Surely there is room for Linux in there somewhere.
Sure there is room for Linux in there. As the article says, IT spending is now considered a waste of money. Therefore, free software must now look pretty appealing (but don't expect them to spend money on services and support).
Most people in the tech industry are going to fade out. Thus, leaving the majority of workers those who have been around before the.com boom.
"Bigger salaries and more work"? Puh-leez!! Since when has the collapse of an industry caused salaries to go up? The whole reason why unqualified people flocked to IT in the first place was the high salaries. The high salaries were the reason why companies pressured the US government to relax immigration controls. Frankly, I think we will see smaller salaries and more work as proprietary programmers struggle to compete with open source.
If I use GPL'd code to create internal code for one of my clients, I am under NO obligation to release it unless I distribute it.
Yes, but *they* have the right to distribute it. How is the GPL an anti-corporate license?
Well, duh. Quickie question, where is 80% of the software in the U.S written and why... time up. Internal corporate apps.
Hey, why not use the 90% figure that ESR quotes in CatB? I severely doubt you have facts to back that up. My guess is that includes "software" such as web pages, scripts, and spreadsheets. Here's my quiz: where is 80% of the software that takes talent, energy, and education to write written and why?
Surely the GPL is better in this situation? I don't mean this as a rhetorical quetion, I'm genuinely interested to know whether you think there's a flaw in my argument.
Surely the GPL is better in this situation?!? What you've just described is the standard retread argument for the GPL, i.e. the fear that a corporation is going to "leech off the community" and possibly even make money doing so. Except in this case, there is no community. What is wrong with using the BSD license here? Of course everyone likes to pick on Microsoft, but what about all the other companies that might want to incorporate this research into their non-GPL'ed software; don't they have rights? MS decide that they really like this technology. They want to distribute it with MS Windows, but they decide to change it slightly.
Your arguments hinge on the presumption that Microsoft is a monopoly. Well fine, but they are being sued for that right now. You want to prevent them from engaging in monopolistic practices by punishing a lot of other companies as well. Why don't you let the US courts handle the issue of what sanctions to impose against Microsoft. You can't base every policy decision on the actins of one company.
-a Do you suffer from the irrational fear that somewhere out there, at this very moment, someone is making money?
Judging from the current stream of comments, I guess I'm the only one who liked the article. I have always maintained that the Internet is attempting to be both a technical revolution and a social one and you don't have to subscribe to both. I don't see why an international data network trumps national distinctions any more than an international phone network or air travel network or space station would. We may not like all the laws of other countries, but we have to respect their right to self-determination or else we become hypocrites.
In retrospect, the concept of a bunch of geeks who swear by the EFF's manifesto on how cyberspace really is a separate reality in which national borders do not exist and regular laws do not apply... it really does seem vaguely similar to the analogy of a bunch of freemen holed up in Oregon who refuse to recognize the authority of the US government. He lost me a bit at the end, though. Monitoring all that data to make sure no private information escapes seems kind of hard to enforce, especially if the data is encrypted.
Unfortunately, I don't have an Ogg-Vorbis player installed on my machine and I don't feel like installing one at the moment. To tell you the truth, I've never been a fan of Stallman's. To put it plainly, he's a socialist and I'm not. So I don't know exactly how RMS explains how copyleft is not a tragedy of the commons, but I'm pretty sure I would disagree with it. The way I would explain it, there are two basic TotCs (please note that when I say TotC, I am using the game theory definition):
1. The tragedy of socialism. 2. The GPL Hobson's choice.
As I'm sure you know, socialism has a fundamental flaw (1) in the sense that the people share equally in the proceeds of society, regardless of how much they contribute. There is no incentive to work hard, so production goes down. Thus, socialist societies have invariably suffered from a) having weak economies, and b) being police states.
In the case of Linux, there are definitely plenty of people pulling their weight, but I attribute this to the fact that a) there do exist some dedicated socialists, b) the propoganda hasn't gotten stale enough yet, and c) some poor bastards still think they can make money off this OSS shit. I should point out that Linux development is still at the point where it developers are basically trying to copy various features of Unix and Windows. Only time will tell whether Linux can thrive, and even innovate, after b and c wear off.
Then there is the GPL Hobson's choice (2), in which a corporation that wishes to sell a product can't afford to use the GPL (because it drives down profits), but they can't afford not to use the GPL either (because it lowers the cost of entry). A monopoly/cartel may be bad for consumers, but unfettered price wars can be just as bad because they have the capacity to destroy an entire industry. If you think about it, a cartel is just a group of people acting in a cooperative manner to ensure their mutual benefit. It somehow sounds less sinister when you phrase it that way.
You say that RMS's speech is about farmers not having to share land. That doesn't sound to me like it has anything to do with TotC. Quite possibly, RMS does not understand game theory. The two TotC arguments, as applied to software, say basically that:
1. The GPL will stifle software development. 2. The GPL will prevent companies from making money by selling software. The idea of copyright is to give up public freedoms (the natural right to copy or modify something you own) in exchange for a greater output of works.
