Fair use is downloading the show you already paid for.
And your definition of copyright is very creative. Copyright is a monopoly granted by governments to encourage creators to create. Not an inherent right of the creator. Not a form of intellectual property, because there is no such thing as intellectual property. Property is physical, and finite, and can have an owner. Intellectual stuff does not have an owner, it has a creator, who is granted by governments a monopoly on distribution, because the nature of intellectual works make impossible for them to have an owner, like actual property, once you distribute them. Even if you keep you works a secret, some other guy could even create the same by himself, and get the copyright himself, although it's highy unlikely.
Computers are not complex machines. The problem s that people want to accomplish complex tasks with them. Of course, someone convinced them that they are not complex tasks, but they are. You can buy a good machine, easy to use, with limited capabilities when you buy a Mac, but you lose the capability of lots of hardware and software, at least if you want to keep it simple. You can use Windows, where you have maybe some more flexibility (don't try to use hardware that is too old, though), with less ease of use. You can use GNU/Linux, gain lots of flexibility, but get a lot of complexity.
Of course, if your needs are simple and limited, (web, mail, music, some documents) you can use a Mac with no hassle and be happy. If you want more flexibility, you will lose some of the simplicity of your Mac.
If you want flexibility at the expense of simplicity, GNU/Linux is nice. You can even get someone to set it up for you, so it becomes simple. For a corporate environment it works great, where you manage and police centrally the features available to each desktop.
Windows is good, because it comes preinstalled in "cheap" machines, and needs no retraining, but the hidden costs kill you, and you have none of the beefits of the other two options.
But it's not true that computers are inherently complex, or that they can't be used simply, right now.
Muahahahhaha!! No! YOU fell right into my trap!! You said "lengths"
Pithagoras comes to the rescue!!
Taking the taurus for the rectangle it is (wiewed from the top), it is subject to the laws of geometry.
From the pithagora theorem: width^2 + length^2 = diagonal^2
And diagonal is bigger than length (even taking into account round edges, and using a rectangle inside those boundaries).
I would have no trouble placing the tauruses with their diagonals aligned to the transversal of the track. Plenty of Tauruses to spare, so I can can lap you.
For a simpler answer, I can place the tauruses sideways, and spaced 1 meter in between, so again I have lots of tauruses left to run, or crash your car.
If you are thinking about riding a Ferrari _through_ a Taurus, you will have some trouble with your cars integrity.
Ok, if you were riding a Shelby Cobra 500GT, and were Nicholas Cage, and had a piece of wood to build a ramp, you could try jumping over the Tauruses, but the way it is right now, you lose.
Of course, I would much rather lose with a Ferrari, than win with a thousand Taurus (monetary value aside).
"The parent said *A* Taurus catching *A* Ferrari. If you put 200 Ford Taurus on a racetrack with one Ferrari, I can pretty mcuh assure you none of the Taurus will lap the Ferrari."
I could use 20 Taurus to block the Ferrari, and win the race with the others. I didn't bother to create a nice analogy to MS practices, because in terms of muddy competition, Microsoft is much more creative than I am.
I was replying to an AC troll (my fault) who said he didn't care about the java version, but the features.
I said three things: eclipse runs faster, you program faster programs that will run faster.
Having more power to work with Java 1.5 means nothing by itself, and that was the only point of the AC I replied to. Of course, it means you can work with a VM tailored for speed, in every sense. Whether it provides a small, or a big speed increase, depends on what you are developing, and your needs, but the "feature" that java 1.5 tries to provide is speed. Running and coding speed.
File a bug. Find who is involved, and help them solve the problem. Good bug reports are half the work needed to fix a bug, and you don't need to be a programmer to do that. You don't need to be a programmer. You just need to help with some testing time. You can help with money, too, if you don't have the time. At least tell the people who can do something about it that you would like that bug fixed. You can do lots of things to help with xorg, or you can do things against it, like just bitching. It's your call, of course. I would like more eyecandy myself, you don't hear me bitching, though.
"I'll probably get modded down for this because i'm pointing out the facts."
Stop saying that, please! I would mod down every guy who says that, if I ever got mod points. It's just a cheap shot a getting modded up, and the most annoying thing is that it works.
