For now, corporatations with large investments in their source see themselves as having two options: 1. release the code with a restrictive license. 2. don't release the code.
Good point. Companies can do whatever they like. I don't like them coopting the "open source" term for licenses which are not in the spirit of GPL or BSD licenses. This is something that the OSI (or Perens) presumably has some say over, so I am more angry at ESR for occasionally blessing non-open source licenses, than at the companies that release the licenses.
Beyond that, if a company wants the benefits of the feedback that comes from open source, they will do well to please the developers they are getting the service from, or they will get less development. If there is a good reason to release the source, therefore there is a good reason to release it in as developer-acceptable form as possible.
Who is going to pay for service for a computer game?
Ask the denizens of Ultima Online. They pay for play. Clearly this model works only with internet multiplayer games with proprietary servers.
I agree that most computer games will never be open source because the product cycle is too short so neither the developer nor the user has much incentive in open source. Game makers could open source old games but there isn't much incentive to do so.
Companies have a vested interest in not paying for _open_ customizations.
As that would let their competitors use the same customizations for free. Heck, that might also give their competitors insight into what they are doing. They would be the sole entities paying for something that benefits many people; as companies are and always will be money-driven, it makes far more sense just to let someone else take the plunge. The same applies to most users, who would rather leech than fund (say) game development. How much of your shareware did you actually register? How much of your freeware did you send in donations for?
Under the GPL, the company contracting the custom work would have to get the source, but they would be under no obligation to release it unless they released binaries outside their company. Additionally, they could restrict the programmer from releasing the source and binaries if they agreed to that in the contract.
That being said, I don't think opens source is a good model for _all_ commercial programs, but it is certainly appropriate for programs with long product cycles, a large install base and role as a platform for other programs (which may or may not be open source). OS software, browsers, web servers and programming languages are good examples. It should be no suprise that there are viable open source projects with commerciale support in all of these areas.
Most whizz-bang games will never be open source since the product cycle is too short for the original programmers or the even consumers to get much benefit.
The BSD license certainly restricts future coders much less, and is in that sense "truly free." The GPL doesn't allow reproprietization (if that's a word) of the code and is in that sense is "truly free" since all future users and coders have access to the source of derivative products.
There are honorable and selfish reasons for using either license, I don't personally believe that a coder should be faulted for chosing one or the other.
I don't trust the DOJ or the states to come up with a reasonable consent decree for limiting Microsoft's monopoly. Look what they did with the last one. Microsoft's lawyers, while apparently not much good in the courtroom, certainly understand their business better than the DOJ and can make any settlement a mockery.
IMHO, the only fair settlement would be to enforce transparent pricing on Microsoft, fully open their API's, with a severe penalty for MS products that use undocumented API's. Opening or auctioning their source is not a good idea in it's present form, but it should be available on an ongoing basis to an independent body who will judge compliance with the API specs.
The only open source plan that could work would be to force Microsoft to distribute all future versions of Windows under the GPL. Watch them run to narrow the scope of windows when that happens. (Windows? that's just the kernel (aka DOS). Win32, IE, the GUI, drivers, those are still our proprietary property.)
Microsoft should also be forced to observe a 2 year moratorium on aquiring companies. Let them innovate, not assimilate.
I hadn't been able to login as copito for a week and I felt like a casualty of progress. I made myself a new login (rmminusrf but it just wasn't the same. Thanks for reaching back and fixing the problem. The new format is excellent.
Let's see, this might be the first customizable community news portal for techs. Can somebody say IPO? Although I hope for Rob's sake that he can make lots of money, I pray that this place will never lose it's soul. So far so good.
Their contract with SCO over xenix states they can't compete in the Unix world. They might be able to get around this with Linux since Linux doesn't have Unix branding but it would be a big court fight.. Not that they wouldn't find a way to do it if they could make money on it, but the Linux world is so philisophically removed from the MS world, it's hard to see the match.
I can think of 995 reasons. Probably closer to 945 reasons. I realize that the workstation version of OS X won't cost that much but it also won't have WebObjects. I won't argue with the superior graphic interface. The superior OS depends strongly on the application an budget.
[5:57pm] mcope@orion (~): telnet 206.170.14.76 80 Trying 206.170.14.76... Connected to 206.170.14.76. Escape character is '^]'. Connection closed by foreign host.