I disagree. The idea of patents is something like that. The idea of copyright is to give up freedom to copy/modify and redistribute something you license in exchange for a greater output of works. (Notice how I have put some words in bold in order to emphasize the places where you are slanting the argument.) That is one rationale behind copyright, but I would argue that an equally important one is simply to reward the people who produce creative or useful things. The RIAA, DMCA, software patents, and other interfering mechanisms are preventing us from utilising these freedoms, but without offering any compensating advantages (such as lower cost).
The prohibition against murder prevents me from exercising my natural warlike tendencies and all I got in return was this lousy t-shirt. Copyleft licenses attempt to re-establish the 'digital commons'. They give specific permission to exercise the freedoms to duplicate (and/or modify, etcetera).
I just don't believe that these freedoms are any more fundamental than the freedom to control the content of and profit from the distribution of any works you create. If I build (or buy) a chair, it is my property and no one is allowed to steal it. If I write a song, I believe it is also my property. I don't believe that the distinction between concrete and abstract creations is somehow fundamental, but you do and I don't know why. Keep in mind that there are lots of exceptions to this. You would no doubt protest if I started counterfeiting money because I feel that I have the basic freedom to do so. This is about public freedoms, not about business sense.
But seriously, you keep repeating the same scenario over and over without a scrap of evidence or precedent to back it up, other than the fact that you can "see it happening someday."
You want evidence of my speculation? Hold on -- let me call Miss Cleo...
But seriously, you want precedent for my remarks:
Do you doubt that there is a Pink Tie Linux?
You don't believe that companies change their business model/attitude towards their customers after revenue dries up/a management change? Like UnitedLinux not offering binaries. Like Yahoo selling your address to spammers. Like Sun charging money for StarOffice.
You don't think that politicians care about the health of the software business?
You do think that politicians give a flying fuck about your right to hack the source code?
I was not attempting to give analogies which mimicked the entire RIAA situation. (I have learned that it is usually pointless to argue by analogy on/.) I was merely pointing out that mob rule is not, in general, desirable. As far as analogies go, you cleverly picked the least applicable (as an analogy) of the three examples I gave. According to Godwin's law, the conversation should be over when we start discussing Nazis. However, after paying lip service to the Blitzkrieg, you managed to squirrel my example into something more closely resembling the US-Mexican border problem. BTW, as for what the Germans should do to enforce their border, I recommend a giant wall.:-) But not once did they ever stop and think, "You know, maybe having a steady stream of intelligent and hardworking foreigners might just be a good idea. Rather than fighting it, maybe we could co-opt it and, in the process, make a shitload of money."
Right. I always love this point in the argument, where the poster suggests that the RIAA should embrace file sharing and make money, whether from selling a file sharing service, or by using the songs in tv commercials (which they already do), or by putting a CD under their pillow and accepting donations from the money fairy. Even if they could make a shitload (by your standards) of money, the fact is it would be a much smaller shitload than the shitload they are already accustomed to making. That's just not good business sense.
The RIAA debate really is my favorite recurring thread on/., if only for the sheer illogic of hearing the same people who tell you that the GPL is necessary to prevent big companies from "leeching" their work turn around and explain that anything that can be copied, should be copied. BTW, if it's analogies you want, one I've used before that (to my amazement) got modded up as +1 insightful is "That's what they tell you in prison. I'm going to anally rape you whether you like it or not, so you might as well sell your body for some cigarettes." I agree, mob rule is a terrible thing.
Okay good, because I've had this debate with people who didn't. But this scenario has two key factors. One, the ability to commit the crime simply cannot be undone
B.S. While it is not possible to perfectly eliminate the crime, you can dramatically reduce it by making it inconvenient. and two, the 'victim' cannot prove that harm is even being done.
B.S. Harm *is* being done. That is obvious. This sounds like the argument that the defense attorneys always try to use in product liability lawsuits. E.g. 5000 people get cancer after using some product. Many people also use the product and don't get cancer, and of course many people just randomly get cancer. The lawyers try to claim that you can't prove that any specific individual got cancer from the product, but the fact is some of them obviously did. This is the kind of razzle-dazzle you always hear from file-sharing advocates who posit that for every CD they download for free, they end up buying a different CD from an artist they had never heard of before, all the while complaining that CDs are too expensive and they can't find any albums with more than 2 good songs. Sorry, but that fuzzy math is about as good as Worldcom's. It just cannot be compared to wholesale violence.
Now let's try comparing it to looting. And don't give me that "it's not stealing because I'm not depriving anyone of property" crap.
I have to say that I feel amazingly coherent for 6:30 am. In fact, I think this was one of my best posts on the subject.
Nonetheless, this would be a valid option for people like Moby to increase the freedoms of their audience. (I also neglected to mention the cash that Moby could make from live appearances, licensed apparel etc.)
The trouble I have with this is not the concept. I can't argue that you can make money from licensed apparel and live appearances. The problem is that you advocate giving up a huge market (CDs) and focusing on smaller one's. This just doesn't make good business sense. I feel the same way about all the loss leaders that are often advocated on/. (OSS business model, giving X away free and making money on documentation/support/advertising, etc.) Most of the new bands I like aren't commercial successes. => Then they would not be significantly harmed if they permitted reduplication of their music! They're 'failures' anyway, right?