I would really like mods to stop modding up people who say "I'll probably get modded down", because most people who do say things that matter, don't care that much about their karma.
You are right that languages do change. But if they try and change the language, maybe it's becuase they have something to gain, so using their words is good for their objectives. As long as you are against their objectives, or means, you shouldn't use the words they want you to use. It's like fighting DeBeers, and keep saying that "diamonds ae forever" crap. Slogans do have a value everytime you say them. Saying that people who share music are pirates is not innocuous. You are doing harm, and helping RIAAs cause, just by saying it.
Piracy doesn't mean anything useful to any discussion in slashdot. Let's quit using that word. People on one side think it means anything they want, and people on the other side think it describes a crime usually commited at the sea.
Free software - Linux desktop...... are you trying to start anothe flame war inside this one??????
Even without copyright, there would be lots of incentive for people to develop software. You can work for hire, and not keep the copyright..... like I am doing right now.
You can pay for the development of free software.
And if you used a small percentage of the money that has been funneled into MS all these years, you could have something nice.
You can sell software services without providing the software itself, it's called the intarweb or something like that. I believe it has some future. Some company name googol or something like that say they will profit with that. They must be delusional.
As to your last point: There are some people, myself included, who believe that artists should be able to reap the fruits of their work, and retain full rights to them. I think that copyright is a basic moral right that in principle belongs with the artist, and is not something to be lightly toyed with in order to maximise the benefit to society, as if we're communists dividing up the harvest.
And there are some, from a capitalistic point of view who believe that monopolies are bad, even monopolies on distribution of your own work.
The whole thing with "stealing" is that it is too far from the truth, and implies things that are wrong. When you copy copyrighted works without authorization, you are breaking an artificial (as in "non-natural") monopoly granted by governments in order to encourage people to share their creative works. Not a human right, like life, or freedom. An deal between governments and creators. If the conditions change, that agreement can change. It has changed into an agreement that gives nothing to the governments in exchange of their enforcement of such monopolies, but that's another thing, and it can change back, because it's an agreement, not an inherent human right.
"Stealing" is much farther from the truth than "standing up against an artificial monopoly", because the latter, although strongly slanted, is completely true, and applies completely to "copyright infringement". Of course, nobody calls it that, because they don't want to alienate those that think different, I just ask the same as the GP, that people stop trolling and calling copyright infringement, "stealing". There have been enough discussions here to clarify that point.
Class 2 "hackers are the cause for most Class 3 "hackers", I believe so. I believe that they are the cause of everybody talking about security, too. What I think is that in a free-market environment, where you don't care about what doesn't cost you money yet, the history of Class 2 attacks (which are bad by themselves, of course) does shield us from the wide amount of Class 3 attacks we could have if we kept using software with the same focus on security as win98+office97+outlookexpress.
Of course, a world without Class 2/Class 3 "hackers" would be a better world, but I believe the formers existance, is of some help in showing that there is a danger, and a need for a fix.
A lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth. Maybe the idea is to show that it's something to care about, to people who don't.
Fair or not, copyright is just a monopoly on distribution granted by governments so people create useful stuff. Somehow, some people managed to put in the minds of contemporary media, an most people, the notion that infringing such monopoly is the same as stealing property, in the meantime, rewriting the concept of property, and stealing, and creating the monster that is "intellectual property". Most laws created in the name of "protecting IP" are useful mostly against the creation of stuff, so they work backwards from their original intent.
Using that kind of words only helps the statu quo, that is very bad to begin with.
AAAAAAAGHHHH. Again. There are not 2 definitions we are talking about. There are 3. My original point was that mainstream fear of "hackers" (in the contemporary, mainstream media "hackers"/"swordfish" movie definition) does actually protect us from actual vulnerabilities that could be exploited by those who normal people don't call "hackers", like for example, dumb people with passwords, or employees you fired, stupid admins, or just Google + some datamining.
Of course, I ranted about old-style "hackers", too, but what I originally meant was that "hackers", in the mainstream media sense, are not to blame for security problems, they are responsible for the fixing of vulnerabilities that would still exist if management didn't think they are a threat because they saw it on the movies, or they heard that some website was 0wn3d.
About you being a nerd, or not being a nerd, maybe I changed my mind while writing, who knows.