If trolling were a word it would not be used in the context you used it.. Do yourself a favor troll an read the dictionary.
While you're at it shatter your illusions of MS-DOS.
In response to your opinion that the IBM PC was far more advanced than the Apple ][. I respectfully disagree. The Apple had much better graphics capabilities, BASIC in the shell and was cooler overall. The PC took off not because of DOS, which, let's face it, is a no brainer of an OS, but because of programs like VisiCalc and because the bare exposure of the hardware made it easy to write games. Microsoft is right in one thing, apps attract users and users attract apps. Too bad that doesn't work in the server environment where far fewer apps are needed and the big costs are support and downtime. For a server you need a real OS
Exactly how is calling Linux a "Kiddy OS" any different then the sometimes childish things Linux advocates say. In my experience I have seen many lucid expositions of Linux's strengths on a technical basis but few such expositions of Microsoft's strengths from Microsoft advocates. The only counter example I can think of that clearly argues a _technical_ advantage of MS was the CS professor who wrote about the fundamental scalability of NT's internals. and pointed out some problems with Linux 's internals. I have respect for that, although I would have more respect if it meant something in practice.
I do not have much respect for monkeys on either side but they don't bother me much as long as I have the choice to choose what is best for my own use.
I think breaking them up would be too unweildy of a hammer. I would like to see transparent pricing and fully documented API's. Let the market take care of the rest.
They can't beat Linux on total cost of ownership so they say that cost per transaction is the most important thing. If that were the case everybody in the world would be running Solaris on an E10k.. In any case OS cost per transaction -> 0 as transactions gets large it's seven figure hardware costs and big support costs that bite you.
Cost of NT is an extremely big issue in a medium scale server application and using it in a large scale server application is idiotic since it does not scale very well and doesn't come close to running on Big Iron (Linux doesn't run on Big Iron either but it will before NT does). Linux beats NT where it counts, cost and reliability in serving NT domains and medium scale server aps on PC hardware. Add the ability of Linux to run more varied and cheaper hardware and you have a clear winner in the server world. I can see how MS could be smug about the user side for a while longer but they're losing the server side now to a supperior product.
Yet some PC users are making similarly outrageous wagers on Linux, the underdog in the operating-system wars.
Who exactly are these users and how are they going to be hurt? The only people that could get hurt are those providing services, not the average user.
Perhaps he's talking about business users who require the support of Oracle etc... But it is pure FUD to suggest that good companies like Sun (Which still supports SunOS 4) and Oracle would renege on their customer commitments.
It is true that the vendors may have reason to be cautious, but the user...hardly/p?
The market does a great job of pricing commodities if all internal and external costs related to the production and distribution of that commoditity.
Does the price of gasoline accurately internalize the price of military intervention in the Middle East?
Does the price of gasoline accurately internalize environmental and human harms of agressive exploration and extraction of petroleum? or of the damage when it is used?
When those things are true, gasoline will be fairly priced.
As for your other point, you are correct will never run out of petroleum reserves since the price will rise as supply diminishes, hence some will never be extracted. We will, however, run out of useful quantities of gasoline, which is a man made product and which will not be produced if it is priced out of the energy market.
I find Sengan's posts to be troublesome not because they are anti-US, but because they are anti-sense. I'm not talking about the geopolitical editorials, but ones that have convoluted grammatical constructions. I thought that Sengan was a non-native English speaker for a some time, but apparently he's British, so now I just think he's a little hasty.
As to your other points, I attended an international school (25% US, 75% other) and I agree wholeheartedly that Americans,even well educated ones, tend to be less well rounded than others. However, Europe is not the whole world either and once you get outside of that your taxes and social systems quip is even less true. And besides, in my limited experience, Panama and Chile have by far worse beer than the US.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who haven't seen it, the Dilbert mission statement generator is worth a look.
Here's the one it came up with for me.
The customer can count on us to authoritatively coordinate world-class technology in order to solve business problems
For now, corporatations with large investments in their source see themselves as having two options:
1. release the code with a restrictive license.
2. don't release the code.