Well they're not raking in money hand-over-fist, but I imagine they earn enough to get by. I don't want to take that away from them. Consider that for the majority of ambitious music acts, commercial failure actually means losing money. Not making a living, even a small one, but going broke.
It's not like I've never had this discussion before. I'm fully aware of the opinions of Courtney Love, Janis Ian, David Bowie, moby, etc. I know that the majority of artists can't make a living, but that's showbiz for ya. The vast majority of "actors" are waiting tables in LA. This is to be expected in any industry where supply outstrips demand. If you liked these kind of (local?) acts, then you'd probably already be paying them by attending concerts or buying records directly off them (something which you could still do if they permitted reduplication).
No, I don't like local bands. I like bands that are popular enough to have fans all over the world, but not mainstream enough to get commercial radio airplay. I don't have an opportunity to see them in concert. I'm not much of a fan of concerts anyway. You go on about the 'internet radio' bands you like. Isn't there a whole system of donation or voluntary subscription waiting to be set up here? Why can't you pay them for reduplicable mp3s with liner notes, or t-shirts?
I don't pay for CDs that I could (legally) get for free. I refuse to participate in a system that is subject to a tragedy of the commons. That's like throwing money down the drain. Why is it that an aspiring painter buys his own paint (but retains the copyright in his pictures) while a musician signs his soul over to the RIAA in exchange for an advance to buy studio time?... This sustains a cartel in the distribution market.
You know what? I agree with you. Every time I have this discussion on/., someone brings up the point that the RIAA is evil. Well, I agree with the premise, but not the conclusion. Why does the fact that the RIAA is evil mean that we have to rip off the musicians by stripping them of their copyright? Why can't the Internet be a positive force. Instead of pirating music to spite the RIAA, we should be encouraging musicians to not sign with a label, and sell their CDs directly from their website. Be entrepreneurial... borrow some money from the bank, record an album, and try to sell it at a profit. Granted. But my father (for example) is semi-retired and is a 'hobbyist' painter. Nonetheless he has sold a couple of paintings in the last year for money, and not to friends (about $300 each, I think). Even though paintings can't be easily duplicated, he still managed to get enough 'distribution' (gallery showings, etc) to make money (although not a profit). And he has an incentive, albeit not overwhelming, to increase his skill and output. Isn't this what many free software developers do? What's wrong with that model, in the end?
I think what your father does is fine. I think your comparison to free software developers is a bit stretched. Most of them are not doing it to try to improve their skills so they can get a real job (as far as I can tell). Most of them are in it for the ideology. When I was a kid, I wrote a few small programs, which I gave away free (although I didn't release the code). Back then, lots of programmers were still trying to make a living selling shareware (not very successfully as far as I can tell), which is essentially what you are advocating that musicians do. I don't object to people releasing code into the public domain or under a BSD license. I just don't like viral licensing because it destroys the software economy by creating a tragedy of the commons.
Closing down the ftp server doesn't help if OF has its own download site. Another poster already pointed out that there is already a site where you can download "Pink Tie" Linux, which is just RedHat under annother name.
After a couple more years of losing money, I think it is quite realistic that RedHat (or their shareholders) will turn anti-GPL. As corrupt as the American government is always portrayed in these/. threads, I believe that they really do care about keeping American businesses healthy (remember that the dot.com bubble was enough to send the entire American economy into recession).
Software EULAs are truly ridiculous when you read them, but most people accept that as standard legal mumbo-jumbo, which it really is. Have you read the EULA on the back of a ski pass, for example? It says they are not liable if the chairlift malfunctions, even due to human error, and you get killed. The point is, that would never hold up in court!! And I can't absolve myself of liability if I hold up a sign which says "We will not be held responsible for murdering you" right before I shoot someone in the head.
To a politician, I imagine that a restriction in an EULA that looks like a Communist plot is going to appear far more dangerous than one that says you can't "hack" the product. The government could very well decide that the GPL is "anti-competive" and pass legislation converting all GPL'ed products into BSD'ed ones (at least within American jurisdiction). They might very well do this, while leaving all other proprietary licenses alone.
You can have perfect forward secrecy for dynamic communications, but the standard perfect forward secrecy algorithm (Diffie-Hellman) can also be cracked by a quantum computer.
P.S. It (sort of) says in the article that RedHat is not providing binaries to Advanced Server, although I guess they are still providing binaries for their desktop Linux.
The point is, in the future, Linux distributors will become more concerned with making a buck, after it becomes apparent that no one is just going to drop money in their hands. As is mentioned in the article, Linux distributors are projecting "increased sales" through "new revenue streams" and one of these revenue streams is "making it more difficult for users to obtain the software for free."
My theory is that RedHat will try to prevent people from simply copying their distribution and rebranding it. This could be the string "RedHat" embedded in non-obvious places or it might include some proprietary apps or some obfuscated code that needs to be modified. If OF isn't careful, RedHat will accuse them of copyright/trademark violation or reverse engineering and take them to court.
At that point, assuming that the proprietary software industry is already bleeding and the free software companies aren't making any money either, I speculated that the government might step in and try to save the industry. They might do this by pressuring the courts to rule that some sections of the GPL are unenforceable.