So, would someone pay an extra hardware fee just to have a funky looking hardware design that runs Windows (gamerz not withstanding; I guess they've demonstrated that people will, but we're talking mainstream here.)
Gamers are mainstream! PS2, XBOX is mainstream. computers ae not mainstream. Mainstream like pretty boxes. Mainstream buy stuff because it has pretty boxes. It's quite hardcore not to care about the appearance of you beige box.
"I'm a Linux user, so every time Microsoft users are hit with a virus which shuts down entire companies for the day and costs the US economy millions of dollars, I can barely contain my joy."
That quote isn't up to par with the others, in realism.
"I'm a free software user, and every time non-free-software users get a chance to discover the problems proprietary software generates (esp. software made by crappy software companies), I am very happy for the increased plausibility of them choosing better platforms, making their environment, and my environment, safer."
"I am an atheist, and every time a rapist rapes a kid, I'm glad it wasnt my kid"
"I am not from the US, and every time people die in Irak killed by the resistance (face it, you can call them what you like, but as bad as they could be, they ones who fight US forces are the resistance, and you are the "evil empire"), I don't enjoy it, but I blame the invasors first, after them, the invaded."
Plus, Flash is way faster than Superman, if you don't look at the movie where Superman circles the earth backwards, I believe he achieves close to light-speed, so then Superman would be just as fast as The Flash.
If you carefully read my post, without your "I despise/. nerds, and try to pretend I am not one of them" glasses, you would see that I address your point. I talk about three definitions of "hackers".
1- The real one, MIT-style definition, that, probably by its usage by script kiddies produced the current, media term.
2 - the current, worldwide acepted term. Hacker usually means someone _with_skills_ who can use them to do some harm. You can't say "hacker" without implying some secret art that involves knowledge.
3 - The stupid, but non common, even in mainstream media, notion that anybody who can do harm to a ocmputer system, trying or not, knowingly or not.
Number 3 is the real threat to computer security. Number 1, but more cimportantly, those that fall under the 1 _and_ 2 categories, do help you against number 3. Of course, nobody protects you against them.
The whole idea about using the word "hacker" to mean definition #1 is that is was used already, inthe nineties, and misused by dumb kids. That misuse brought the #2 definition, but new words used by other people shouldn't change the way you already talk.
I know I am just an old guy trying to keep things the way they were, being 27 and all, but I like to keep calling hackers "hackers", and script kiddies, what they are.
If you have a problem with nerds using different words than mainstream media, maybe you are not a nerd, and will have always trouble in a nerds forum.
Aside from the fact that "hacker" is not the best word to talk about this stuff (*) , I don't think that "hackers" are to blame.
If by "hacker" you mean people with skills to break into another guy's computer, who do use those skills, well, they are very helpful.
I believe that the enemy of security-sensitive systems are people with interests in the information guarded by those systems. For example, the enemy of a bank is a scammer, not a hacker. If it weren't for "hackers", common scammers, with no skills, would be able to learn how to break into systems. Email databases would be plain-text and easily accesible through google, so it wouldn't take a "hacker" to build a massive spammer database.
Only if you invent a new meaning for "hacker" that stands for "a person who does something _harmful_ with some information/piece of software, when he shouldn't", then those "hackers" would be the cause for the need for security.
If you use the current media definition of "hackers", meaning "a script kiddie with at least average skills", then lots of possible menaces to security would still exist.
Of course, if you use a correct definition of "hacker" where it means something like "someone with actual skills, who can tweak a system into doing something it wasn't originally designed to do (esp. if it's something cool)", then most security threats would not fail into the "hacker" definition, and there would still be a need for actual security.
That's like saying giving a teenager the keys to your car means they'll get you that oil change and take it to the car wash and return the tank full of gas. Not likely.
Bad analogy. Maybe it's like giving a teenager the keys to my dirty car on a Saturday, he pays for the fuel, and doesn't break it, I don't need it, and maybe, he might wash it for his night out, on his time.