Good point. Companies can do whatever they like. I don't like them coopting the "open source" term for licenses which are not in the spirit of GPL or BSD licenses. This is something that the OSI (or Perens) presumably has some say over, so I am more angry at ESR for occasionally blessing non-open source licenses, than at the companies that release the licenses.
Beyond that, if a company wants the benefits of the feedback that comes from open source, they will do well to please the developers they are getting the service from, or they will get less development. If there is a good reason to release the source, therefore there is a good reason to release it in as developer-acceptable form as possible.
Who is going to pay for service for a computer game?
Ask the denizens of Ultima Online. They pay for play. Clearly this model works only with internet multiplayer games with proprietary servers.
I agree that most computer games will never be open source because the product cycle is too short so neither the developer nor the user has much incentive in open source. Game makers could open source old games but there isn't much incentive to do so.
Companies have a vested interest in not paying for _open_ customizations.
As that would let their competitors use the same customizations for free. Heck, that might also give their competitors insight into what they are doing. They would
be the sole entities paying for something that benefits many people; as companies are and always will be money-driven, it makes far more sense just to let
someone else take the plunge. The same applies to most users, who would rather leech than fund (say) game development. How much of your shareware did you
actually register? How much of your freeware did you send in donations for?
Under the GPL, the company contracting the custom work would have to get the source, but they would be under no obligation to release it unless they released binaries outside their company. Additionally, they could restrict the programmer from releasing the source and binaries if they agreed to that in the contract.
That being said, I don't think opens source is a good model for _all_ commercial programs, but it is certainly appropriate for programs with long product cycles, a large install base and role as a platform for other programs (which may or may not be open source). OS software, browsers, web servers and programming languages are good examples. It should be no suprise that there are viable open source projects with commerciale support in all of these areas.
Most whizz-bang games will never be open source since the product cycle is too short for the original programmers or the even consumers to get much benefit.
The BSD license certainly restricts future coders much less, and is in that sense "truly free." The GPL doesn't allow reproprietization (if that's a word) of the code and is in that sense is "truly free" since all future users and coders have access to the source of derivative products.
There are honorable and selfish reasons for using either license, I don't personally believe that a coder should be faulted for chosing one or the other.
I don't trust the DOJ or the states to come up with a reasonable consent decree for limiting Microsoft's monopoly. Look what they did with the last one. Microsoft's lawyers, while apparently not much good in the courtroom, certainly understand their business better than the DOJ and can make any settlement a mockery.
IMHO, the only fair settlement would be to enforce transparent pricing on Microsoft, fully open their API's, with a severe penalty for MS products that use undocumented API's. Opening or auctioning their source is not a good idea in it's present form, but it should be available on an ongoing basis to an independent body who will judge compliance with the API specs.
The only open source plan that could work would be to force Microsoft to distribute all future versions of Windows under the GPL. Watch them run to narrow the scope of windows when that happens. (Windows? that's just the kernel (aka DOS). Win32, IE, the GUI, drivers, those are still our proprietary property.)
Microsoft should also be forced to observe a 2 year moratorium on aquiring companies. Let them innovate, not assimilate.
Don't forget can opener.
If you recognized the Dilbert reference, you are one step closer.
I don't much like the VMS user environment, but it has a well deserved reputation as a reliable and secure OS.
I hadn't been able to login as copito for a week and I felt like a casualty of progress. I made myself a new login (rmminusrf but it just wasn't the same. Thanks for reaching back and fixing the problem. The new format is excellent.
Let's see, this might be the first customizable community news portal for techs. Can somebody say IPO? Although I hope for Rob's sake that he can make lots of money, I pray that this place will never lose it's soul. So far so good.
The ROM could easily be on die.
Their contract with SCO over xenix states they can't compete in the Unix world. They might be able to get around this with Linux since Linux doesn't have Unix branding but it would be a big court fight.. Not that they wouldn't find a way to do it if they could make money on it, but the Linux world is so philisophically removed from the MS world, it's hard to see the match.
I can think of 995 reasons. Probably closer to 945 reasons. I realize that the workstation version of OS X won't cost that much but it also won't have WebObjects. I won't argue with the superior graphic interface. The superior OS depends strongly on the application an budget.
Intel SE440BX motherboard (AMI BIOS I think) boots El-torito nicely.
