billion dollar product.
Microsoft is a company. They sell windows and office and a ton of other products. Consumers get an easy-to-use operating system and office suite. Could there be something better? maybe. But as of yet, there is nothing. Even linux, as a desktop OS, is lacking in many respects.
I realize monopolies are bad, but when a company naturally becomes a monoply by becoming the best/most popular(I'm not talking about Microsoft). It seems unfair to limit their success.
No it's popular, I hope you know the difference
There is a difference: it's popular because it's good.
If music is not good, less people will share it and less people will download it (it's human nature). Look at movies. They are sometimes shoved down our throats as much (or more). Good ones are popular, because people tell their friends about a good movie. Bad ones are not, because of the same thing (a bad movie might be popular the first opening weekend).
You may not like the latest pop group, but they have to have some kind of talent to sell millions of records. Even with the most marketing ever, you can't make someone sing well.
It's harder to make money without having a monopoly? Adam Smith, is that you? Many small companies are successful in markets where everyone can sell a product that is for all intended purposes identical to theirs, we call it competition and small, agile companies seem to be good at it, so good that big companies routinely use anti-competitive tactics against them. "Intellectual property" in all it's current forms is one of the weapons used
richard Stallman, is that you (It sure smells like it)?
are you serious? copyright does not prevent competition. You can see evidence of this in almost every area of software. If what you say was actually true, we would not have the gimp (because photoshop is there), mysql (because of oracle), and open office (because of microsoft office), need I go on.....
You keep saying "government granted monopoly". This is just not true. If this were the case, linus would have been prevented from creating linux (and redhat from selling it).
I think the correct term is "government granted protection".
Are you replying to somone else? I was saying that we might need to get rid of copyright alltogether just to make saner copyright laws, because going from life+50 to something like 20 years has a very slim chance of happening IMHO (not that getting rid of them would be easy).
The end result would be a gradual decimation of most copyright-based businesses. Most businesses would move somewhere else..where they could protect their work...which is why there aren't many software companies in china (or people buying software). The U.S. copyright is pretty much ignored there.
If you aren't producing that *shit*(tm) them the p2p networks aren't hurting you, are they? Quit your bitching and make something that people actaly want.
They are making things people want, the stuff that's on the p2p networks (I never see shitty music by some random artist on the internet shared..why ist that?). Most people using p2p like to give excuses for the fact that they don't want to shell out the cash for their music. If something is really shitty, people will not download or buy it. The only reason something is downloaded or shared, is because it is actually good. After all, why would you download something you didn't want? It would serve no purpose.
I'll take this as a big "no" answer to the question about evidence. Anyway, if selling your work is so hard that you need to sell it 50 years after your dead you need to look for another way to make money. There are even people who make a living wihout goverment granted monopolies on whatever they do!
it's a big yes, but I think you missed my point.
It's not that hard to make money. it's hard, as a small company, to prevent a larger company from taking your ideas or product out right and using it as their own without the protection of the copyright laws. I know I am just repeating myself, but you didn't seem to get it the first time.
Bullshit, I can't boycot something that isn't even sold to me. The only way I can get many-many interesting works is to order that from the net spending half of my months pay for the item+shipping. And getting non-cartel works is more not less difficult.
I find that hard to believe. The Internet has made it a lot easier to buy things from companies not associated with the cartels. Anyone can sell their music, art, or movie without signing with any company.
There is so much competition, I am sure you can find something out there that suits your needs. If not, then buy from the cartels and stop bitching. You are not entitled to getting things easily from the cartels.
Many people bitch about how the recording industry puts out shit and charges too much. The funny thing is, it's all their *shit* that's flooding the p2p networks.
What does this have to do with anything, companies will always try to make money, this has nothing to do with the accessability of currently copyrighted material.
You were ranting about how glorious the world would be without copyright laws. I was just stating that it would probably be the same. Mostly because we would have some other type of law in place.
And you know this how? Can you give a percentage with data backing it. Are artists the only people wo make money on copyright? Anyway, that wan't even my point, that is what is told to many artists so that they support can be claimed for all sorts of copyright extenting laws (both in time and in power).
create a new product,art,movie, or song, and to sell it. Then tell me how long it takes, if ever, to make a profit. This is how I know most have busted their ass throughout their careers. It is damn hard to make money selling anything. Unless you win the lotto or are stealing something, making money is though...no matter what you do.
big companies may be in a position to market something and make money easily, but they pay the price in R&D, which many times is a big risk.