GPL is your friend here. If you are in a proprietary software market, your competitors wouldn't be allowed to used GPLed source. But you get the advantages of giving your software freely to anyone who wants to play with it. Your company would be a nice company. Of course, free support from the "community" could or could not happen, you shouldn't count on it. You should only GPL your software, from a bussiness sense, if you want to make your software more used, or if you want to undermine your proprietary software competitor's software dominance (a nice blow). If you want free PR, it's good too, if your target audience is the kind of people that likes that kind of thing. If you want to sell services, and think you can, it's good too. When the code is free, there is such a thing as a free market for support, so you can get a way with charging as you want for support (at least enough to make it worthwile), without being a bad guy ripping off locked-in customers.
But one important bit, from the bussiness sense, is GPL, don't BSD. That way, if your software is worth 500k to company that can afford it, you can re-license it under a proprietary license and charge them as much as you want. It's not a new thing. Mysql does something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Fair use is downloading the show you already paid for.
And your definition of copyright is very creative.
Copyright is a monopoly granted by governments to encourage creators to create. Not an inherent right of the creator.
Not a form of intellectual property, because there is no such thing as intellectual property. Property is physical, and finite, and can have an owner. Intellectual stuff does not have an owner, it has a creator, who is granted by governments a monopoly on distribution, because the nature of intellectual works make impossible for them to have an owner, like actual property, once you distribute them.
Even if you keep you works a secret, some other guy could even create the same by himself, and get the copyright himself, although it's highy unlikely.
Computers are not complex machines.
The problem s that people want to accomplish complex tasks with them.
Of course, someone convinced them that they are not complex tasks, but they are.
You can buy a good machine, easy to use, with limited capabilities when you buy a Mac, but you lose the capability of lots of hardware and software, at least if you want to keep it simple.
You can use Windows, where you have maybe some more flexibility (don't try to use hardware that is too old, though), with less ease of use.
You can use GNU/Linux, gain lots of flexibility, but get a lot of complexity.
Of course, if your needs are simple and limited, (web, mail, music, some documents) you can use a Mac with no hassle and be happy. If you want more flexibility, you will lose some of the simplicity of your Mac.
If you want flexibility at the expense of simplicity, GNU/Linux is nice. You can even get someone to set it up for you, so it becomes simple. For a corporate environment it works great, where you manage and police centrally the features available to each desktop.
Windows is good, because it comes preinstalled in "cheap" machines, and needs no retraining, but the hidden costs kill you, and you have none of the beefits of the other two options.
But it's not true that computers are inherently complex, or that they can't be used simply, right now.
The same thing happens everywhere.
Installing hardware is difficult. A complex task.
I pay people to install hardware in my car.
People who use MSWindows pay to get hardware vendors to test compatibility with MSWindows.
You can pay someone to install your hardware for you. It's much less expensive than with cars.
The software is free, and it doesn't cost a thing, many times . The service are not.
You win
I believe I already addressed that subject.
Muahahahhaha!!
No! YOU fell right into my trap!!
You said "lengths"
Pithagoras comes to the rescue!!
Taking the taurus for the rectangle it is (wiewed from the top), it is subject to the laws of geometry.
From the pithagora theorem:
width^2 + length^2 = diagonal^2
And diagonal is bigger than length (even taking into account round edges, and using a rectangle inside those boundaries).
I would have no trouble placing the tauruses with their diagonals aligned to the transversal of the track. Plenty of Tauruses to spare, so I can can lap you.
For a simpler answer, I can place the tauruses sideways, and spaced 1 meter in between, so again I have lots of tauruses left to run, or crash your car.
If you are thinking about riding a Ferrari _through_ a Taurus, you will have some trouble with your cars integrity.
Ok, if you were riding a Shelby Cobra 500GT, and were Nicholas Cage, and had a piece of wood to build a ramp, you could try jumping over the Tauruses, but the way it is right now, you lose.
Of course, I would much rather lose with a Ferrari, than win with a thousand Taurus (monetary value aside).
202 Tourus widths wide?
Ok, I'll just make them park sideways.
Or spaced amongst each other by 0.9 Ferrari widths.
"The parent said *A* Taurus catching *A* Ferrari. If you put 200 Ford Taurus on a racetrack with one Ferrari, I can pretty mcuh assure you none of the Taurus will lap the Ferrari."
I could use 20 Taurus to block the Ferrari, and win the race with the others.
I didn't bother to create a nice analogy to MS practices, because in terms of muddy competition, Microsoft is much more creative than I am.
Read the parent first.