I actually think that very few musicians could live on donations from their fans, and I doubt that Moby is one of them. Another salient question is whether he could afford to rent a studio, hire session musicians, etc. for a few months without getting any money from album sales.
There are just so many things wrong with your argument, I don't know which ones to focus on. Most of the new bands I like aren't commercial successes. They don't get commercial radio play and I can only hear them on the Internet. Would I prefer that they couldn't make any money at all? Uhh... no.
I really don't understand why everything has to be free. When bands churn out what I consider to be mindless pop music, I don't begrudge them their success. Fine, so I don't like it, but millions of others do. (The one exception is No Doubt, cuz I *know* they could do better.)
I don't typically criticize people to choose to work for free either. Amateur carpenters, sculptors, potters, etc mostly create chairs, urns, etc. to decorate their own houses or to give as gifts to their friends. If someone wants to give away their work for free, I don't begrudge them that, although it should be their choice. The same applies to music and software, although I don't really agree with the GPL because I think it is hypocritical.
Well, you are the same guy posting the same thing again, although I notice you have a different username than last time. Please tell me you didn't honestly go back to the previous story, pick a random message that got modded up to +5, and repost it here... that would be the ultimate in karma whoring.
Okay, sorry. I did a search and i turns out it was UnitedLinux who announced that they would not be providing free binaries. Anyway, in my hypothetical example, the first step was for RedHat to stop providing free binaries. Since UnitedLinux has already done this, it is not inconceivable that RedHat will follow suit.
And, wha'? Why would RedHat stop distributing binaries?
AFAIK, RedHat has stopped making binaries available for free download. Wasn't there a/. story on this? (Yes, they include binaries in the distribution that you buy.) They also mentioned in that same story that you couldn't use the pre-built binaries without a per-seat license. And how the heck would your fictional company get hold of the stuff, as purchased source code?
They would build their own binaries from the GPL'ed source. RedHat has been pretty careful to follow the letter and spirit of the GPL, and they remain openly committed to that model. Why would they try to subvert it now?
The board of directors gets fed up with the cash burn and hires new management. Betrayed trust is only a management change away. All RedHat has to do in order to make free copies more scarce is to stop maintaining an anonymous ftp server, and stop allowing updates to mirror sites. That is perfectly allowed under the GPL. Of course, they cannot stop anyone from buying the disc and redistributing the contents.
I was waiting for someone to chime in with that vapid remark about how people will always manage to find business models to sell new technology (e.g. look at radio -- no one thought that would ever make money, but then people started selling ads.)... but it looks like no one will.
I loved this quote from the article: Linux sales lost some ground to Windows last year, but they're expected to climb in coming years as distributors of the alternative operating system create new revenue streams.
What new revenue streams do they have in mind -- the money fairy? So far, the only thing they've been good at selling is stock. I am very suspicious of the idea that Linux will ever produce significant revenues.
One of the trends we are seeing these days, due to computer analysis of trends, is that the trends are no longer valid. Look at all the stock market analyists who were predicting a U-shaped recovery or a V-shaped recovery based on analyses of previous recessions. They were all full of crap. They told people to stay in the market, since the market would inevitably recover, and consequently the market now obeys a meta-law.
The people who think that technology will create revenues through some business model or another, no matter how you produce it, are basing their conclusions on recent history. But history is fallable because it filters out all the failures. Historically, commercial success did not arise out of an "if you build it, they will come" attitude; it came from people with an idea for making money, and those people were proven right or wrong.
It doesn't take a genius to see that the stock market's whole boom and bust arose out of this shared hallucination that all we had to do was build the Internet, and new business models would spring out of thin air.
It's the very same thing as moby said recently, he questioned why the worth of music is measured by the amount of sales. I agree with him that the music that really matters and defines our culture is not the charts.
Yeah... but moby also said that he still wants to make a living selling music.
IDC based its projection of $280 million in sales within four years on efforts by Red Hat, SuSE and others to wring more money from Linux, in part by making it more difficult for users to obtain the software for free, Gillen said.
Here's what I think will happen:
1. RedHat stops distributing binaries and enforces its copyright on the binaries it builds. 2. Someone founds a company called OrangeFedora whose sole purpose is to take the RedHat distribution, s/RedHat/OrangeFedora/ and give away/sell the binaries at a reduced cost. 3. RedHat embeds some secret instances of the string "RedHat" inside their distro. 4a. OrangeFedora developers don't notice the secret strings. 5a. RedHat sues OrangeFedora for trademark violation and wins. 4b. OrangeFedora developers notice the secret strings and remove them. 5b. RedHat sues OrangeFedora under the DMCA and wins. 6. The courts decide that commercial entities have the right to keep ownership of their improvements to GPL'ed code, thus defeating the spirit of the license.
what is this "euler's formula" of which you speak? i thought miller-rabin was the most commonly used primality test.
I had trouble finding a good reference for this. As I mentioned before, the Euler test is very fast, but it is vulnerable to pseudoprimes. After you find a candidate, you may want to double-check it with another algorithm, such as Miller-Rabin. Here's a crypto library that uses both.
