makers are hobbyists, but write products to be used beyond the hobbyist segment
As I've said before under this article, the term 'hobbyist' is simply incorrect when talking about Free Software developers.
Sure, perhaps some Free Software is developed by hobbyists idling away some emty hours which they might as well spend watching reruns of Seinfeld.
But no-one uses their output because it stinks.
On the other hand, creators of serious Free Software products like Linux, Emacs, Apache, gcc, Galeon, and so on, are not hobbyists. In some instances they are paid by companies. The rest, whom you would call hobbyists, are by and large on a mission. They are missionaries.
It'd be clearer if you indented (or italicised) the quoted parts of the post you were replying to, instead of indenting your own.
NO company has yet financially contributed to the development of Linux itself by paying people to work on it. Sure, they donate hardware, rack time, stuff like that, but it's for their own benefit; PR or product work
Wrong. To pick a ridiculously obvious example, have you heard of RedHat? They pay Alan Cox to code the kernel. They pay Steven Tweedie to do the same (or they used to).
Have a look at the Linux Kernel mailing list. It's full of people coding Linux as part of their job because the companies they work for want bugs fixed and features added. And I'm not just talking about Linux distribution vendors, I'm talking about end user companies. Of course it's a small proportion of companies who do this, but it had to start somewhere, then grow. That's how Open Source really works. That's how it should work.
Software is warranted to conform to published specifications for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of delivery.
OK, one company provides a warranty. Let's see the 'published specifications' before we take your argument to mean anything other than 'such a warranty exists'. Wan't we really want to see is, 'and it's worth the paper it's written on.'
And why only 90 days? Is the installation media subject to bit decay? Or perhaps they know that it might take a bit longer than 90 days for people to realise that the software is defective (according to published specifications).
describe yourself as a "group of overworked hobbyists" when people complain.
The only people who have called the Abiword developers 'hobbyists' are people posting to this Slashdot thread. The developers don't call themselves hobbyists, they call themselves volunteers.
"Hobbyist" is a demeaning term to apply to people who are devoting passion and large swathes of their time to a cause they obviously believe in. Hobbies are done for relaxation and to pass otherwise empty time, and that's fine.
But the Abiword developers are not hobbyists. They have a mission - to create a Free, cross-platform word processor. Therefore they are missionaries.
Open Source, Free Software. C'mon, it's just word.
Kike, Jew. C'mon, they're just words.
The thing about words is that they represent thought processes and attitudes.
Stallman want's to get people to change their attitudes to software. He uses the term Free Software to represent the attitude he wants to people to adopt.
Open Source is a different symbol for a different attitude. There are similarities in the attitude, but they are not the same.
I like what you have to say; however I don't think this has anything whatsoever to do with capitalism. Free market, perhaps; but not capitalism. Capitalism is the leverage of a reserve of capital to create profit, i.e. investment. That's why it's called capitalism.
I'm surprised you had to compile it too. It's not 'normal' in Linux, though it's certainly not unusual, because you tend to have the source. There should be a pre-compiled package on the SuSE cds. if not, try another distro (last night, with Debian, I installed Samba by typing 'apt-get install samba').
As an anonymous coward has already pointed out, you're ID is 47611; thus you've been hanging around slashdot for at least several years. Methinks thou trolleth.
I generally take a trip to Borders once a month and return with both of these.
Sysadmin isn't specifically a Linux magazine, but it frequently has some damn good articles involving Linux and will show the novice the kind of things Linux and other Unices are really good at.
Linux Journal is the other magazine I read regularly, it has a good mixed bag of articles and opinions.
Someone else mentioned Linux Gazette, it's web-based only and is a 'sister' of Linux Journal. It has some very good technical articles and it's free (sponsored by various companies).
You won't learn everything from magazines though, see them as a catalyst for further research through books, web sites, man pages, and most of all, your own experimentation.
That article argues that contract would replace IP. Those things which are covered by IP in today's world are easy to copy (in digital form); the article postulates technological means of catching 'IP contract' breaches, but you know as well as I do that the nature of digital information disables these attempts (save for their legal protection, as in the DMCA). The thing about contract is that it doesn't apply to third parties.
Look at SDMI. It's all well and good, but the problem for the 'content owners' is that non-SDMI compliant devices exist, so it's protection is limited to a narrow scope of 'approved' devices. What is to prevent entrepreneurial disablement of SDMI through the marketing of non-SDMI devices? (except the force of a possible law, which would not exist in your anarchist world).
Ease of copying without detection, and the inapplicability of contract to third parties, confounds this libertarian / anarchist theory of 'IP contract'. All it takes is for me to take your content, agreed under contract, and undetectably copy it and give the copy to someone else, for the system to break down.
The upshot may be, that should all software be required to be GPL'd, or if software could not be patented or copyrighted, that the developers/owners, to protect their interests, would never distribute anything.