[5:57pm] mcope@orion (~): telnet 206.170.14.76 80
Trying 206.170.14.76...
Connected to 206.170.14.76.
Escape character is '^]'.
Connection closed by foreign host.
HTTP is down, other things are up
You forgetting that since the trial, all internal e-mail is forbidden. Try going around telling this to 25,000 ....
people
Couldn't they just use their brain-zappers? 8-?)
I applaud your analysis
If trolling were a word it would not be used in the context you used it.. Do yourself a favor troll an read the dictionary.
While you're at it shatter your illusions of MS-DOS.
In response to your opinion that the IBM PC was far more advanced than the Apple ][. I respectfully disagree. The Apple had much better graphics capabilities, BASIC in the shell and was cooler overall. The PC took off not because of DOS, which, let's face it, is a no brainer of an OS, but because of programs like VisiCalc and because the bare exposure of the hardware made it easy to write games. Microsoft is right in one thing, apps attract users and users attract apps. Too bad that doesn't work in the server environment where far fewer apps are needed and the big costs are support and downtime. For a server you need a real OS
Exactly how is calling Linux a "Kiddy OS" any different then the sometimes childish things Linux advocates say. In my experience I have seen many lucid expositions of Linux's strengths on a technical basis but few such expositions of Microsoft's strengths from Microsoft advocates. The only counter example I can think of that clearly argues a _technical_ advantage of MS was the CS professor who wrote about the fundamental scalability of NT's internals. and pointed out some problems with Linux 's internals. I have respect for that, although I would have more respect if it meant something in practice.
I do not have much respect for monkeys on either side but they don't bother me much as long as I have the choice to choose what is best for my own use.
I think breaking them up would be too unweildy of a hammer. I would like to see transparent pricing and fully documented API's. Let the market take care of the rest.
They can't beat Linux on total cost of ownership so they say that cost per transaction is the most important thing. If that were the case everybody in the world would be running Solaris on an E10k.. In any case OS cost per transaction -> 0 as transactions gets large it's seven figure hardware costs and big support costs that bite you.
Cost of NT is an extremely big issue in a medium scale server application and using it in a large scale server application is idiotic since it does not scale very well and doesn't come close to running on Big Iron (Linux doesn't run on Big Iron either but it will before NT does). Linux beats NT where it counts, cost and reliability in serving NT domains and medium scale server aps on PC hardware. Add the ability of Linux to run more varied and cheaper hardware and you have a clear winner in the server world. I can see how MS could be smug about the user side for a while longer but they're losing the server side now to a supperior product.
Yet some PC users are making similarly outrageous wagers on Linux, the underdog in the operating-system wars.
Who exactly are these users and how are they going to be hurt? The only people that could get hurt are those providing services, not the average user.
Perhaps he's talking about business users who require the support of Oracle etc... But it is pure FUD to suggest that good companies like Sun (Which still supports SunOS 4) and Oracle would renege on their customer commitments.
It is true that the vendors may have reason to be cautious, but the user...hardly/p?
The market does a great job of pricing commodities if all internal and external costs related to the production and distribution of that commoditity.
Does the price of gasoline accurately internalize the price of military intervention in the Middle East?
Does the price of gasoline accurately internalize environmental and human harms of agressive exploration and extraction of petroleum? or of the damage when it is used?
When those things are true, gasoline will be fairly priced.
As for your other point, you are correct will never run out of petroleum reserves since the price will rise as supply diminishes, hence some will never be extracted. We will, however, run out of useful quantities of gasoline, which is a man made product and which will not be produced if it is priced out of the energy market.
Now, now. Quayle was less of a leader than the Queen.
I find Sengan's posts to be troublesome not because they are anti-US, but because they are anti-sense. I'm not talking about the geopolitical editorials, but ones that have convoluted grammatical constructions. I thought that Sengan was a non-native English speaker for a some time, but apparently he's British, so now I just think he's a little hasty.
As to your other points, I attended an international school (25% US, 75% other) and I agree wholeheartedly that Americans,even well educated ones, tend to be less well rounded than others. However, Europe is not the whole world either and once you get outside of that your taxes and social systems quip is even less true. And besides, in my limited experience, Panama and Chile have by far worse beer than the US.