I was replying to an AC troll (my fault) who said he didn't care about the java version, but the features.
I said three things: eclipse runs faster, you program faster programs that will run faster.
Having more power to work with Java 1.5 means nothing by itself, and that was the only point of the AC I replied to. Of course, it means you can work with a VM tailored for speed, in every sense. Whether it provides a small, or a big speed increase, depends on what you are developing, and your needs, but the "feature" that java 1.5 tries to provide is speed. Running and coding speed.
"improved support for developing rich client applications based on the Eclipse platform",
that is a feature.
It means that you can make better standalone programs, based on the Eclipse framework.
Java 5.0 support means that it will run faster, and help you make programs faster, that run faster, too, in a nutshell.
File a bug.
Find who is involved, and help them solve the problem.
Good bug reports are half the work needed to fix a bug, and you don't need to be a programmer to do that.
You don't need to be a programmer. You just need to help with some testing time.
You can help with money, too, if you don't have the time.
At least tell the people who can do something about it that you would like that bug fixed.
You can do lots of things to help with xorg, or you can do things against it, like just bitching.
It's your call, of course.
I would like more eyecandy myself, you don't hear me bitching, though.
"I'll probably get modded down for this because i'm pointing out the facts."
Stop saying that, please!
I would mod down every guy who says that, if I ever got mod points. It's just a cheap shot a getting modded up, and the most annoying thing is that it works.
I would really like mods to stop modding up people who say "I'll probably get modded down", because most people who do say things that matter, don't care that much about their karma.
You are right that languages do change.
But if they try and change the language, maybe it's becuase they have something to gain, so using their words is good for their objectives.
As long as you are against their objectives, or means, you shouldn't use the words they want you to use.
It's like fighting DeBeers, and keep saying that "diamonds ae forever" crap. Slogans do have a value everytime you say them. Saying that people who share music are pirates is not innocuous. You are doing harm, and helping RIAAs cause, just by saying it.
Thanks, I don't have a god!
(-2, Double Flamebait)
Piracy doesn't mean anything useful to any discussion in slashdot. Let's quit using that word.
People on one side think it means anything they want, and people on the other side think it describes a crime usually commited at the sea.
Free software - Linux desktop...... are you trying to start anothe flame war inside this one??????
Even without copyright, there would be lots of incentive for people to develop software. You can work for hire, and not keep the copyright..... like I am doing right now.
You can pay for the development of free software.
And if you used a small percentage of the money that has been funneled into MS all these years, you could have something nice.
You can sell software services without providing the software itself, it's called the intarweb or something like that. I believe it has some future.
Some company name googol or something like that say they will profit with that. They must be delusional.
As to your last point: There are some people, myself included, who believe that artists should be able to reap the fruits of their work, and retain full rights to them. I think that copyright is a basic moral right that in principle belongs with the artist, and is not something to be lightly toyed with in order to maximise the benefit to society, as if we're communists dividing up the harvest.
And there are some, from a capitalistic point of view who believe that monopolies are bad, even monopolies on distribution of your own work.
The whole thing with "stealing" is that it is too far from the truth, and implies things that are wrong. When you copy copyrighted works without authorization, you are breaking an artificial (as in "non-natural") monopoly granted by governments in order to encourage people to share their creative works. Not a human right, like life, or freedom. An deal between governments and creators. If the conditions change, that agreement can change. It has changed into an agreement that gives nothing to the governments in exchange of their enforcement of such monopolies, but that's another thing, and it can change back, because it's an agreement, not an inherent human right.
"Stealing" is much farther from the truth than "standing up against an artificial monopoly", because the latter, although strongly slanted, is completely true, and applies completely to "copyright infringement". Of course, nobody calls it that, because they don't want to alienate those that think different, I just ask the same as the GP, that people stop trolling and calling copyright infringement, "stealing". There have been enough discussions here to clarify that point.
Ok, I kind of agre with you, mostly, then.
Class 2 "hackers are the cause for most Class 3 "hackers", I believe so.
I believe that they are the cause of everybody talking about security, too.
What I think is that in a free-market environment, where you don't care about what doesn't cost you money yet, the history of Class 2 attacks (which are bad by themselves, of course) does shield us from the wide amount of Class 3 attacks we could have if we kept using software with the same focus on security as win98+office97+outlookexpress.