Slashdot Mirror
Surely there is room for Linux in there somewhere.
Sure there is room for Linux in there. As the article says, IT spending is now considered a waste of money. Therefore, free software must now look pretty appealing (but don't expect them to spend money on services and support).
-a
Most people in the tech industry are going to fade out. Thus, leaving the majority of workers those who have been around before the
"Bigger salaries and more work"? Puh-leez!! Since when has the collapse of an industry caused salaries to go up? The whole reason why unqualified people flocked to IT in the first place was the high salaries. The high salaries were the reason why companies pressured the US government to relax immigration controls. Frankly, I think we will see smaller salaries and more work as proprietary programmers struggle to compete with open source.
-a
If I use GPL'd code to create internal code for one of my clients, I am under NO obligation to release it unless I distribute it.
Yes, but *they* have the right to distribute it.
How is the GPL an anti-corporate license?
Well, duh.
Quickie question, where is 80% of the software in the U.S written and why... time up. Internal corporate apps.
Hey, why not use the 90% figure that ESR quotes in CatB? I severely doubt you have facts to back that up. My guess is that includes "software" such as web pages, scripts, and spreadsheets. Here's my quiz: where is 80% of the software that takes talent, energy, and education to write written and why?
-a
Surely the GPL is better in this situation? I don't mean this as a rhetorical quetion, I'm genuinely interested to know whether you think there's a flaw in my argument.
Surely the GPL is better in this situation?!? What you've just described is the standard retread argument for the GPL, i.e. the fear that a corporation is going to "leech off the community" and possibly even make money doing so. Except in this case, there is no community. What is wrong with using the BSD license here? Of course everyone likes to pick on Microsoft, but what about all the other companies that might want to incorporate this research into their non-GPL'ed software; don't they have rights?
MS decide that they really like this technology. They want to distribute it with MS Windows, but they decide to change it slightly.
Your arguments hinge on the presumption that Microsoft is a monopoly. Well fine, but they are being sued for that right now. You want to prevent them from engaging in monopolistic practices by punishing a lot of other companies as well. Why don't you let the US courts handle the issue of what sanctions to impose against Microsoft. You can't base every policy decision on the actins of one company.
-a
Do you suffer from the irrational fear that somewhere out there, at this very moment, someone is making money?
Judging from the current stream of comments, I guess I'm the only one who liked the article. I have always maintained that the Internet is attempting to be both a technical revolution and a social one and you don't have to subscribe to both. I don't see why an international data network trumps national distinctions any more than an international phone network or air travel network or space station would. We may not like all the laws of other countries, but we have to respect their right to self-determination or else we become hypocrites.
In retrospect, the concept of a bunch of geeks who swear by the EFF's manifesto on how cyberspace really is a separate reality in which national borders do not exist and regular laws do not apply... it really does seem vaguely similar to the analogy of a bunch of freemen holed up in Oregon who refuse to recognize the authority of the US government. He lost me a bit at the end, though. Monitoring all that data to make sure no private information escapes seems kind of hard to enforce, especially if the data is encrypted.
-a
Unfortunately, I don't have an Ogg-Vorbis player installed on my machine and I don't feel like installing one at the moment. To tell you the truth, I've never been a fan of Stallman's. To put it plainly, he's a socialist and I'm not. So I don't know exactly how RMS explains how copyleft is not a tragedy of the commons, but I'm pretty sure I would disagree with it. The way I would explain it, there are two basic TotCs (please note that when I say TotC, I am using the game theory definition):
1. The tragedy of socialism.
2. The GPL Hobson's choice.
As I'm sure you know, socialism has a fundamental flaw (1) in the sense that the people share equally in the proceeds of society, regardless of how much they contribute. There is no incentive to work hard, so production goes down. Thus, socialist societies have invariably suffered from a) having weak economies, and b) being police states.
In the case of Linux, there are definitely plenty of people pulling their weight, but I attribute this to the fact that a) there do exist some dedicated socialists, b) the propoganda hasn't gotten stale enough yet, and c) some poor bastards still think they can make money off this OSS shit. I should point out that Linux development is still at the point where it developers are basically trying to copy various features of Unix and Windows. Only time will tell whether Linux can thrive, and even innovate, after b and c wear off.
Then there is the GPL Hobson's choice (2), in which a corporation that wishes to sell a product can't afford to use the GPL (because it drives down profits), but they can't afford not to use the GPL either (because it lowers the cost of entry). A monopoly/cartel may be bad for consumers, but unfettered price wars can be just as bad because they have the capacity to destroy an entire industry. If you think about it, a cartel is just a group of people acting in a cooperative manner to ensure their mutual benefit. It somehow sounds less sinister when you phrase it that way.
You say that RMS's speech is about farmers not having to share land. That doesn't sound to me like it has anything to do with TotC. Quite possibly, RMS does not understand game theory. The two TotC arguments, as applied to software, say basically that:
1. The GPL will stifle software development.
2. The GPL will prevent companies from making money by selling software.
The idea of copyright is to give up public freedoms (the natural right to copy or modify something you own) in exchange for a greater output of works.