I have nothing against it as a matter of principle (see sig). I have something against copyright caretels. I have something about broken distribution--those of you in the US know this mostly as untranslated Japanese videogames, but at least many of you can aford to import, the rest of the world is often in a far worse state. I have something against profit inconsistent with the talent, investment and risk. And so on.
copyright cartels don't keep you from breathing, eating, or living. You don't need a cartels product. You also are not forced to use it. If the record industry is too harsh, stop buying their product. Same with anything else. If enough people get pissed, the cartels will be forced to change their ways. But, most people would rather bitch about how it's too expensive and get it for free on the Internet. What they don't realize is that it hurts the little guy even more than the big companies.
when Small companies get their music, software, and movies copied and distributed on the Internet for free, it may very well put them out of business.
That's a risk I will gladly take to see a copyrighted work released within my lifetime to naturaly fall into the public domain.
If the copyright was released, businesses would just find another model. It's not so cut and dry.
Well, I do not. People want to get paid for all sorts of stuff, should we make a law so each of them can?
There is already a law in place: The copyright law. I think the DMCA is going too far and needs to be stopped, but the original copyright laws should stay.
I don't have a problem with somone selling his creative output, I have a problem with insane copyright laws. Even if we had no copyright at all people would still live from the creation of their art, but it would be more difficult and not the "get insanely rich by doing little work" sheme that is sold to artists so that they nod their heads to another copyright extension or DMCA-style law. The question is: do we need to abolish copyright first to get away from that silly idea so we can get sane copyright?
Name an artist that is insanely rich for doing little work. Almost every artist that has money, has busted their ass for pretty much their entire career.
You may not like people making money on art and or copyrighted materials, but many of the advances we see today are a result of business interest. Without it, advances would be slow and sometimes non-existant.
And I don't but it, there is no "in general" with things like copyright, you have to look at the implementation at hand and the Berne convention is a particulary nasty one with it's life+50 copyright lenght and the fact that it allows and encourages more strict copyright laws then what it requires.
I think both extremes are wrong. I don't want a world with no copyright, yet I don't want a harsh copyright law created. I think there is a happy medium...somewhere.
I'm well aware of the effort it takes, however if you wouldn't do it without copyright laws that promise royalities to your grandchildren I would rather live without it.
it's not about "milking it for all it's worth" or "giving money to my grandchildren". I feel that if someone puts their time and effort into something and want to get paid for it, they deserve the chance.
The copyright protects the little guy too. It protects a person from getting their works taken from them by a large company with more resources and money.
Money rules the world, im afraid. Many people create art for pleasure, which is fine. But some want to make a living at it. If they have the ability, and someone is willing to pay the price that they set, it should be okay.
Wow, you didn't get that I was pointing out exactly that about your post.
I am not the one that did not "get" it. I think you have a personality issue: it's called being an asshole.
There are many things people happen to enjoy or to hate, this is no reason to make laws about it, particulary not draconical overreaching laws.
see: GNU
and on that note, the only people I see using the word "draconian" or any form of it usually don't know what the fuck they are talking about.
I am talking about copyrights in general being a good thing.
Having a 9-17 living off of your work (as are many other methods), receiving royalties is not, but there is no doubt that people enjoy receiving money while others do the actual work.
if I did the work, I get the royalties. Think of it like this: let's say I invest $1,000,000 into research and development for product X. it's sold for $19.95. I, the original creator, am protected, because another company can't come along and take my product and re-sell it for $9.95 (without having to do any R&D). It may take no effort to copy something such as art,books, software, movies, or music, but it can take months and even years to create it.
With no copyright, each copy would cost whoever bought it the amount of hours it took to develop/research it, which would be very expensive.
No you don't
wow, what a compelling argument.
and why not? The free market determines whether you deserve to milk it or not...and copyright protects the original owner.
I happen to enjoy knowing that someone cannot take my work, copy it, and re-release it as their own (and possibly make money off of it).
Is it greedy? maybe a little, but it allows me to live off of my work, without having to get a 9-5.