Depends which developers/owners you are talking about. The developers/owners of proprietary software wouldn't even exist in a copyright-free / patent-free world. They'd be doing something else. The broad base of developers would be distributing Free software to take advantage of the benefits of the Open Source development model. Fewer lines of code would be circulating, because code-reuse would be much more prolific. There would be no need to have multiple implementations of a system, e.g. multiple web servers, because the poorer implementation would be dropped faster.
Someone suggested to me a few days ago that the original purpose of patents and copyrights were, ironically, to encourage closed guild systems to be more open about their techniques. Now that is an argument worth considering. I have to chew on that a bit...
Yes, that is an interesting question, and challenges the validity of what I said above. However, if patents / copyrights didn't exist and there was a closed-guild environment, the Free Software movement could still be exist, but it's job would be MUCH easier because it wouldn't have legal issues to overcome when re-implementing systems developed by the 'guild'. The guild would probably fall down pretty quickly, when they're secrets were rediscovered.
In fact I see parallels between this hypothetical guild and a virtual 'guild' created by patent and copyright law. The answer would still be the same - distribute source code.
Gnome advocates will tell you of the plight of the pore shareware author who must develop his nifty new application for Gnome as the competing desktop is built on a GPLed library.
Which Gnome advocates? I'm a Gnome advocate (Use Gnome!), but I would never say "Because it's great for shareware authors!", even though it in fact is.
Tell you what, I'll save you a mouse click. Some quotes:
GNOME is part of the GNU project, and is free software
The GNOME project was born as an effort to create an entirely free desktop environment for free systems.
The GNOME project was the first to provide a fully free desktop environment for Unix-like systems. Free Software is about empowering users, and about granting them rights over the software they use. With Free Software, the user gets a number of rights:
The right to use the software.
The right to redistribute the software: if you have a piece of free software, you can share this software with other people (no license fees are required).
The right to learn from the software.
The right to alter the software (all source code, data files, images are included). For example, users can improve it, extend it, trim it down, fix problems, learn or experiment.
The right to redistribute your modified versions of the software. This means that once you have made changes to the software, you can distribute these changes to your friends, customers or anyone else.
These rights and freedoms are at the core of the GNOME project. The side effects of Free Software are that the software tends to be of very high quality, it evolves very rapidly, problems are fixed quickly, and in general the system is better both for the user and the developer.
Now stop trolling, understand what you are talking about before you open your underinformed cakehole.
In the past, pro-MS posters would generally get moderated down and flamed, whilst pro-Linux posters would generally get moderated up.
At the same time, a vocal minority would complain about this lack of balance. Fair enough.
But now, the pendulum has swung the other way. Fully. Now the balance is against linux and Free Software. You are part of the vocal majority.
I'd rather have NONE of the flaming and trolling, the karma-whoring and bigotry on EITHER side.
I came to Slashdot for intelligent discussion, about technical news and, specifically, about Free Software related happenings. The site has ALWAYS had a Free Software slant. Just because it's not written in lights at the top of page doesn't change that; but remember that Slashdot is part of the OSDN: Open Source Developers Network. "Open Source" may not be a drop-in replacement for "Free Software" but near as dammit. But it's not solely about Free Software, and I welcome that, and I don't troll or flame people talking about Microsoft products; in fact I try not to troll or flame anyone. If someone puts up an opinion, it's an invitation to a discussion, but most people here don't want to discuss, they just want to score points.
Your kind and many more like you make me want to go elsewhere.
Has anyone else noticed that all anyone needs to do to get karma nowadays is one of:
+ Say how linux isn't all that great after all
+ Say how perhaps Microsoft aren't so bad
+ Criticise RMS, the more vehemently and ignorantly the better
+ Criticise ESR's state of mind.
It also helps if you do this right under the main story instead of as part of an intelligent discussion.
You are almost guaranteed several Insightfuls and Interestings, at least enough to offset the more accurate Overrated and Flamebait.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said that I wanted people to stop discussing this.
Umm.. stop putting words in mine! I never said that you wanted you people to stop discussing this!
Sigh. There's just no way to reason with fanatics.
Interesting viewpoint. Let's see, try reasoning with a scientist that gravity is not proportional to density. Damn, you just can't reason with those scientists, they must be fanatics.
You see, gravity is a principle of the universe (well, the known universe). And a moral belief is a principle of a personality. I'm sorry, but neither of these things can be reasoned out of existence, even if you don't happen to have any principles yourself.
See my point? Thought not. But it should be clear that there is nothing fanatical about my beliefs - I don't hold the freedom represented by the GPL above your right to life, for instance.
Slashdot Mirror
Note that I didn't say we have problems on a day-to-day basis; we don't
Wow! What a u-turn!