I disagree. The idea of patents is something like that. The idea of copyright is to give up freedom to copy/modify and redistribute something you license in exchange for a greater output of works. (Notice how I have put some words in bold in order to emphasize the places where you are slanting the argument.) That is one rationale behind copyright, but I would argue that an equally important one is simply to reward the people who produce creative or useful things.
The RIAA, DMCA, software patents, and other interfering mechanisms are preventing us from utilising these freedoms, but without offering any compensating advantages (such as lower cost).
The prohibition against murder prevents me from exercising my natural warlike tendencies and all I got in return was this lousy t-shirt.
Copyleft licenses attempt to re-establish the 'digital commons'. They give specific permission to exercise the freedoms to duplicate (and/or modify, etcetera).
I just don't believe that these freedoms are any more fundamental than the freedom to control the content of and profit from the distribution of any works you create. If I build (or buy) a chair, it is my property and no one is allowed to steal it. If I write a song, I believe it is also my property. I don't believe that the distinction between concrete and abstract creations is somehow fundamental, but you do and I don't know why. Keep in mind that there are lots of exceptions to this. You would no doubt protest if I started counterfeiting money because I feel that I have the basic freedom to do so.
This is about public freedoms, not about business sense.
Well, duh!
-a
But seriously, you keep repeating the same scenario over and over without a scrap of evidence or precedent to back it up, other than the fact that you can "see it happening someday."
You want evidence of my speculation? Hold on -- let me call Miss Cleo...
But seriously, you want precedent for my remarks:
Do you doubt that there is a Pink Tie Linux?
You don't believe that companies change their business model/attitude towards their customers after revenue dries up/a management change? Like UnitedLinux not offering binaries. Like Yahoo selling your address to spammers. Like Sun charging money for StarOffice.
You don't think that politicians care about the health of the software business?
You do think that politicians give a flying fuck about your right to hack the source code?
Like, which is it?
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I was not attempting to give analogies which mimicked the entire RIAA situation. (I have learned that it is usually pointless to argue by analogy on /.) I was merely pointing out that mob rule is not, in general, desirable. As far as analogies go, you cleverly picked the least applicable (as an analogy) of the three examples I gave. According to Godwin's law, the conversation should be over when we start discussing Nazis. However, after paying lip service to the Blitzkrieg, you managed to squirrel my example into something more closely resembling the US-Mexican border problem. BTW, as for what the Germans should do to enforce their border, I recommend a giant wall. :-)
/., if only for the sheer illogic of hearing the same people who tell you that the GPL is necessary to prevent big companies from "leeching" their work turn around and explain that anything that can be copied, should be copied. BTW, if it's analogies you want, one I've used before that (to my amazement) got modded up as +1 insightful is "That's what they tell you in prison. I'm going to anally rape you whether you like it or not, so you might as well sell your body for some cigarettes."
But not once did they ever stop and think, "You know, maybe having a steady stream of intelligent and hardworking foreigners might just be a good idea. Rather than fighting it, maybe we could co-opt it and, in the process, make a shitload of money."
Right. I always love this point in the argument, where the poster suggests that the RIAA should embrace file sharing and make money, whether from selling a file sharing service, or by using the songs in tv commercials (which they already do), or by putting a CD under their pillow and accepting donations from the money fairy. Even if they could make a shitload (by your standards) of money, the fact is it would be a much smaller shitload than the shitload they are already accustomed to making. That's just not good business sense.
The RIAA debate really is my favorite recurring thread on
I agree, mob rule is a terrible thing.
Okay good, because I've had this debate with people who didn't.
But this scenario has two key factors. One, the ability to commit the crime simply cannot be undone
B.S. While it is not possible to perfectly eliminate the crime, you can dramatically reduce it by making it inconvenient.
and two, the 'victim' cannot prove that harm is even being done.
B.S. Harm *is* being done. That is obvious. This sounds like the argument that the defense attorneys always try to use in product liability lawsuits. E.g. 5000 people get cancer after using some product. Many people also use the product and don't get cancer, and of course many people just randomly get cancer. The lawyers try to claim that you can't prove that any specific individual got cancer from the product, but the fact is some of them obviously did. This is the kind of razzle-dazzle you always hear from file-sharing advocates who posit that for every CD they download for free, they end up buying a different CD from an artist they had never heard of before, all the while complaining that CDs are too expensive and they can't find any albums with more than 2 good songs. Sorry, but that fuzzy math is about as good as Worldcom's.
It just cannot be compared to wholesale violence.
Now let's try comparing it to looting. And don't give me that "it's not stealing because I'm not depriving anyone of property" crap.
I have to say that I feel amazingly coherent for 6:30 am. In fact, I think this was one of my best posts on the subject.
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Nonetheless, this would be a valid option for people like Moby to increase the freedoms of their audience. (I also neglected to mention the cash that Moby could make from live appearances, licensed apparel etc.)
The trouble I have with this is not the concept. I can't argue that you can make money from licensed apparel and live appearances. The problem is that you advocate giving up a huge market (CDs) and focusing on smaller one's. This just doesn't make good business sense. I feel the same way about all the loss leaders that are often advocated on
Most of the new bands I like aren't commercial successes. =>
Then they would not be significantly harmed if they permitted reduplication of their music! They're 'failures' anyway, right?
Well they're not raking in money hand-over-fist, but I imagine they earn enough to get by. I don't want to take that away from them.
Consider that for the majority of ambitious music acts, commercial failure actually means losing money. Not making a living, even a small one, but going broke.
It's not like I've never had this discussion before. I'm fully aware of the opinions of Courtney Love, Janis Ian, David Bowie, moby, etc. I know that the majority of artists can't make a living, but that's showbiz for ya. The vast majority of "actors" are waiting tables in LA. This is to be expected in any industry where supply outstrips demand.
If you liked these kind of (local?) acts, then you'd probably already be paying them by attending concerts or buying records directly off them (something which you could still do if they permitted reduplication).
No, I don't like local bands. I like bands that are popular enough to have fans all over the world, but not mainstream enough to get commercial radio airplay. I don't have an opportunity to see them in concert. I'm not much of a fan of concerts anyway.
You go on about the 'internet radio' bands you like. Isn't there a whole system of donation or voluntary subscription waiting to be set up here? Why can't you pay them for reduplicable mp3s with liner notes, or t-shirts?
I don't pay for CDs that I could (legally) get for free. I refuse to participate in a system that is subject to a tragedy of the commons. That's like throwing money down the drain.
Why is it that an aspiring painter buys his own paint (but retains the copyright in his pictures) while a musician signs his soul over to the RIAA in exchange for an advance to buy studio time?
You know what? I agree with you. Every time I have this discussion on
Granted. But my father (for example) is semi-retired and is a 'hobbyist' painter. Nonetheless he has sold a couple of paintings in the last year for money, and not to friends (about $300 each, I think). Even though paintings can't be easily duplicated, he still managed to get enough 'distribution' (gallery showings, etc) to make money (although not a profit). And he has an incentive, albeit not overwhelming, to increase his skill and output. Isn't this what many free software developers do? What's wrong with that model, in the end?
I think what your father does is fine. I think your comparison to free software developers is a bit stretched. Most of them are not doing it to try to improve their skills so they can get a real job (as far as I can tell). Most of them are in it for the ideology. When I was a kid, I wrote a few small programs, which I gave away free (although I didn't release the code). Back then, lots of programmers were still trying to make a living selling shareware (not very successfully as far as I can tell), which is essentially what you are advocating that musicians do. I don't object to people releasing code into the public domain or under a BSD license. I just don't like viral licensing because it destroys the software economy by creating a tragedy of the commons.
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Closing down the ftp server doesn't help if OF has its own download site. Another poster already pointed out that there is already a site where you can download "Pink Tie" Linux, which is just RedHat under annother name.
/. threads, I believe that they really do care about keeping American businesses healthy (remember that the dot.com bubble was enough to send the entire American economy into recession).
After a couple more years of losing money, I think it is quite realistic that RedHat (or their shareholders) will turn anti-GPL. As corrupt as the American government is always portrayed in these
Software EULAs are truly ridiculous when you read them, but most people accept that as standard legal mumbo-jumbo, which it really is. Have you read the EULA on the back of a ski pass, for example? It says they are not liable if the chairlift malfunctions, even due to human error, and you get killed. The point is, that would never hold up in court!! And I can't absolve myself of liability if I hold up a sign which says "We will not be held responsible for murdering you" right before I shoot someone in the head.
To a politician, I imagine that a restriction in an EULA that looks like a Communist plot is going to appear far more dangerous than one that says you can't "hack" the product. The government could very well decide that the GPL is "anti-competive" and pass legislation converting all GPL'ed products into BSD'ed ones (at least within American jurisdiction). They might very well do this, while leaving all other proprietary licenses alone.
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Printf("%s%s%s\n", "Re", "dH", "at");
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You can have perfect forward secrecy for dynamic communications, but the standard perfect forward secrecy algorithm (Diffie-Hellman) can also be cracked by a quantum computer.
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P.S. It (sort of) says in the article that RedHat is not providing binaries to Advanced Server, although I guess they are still providing binaries for their desktop Linux.
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The point is, in the future, Linux distributors will become more concerned with making a buck, after it becomes apparent that no one is just going to drop money in their hands. As is mentioned in the article, Linux distributors are projecting "increased sales" through "new revenue streams" and one of these revenue streams is "making it more difficult for users to obtain the software for free."
My theory is that RedHat will try to prevent people from simply copying their distribution and rebranding it. This could be the string "RedHat" embedded in non-obvious places or it might include some proprietary apps or some obfuscated code that needs to be modified. If OF isn't careful, RedHat will accuse them of copyright/trademark violation or reverse engineering and take them to court.
At that point, assuming that the proprietary software industry is already bleeding and the free software companies aren't making any money either, I speculated that the government might step in and try to save the industry. They might do this by pressuring the courts to rule that some sections of the GPL are unenforceable.
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It was WOPR
That's true, but it was definitely pronounced "Whopper", since it was modelled after a real defense department computer named BURGR.
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Well, it seemed relevant at the time. Honest.