From your earlier post:
However, our IT guys seem to have far more problems with keeping the Linux boxes up and running on a day to day basis.
makers are hobbyists, but write products to be used beyond the hobbyist segment
As I've said before under this article, the term 'hobbyist' is simply incorrect when talking about Free Software developers.
Sure, perhaps some Free Software is developed by hobbyists idling away some emty hours which they might as well spend watching reruns of Seinfeld.
But no-one uses their output because it stinks.
On the other hand, creators of serious Free Software products like Linux, Emacs, Apache, gcc, Galeon, and so on, are not hobbyists. In some instances they are paid by companies. The rest, whom you would call hobbyists, are by and large on a mission. They are missionaries.
It'd be clearer if you indented (or italicised) the quoted parts of the post you were replying to, instead of indenting your own.
NO company has yet financially contributed to the development of Linux itself by paying people to work on it. Sure, they donate hardware, rack time, stuff like that, but it's for their own benefit; PR or product work
Wrong. To pick a ridiculously obvious example, have you heard of RedHat? They pay Alan Cox to code the kernel. They pay Steven Tweedie to do the same (or they used to).
Have a look at the Linux Kernel mailing list. It's full of people coding Linux as part of their job because the companies they work for want bugs fixed and features added. And I'm not just talking about Linux distribution vendors, I'm talking about end user companies. Of course it's a small proportion of companies who do this, but it had to start somewhere, then grow. That's how Open Source really works. That's how it should work.
Software is warranted to conform to published specifications for a period of ninety (90) days from the date of delivery.
OK, one company provides a warranty. Let's see the 'published specifications' before we take your argument to mean anything other than 'such a warranty exists'. Wan't we really want to see is, 'and it's worth the paper it's written on.'
And why only 90 days? Is the installation media subject to bit decay? Or perhaps they know that it might take a bit longer than 90 days for people to realise that the software is defective (according to published specifications).
describe yourself as a "group of overworked hobbyists" when people complain.
The only people who have called the Abiword developers 'hobbyists' are people posting to this Slashdot thread. The developers don't call themselves hobbyists, they call themselves volunteers.
"Hobbyist" is a demeaning term to apply to people who are devoting passion and large swathes of their time to a cause they obviously believe in. Hobbies are done for relaxation and to pass otherwise empty time, and that's fine.
But the Abiword developers are not hobbyists. They have a mission - to create a Free, cross-platform word processor. Therefore they are missionaries.
Open Source, Free Software. C'mon, it's just word.
Kike, Jew. C'mon, they're just words.
The thing about words is that they represent thought processes and attitudes.
Stallman want's to get people to change their attitudes to software. He uses the term Free Software to represent the attitude he wants to people to adopt.
Open Source is a different symbol for a different attitude. There are similarities in the attitude, but they are not the same.
I like what you have to say; however I don't think this has anything whatsoever to do with capitalism. Free market, perhaps; but not capitalism. Capitalism is the leverage of a reserve of capital to create profit, i.e. investment. That's why it's called capitalism.
Oh no! it works in Galeon on Linux too! :-(
Wrong.
Apple Computer, Inc.
Personal computer manufacturer.
$150 million equity investment, broad technology sharing agreement.
1997
I'm surprised you had to compile it too. It's not 'normal' in Linux, though it's certainly not unusual, because you tend to have the source. There should be a pre-compiled package on the SuSE cds. if not, try another distro (last night, with Debian, I installed Samba by typing 'apt-get install samba').
As an anonymous coward has already pointed out, you're ID is 47611; thus you've been hanging around slashdot for at least several years. Methinks thou trolleth.
Be careful, I believe Microsoft own a share of Apple.
I generally take a trip to Borders once a month and return with both of these.
Sysadmin isn't specifically a Linux magazine, but it frequently has some damn good articles involving Linux and will show the novice the kind of things Linux and other Unices are really good at.
Linux Journal is the other magazine I read regularly, it has a good mixed bag of articles and opinions.
Someone else mentioned Linux Gazette, it's web-based only and is a 'sister' of Linux Journal. It has some very good technical articles and it's free (sponsored by various companies).
You won't learn everything from magazines though, see them as a catalyst for further research through books, web sites, man pages, and most of all, your own experimentation.
That article argues that contract would replace IP. Those things which are covered by IP in today's world are easy to copy (in digital form); the article postulates technological means of catching 'IP contract' breaches, but you know as well as I do that the nature of digital information disables these attempts (save for their legal protection, as in the DMCA). The thing about contract is that it doesn't apply to third parties.
Look at SDMI. It's all well and good, but the problem for the 'content owners' is that non-SDMI compliant devices exist, so it's protection is limited to a narrow scope of 'approved' devices. What is to prevent entrepreneurial disablement of SDMI through the marketing of non-SDMI devices? (except the force of a possible law, which would not exist in your anarchist world).