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I actually think that very few musicians could live on donations from their fans, and I doubt that Moby is one of them. Another salient question is whether he could afford to rent a studio, hire session musicians, etc. for a few months without getting any money from album sales.
There are just so many things wrong with your argument, I don't know which ones to focus on. Most of the new bands I like aren't commercial successes. They don't get commercial radio play and I can only hear them on the Internet. Would I prefer that they couldn't make any money at all? Uhh... no.
I really don't understand why everything has to be free. When bands churn out what I consider to be mindless pop music, I don't begrudge them their success. Fine, so I don't like it, but millions of others do. (The one exception is No Doubt, cuz I *know* they could do better.)
I don't typically criticize people to choose to work for free either. Amateur carpenters, sculptors, potters, etc mostly create chairs, urns, etc. to decorate their own houses or to give as gifts to their friends. If someone wants to give away their work for free, I don't begrudge them that, although it should be their choice. The same applies to music and software, although I don't really agree with the GPL because I think it is hypocritical.
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It's that same group saying the same thing again.
Well, you are the same guy posting the same thing again, although I notice you have a different username than last time. Please tell me you didn't honestly go back to the previous story, pick a random message that got modded up to +5, and repost it here... that would be the ultimate in karma whoring.
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Okay, sorry. I did a search and i turns out it was UnitedLinux who announced that they would not be providing free binaries. Anyway, in my hypothetical example, the first step was for RedHat to stop providing free binaries. Since UnitedLinux has already done this, it is not inconceivable that RedHat will follow suit.
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Someone has already done this. Go to cheapbytes.com and look for "Pink Tie".
Just out of curiousity... Was that name by any chance chosen by University of Waterloo CS students? Their mascot is a giant pink tie.
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And, wha'? Why would RedHat stop distributing binaries?
AFAIK, RedHat has stopped making binaries available for free download. Wasn't there a
And how the heck would your fictional company get hold of the stuff, as purchased source code?
They would build their own binaries from the GPL'ed source.
RedHat has been pretty careful to follow the letter and spirit of the GPL, and they remain openly committed to that model. Why would they try to subvert it now?
The board of directors gets fed up with the cash burn and hires new management. Betrayed trust is only a management change away.
All RedHat has to do in order to make free copies more scarce is to stop maintaining an anonymous ftp server, and stop allowing updates to mirror sites. That is perfectly allowed under the GPL. Of course, they cannot stop anyone from buying the disc and redistributing the contents.
Which is exactly what OrangeFedora would do.
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I was waiting for someone to chime in with that vapid remark about how people will always manage to find business models to sell new technology (e.g. look at radio -- no one thought that would ever make money, but then people started selling ads.)... but it looks like no one will.
I loved this quote from the article:
Linux sales lost some ground to Windows last year, but they're expected to climb in coming years as distributors of the alternative operating system create new revenue streams.
What new revenue streams do they have in mind -- the money fairy? So far, the only thing they've been good at selling is stock. I am very suspicious of the idea that Linux will ever produce significant revenues.
One of the trends we are seeing these days, due to computer analysis of trends, is that the trends are no longer valid. Look at all the stock market analyists who were predicting a U-shaped recovery or a V-shaped recovery based on analyses of previous recessions. They were all full of crap. They told people to stay in the market, since the market would inevitably recover, and consequently the market now obeys a meta-law.
The people who think that technology will create revenues through some business model or another, no matter how you produce it, are basing their conclusions on recent history. But history is fallable because it filters out all the failures. Historically, commercial success did not arise out of an "if you build it, they will come" attitude; it came from people with an idea for making money, and those people were proven right or wrong.
It doesn't take a genius to see that the stock market's whole boom and bust arose out of this shared hallucination that all we had to do was build the Internet, and new business models would spring out of thin air.
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It's the very same thing as moby said recently, he questioned why the worth of music is measured by the amount of sales. I agree with him that the music that really matters and defines our culture is not the charts.
Yeah... but moby also said that he still wants to make a living selling music.
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IDC based its projection of $280 million in sales within four years on efforts by Red Hat, SuSE and others to wring more money from Linux, in part by making it more difficult for users to obtain the software for free, Gillen said.
Here's what I think will happen:
1. RedHat stops distributing binaries and enforces its copyright on the binaries it builds.
2. Someone founds a company called OrangeFedora whose sole purpose is to take the RedHat distribution, s/RedHat/OrangeFedora/ and give away/sell the binaries at a reduced cost.
3. RedHat embeds some secret instances of the string "RedHat" inside their distro.
4a. OrangeFedora developers don't notice the secret strings.
5a. RedHat sues OrangeFedora for trademark violation and wins.
4b. OrangeFedora developers notice the secret strings and remove them.
5b. RedHat sues OrangeFedora under the DMCA and wins.
6. The courts decide that commercial entities have the right to keep ownership of their improvements to GPL'ed code, thus defeating the spirit of the license.
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what is this "euler's formula" of which you speak? i thought miller-rabin was the most commonly used primality test.
I had trouble finding a good reference for this. As I mentioned before, the Euler test is very fast, but it is vulnerable to pseudoprimes. After you find a candidate, you may want to double-check it with another algorithm, such as Miller-Rabin. Here's a crypto library that uses both.
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