Ease of copying without detection, and the inapplicability of contract to third parties, confounds this libertarian / anarchist theory of 'IP contract'. All it takes is for me to take your content, agreed under contract, and undetectably copy it and give the copy to someone else, for the system to break down.
The upshot may be, that should all software be required to be GPL'd, or if software could not be patented or copyrighted, that the developers/owners, to protect their interests, would never distribute anything.
Depends which developers/owners you are talking about. The developers/owners of proprietary software wouldn't even exist in a copyright-free / patent-free world. They'd be doing something else. The broad base of developers would be distributing Free software to take advantage of the benefits of the Open Source development model. Fewer lines of code would be circulating, because code-reuse would be much more prolific. There would be no need to have multiple implementations of a system, e.g. multiple web servers, because the poorer implementation would be dropped faster.
Someone suggested to me a few days ago that the original purpose of patents and copyrights were, ironically, to encourage closed guild systems to be more open about their techniques. Now that is an argument worth considering. I have to chew on that a bit...
Yes, that is an interesting question, and challenges the validity of what I said above. However, if patents / copyrights didn't exist and there was a closed-guild environment, the Free Software movement could still be exist, but it's job would be MUCH easier because it wouldn't have legal issues to overcome when re-implementing systems developed by the 'guild'. The guild would probably fall down pretty quickly, when they're secrets were rediscovered.
In fact I see parallels between this hypothetical guild and a virtual 'guild' created by patent and copyright law. The answer would still be the same - distribute source code.
Actually, that's not bullshit. Open your eyes, I'm not talking about just your posts.
Which Gnome advocates? I'm a Gnome advocate (Use Gnome!), but I would never say "Because it's great for shareware authors!", even though it in fact is.
Have a look at the Gnome web site.
Tell you what, I'll save you a mouse click. Some quotes:
GNOME is part of the GNU project, and is free software
The GNOME project was born as an effort to create an entirely free desktop environment for free systems.
The GNOME project was the first to provide a fully free desktop environment for Unix-like systems. Free Software is about empowering users, and about granting them rights over the software they use. With Free Software, the user gets a number of rights:
These rights and freedoms are at the core of the GNOME project. The side effects of Free Software are that the software tends to be of very high quality, it evolves very rapidly, problems are fixed quickly, and in general the system is better both for the user and the developer.
Now stop trolling, understand what you are talking about before you open your underinformed cakehole.
In the past, pro-MS posters would generally get moderated down and flamed, whilst pro-Linux posters would generally get moderated up.
At the same time, a vocal minority would complain about this lack of balance. Fair enough.
But now, the pendulum has swung the other way. Fully. Now the balance is against linux and Free Software. You are part of the vocal majority.
I'd rather have NONE of the flaming and trolling, the karma-whoring and bigotry on EITHER side.
I came to Slashdot for intelligent discussion, about technical news and, specifically, about Free Software related happenings. The site has ALWAYS had a Free Software slant. Just because it's not written in lights at the top of page doesn't change that; but remember that Slashdot is part of the OSDN: Open Source Developers Network. "Open Source" may not be a drop-in replacement for "Free Software" but near as dammit. But it's not solely about Free Software, and I welcome that, and I don't troll or flame people talking about Microsoft products; in fact I try not to troll or flame anyone. If someone puts up an opinion, it's an invitation to a discussion, but most people here don't want to discuss, they just want to score points.
Your kind and many more like you make me want to go elsewhere.
Has anyone else noticed that all anyone needs to do to get karma nowadays is one of:
+ Say how linux isn't all that great after all
+ Say how perhaps Microsoft aren't so bad
+ Criticise RMS, the more vehemently and ignorantly the better
+ Criticise ESR's state of mind.
It also helps if you do this right under the main story instead of as part of an intelligent discussion.
You are almost guaranteed several Insightfuls and Interestings, at least enough to offset the more accurate Overrated and Flamebait.
I'm fed up with it, anyone else?
Thanks, very interesting.
Seems a shame that development is slow / stopped...
That one may be zero cost, but it is not Free, which is what the parent poster was stating.
free Flash player
Where?
It may not make it untrue, but your still a whining ninnie who can't help gatecrashing the party.
Heard it all before, bored of it.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said that I wanted people to stop discussing this.
Umm.. stop putting words in mine! I never said that you wanted you people to stop discussing this!
Sigh. There's just no way to reason with fanatics.
Interesting viewpoint. Let's see, try reasoning with a scientist that gravity is not proportional to density. Damn, you just can't reason with those scientists, they must be fanatics.
You see, gravity is a principle of the universe (well, the known universe). And a moral belief is a principle of a personality. I'm sorry, but neither of these things can be reasoned out of existence, even if you don't happen to have any principles yourself.
See my point? Thought not. But it should be clear that there is nothing fanatical about my beliefs - I don't hold the freedom represented by the GPL above your right to life, for instance.