Of course, a world without Class 2/Class 3 "hackers" would be a better world, but I believe the formers existance, is of some help in showing that there is a danger, and a need for a fix.
A lie repeated a thousand times becomes a truth.
Maybe the idea is to show that it's something to care about, to people who don't.
Fair or not, copyright is just a monopoly on distribution granted by governments so people create useful stuff.
Somehow, some people managed to put in the minds of contemporary media, an most people, the notion that infringing such monopoly is the same as stealing property, in the meantime, rewriting the concept of property, and stealing, and creating the monster that is "intellectual property".
Most laws created in the name of "protecting IP" are useful mostly against the creation of stuff, so they work backwards from their original intent.
Using that kind of words only helps the statu quo, that is very bad to begin with.
AAAAAAAGHHHH.
Again.
There are not 2 definitions we are talking about.
There are 3.
My original point was that mainstream fear of "hackers" (in the contemporary, mainstream media "hackers"/"swordfish" movie definition) does actually protect us from actual vulnerabilities that could be exploited by those who normal people don't call "hackers", like for example, dumb people with passwords, or employees you fired, stupid admins, or just Google + some datamining.
Of course, I ranted about old-style "hackers", too, but what I originally meant was that "hackers", in the mainstream media sense, are not to blame for security problems, they are responsible for the fixing of vulnerabilities that would still exist if management didn't think they are a threat because they saw it on the movies, or they heard that some website was 0wn3d.
About you being a nerd, or not being a nerd, maybe I changed my mind while writing, who knows.
So, would someone pay an extra hardware fee just to have a funky looking hardware design that runs Windows (gamerz not withstanding; I guess they've demonstrated that people will, but we're talking mainstream here.)
Gamers are mainstream!
PS2, XBOX is mainstream.
computers ae not mainstream.
Mainstream like pretty boxes. Mainstream buy stuff because it has pretty boxes.
It's quite hardcore not to care about the appearance of you beige box.
"I'm a Linux user, so every time Microsoft users are hit with a virus which shuts down entire companies for the day and costs the US economy millions of dollars, I can barely contain my joy."
That quote isn't up to par with the others, in realism.
"I'm a free software user, and every time non-free-software users get a chance to discover the problems proprietary software generates (esp. software made by crappy software companies), I am very happy for the increased plausibility of them choosing better platforms, making their environment, and my environment, safer."
"I am an atheist, and every time a rapist rapes a kid, I'm glad it wasnt my kid"
"I am not from the US, and every time people die in Irak killed by the resistance (face it, you can call them what you like, but as bad as they could be, they ones who fight US forces are the resistance, and you are the "evil empire"), I don't enjoy it, but I blame the invasors first, after them, the invaded."
Plus, Flash is way faster than Superman, if you don't look at the movie where Superman circles the earth backwards, I believe he achieves close to light-speed, so then Superman would be just as fast as The Flash.
If you carefully read my post, without your "I despise /. nerds, and try to pretend I am not one of them" glasses, you would see that I address your point. I talk about three definitions of "hackers".
1- The real one, MIT-style definition, that, probably by its usage by script kiddies produced the current, media term.
2 - the current, worldwide acepted term.
Hacker usually means someone _with_skills_ who can use them to do some harm.
You can't say "hacker" without implying some secret art that involves knowledge.
3 - The stupid, but non common, even in mainstream media, notion that anybody who can do harm to a ocmputer system, trying or not, knowingly or not.
Number 3 is the real threat to computer security.
Number 1, but more cimportantly, those that fall under the 1 _and_ 2 categories, do help you against number 3. Of course, nobody protects you against them.
The whole idea about using the word "hacker" to mean definition #1 is that is was used already, inthe nineties, and misused by dumb kids. That misuse brought the #2 definition, but new words used by other people shouldn't change the way you already talk.
I know I am just an old guy trying to keep things the way they were, being 27 and all, but I like to keep calling hackers "hackers", and script kiddies, what they are.
If you have a problem with nerds using different words than mainstream media, maybe you are not a nerd, and will have always trouble in a nerds forum.
Aside from the fact that "hacker" is not the best word to talk about this stuff (*) , I don't think that "hackers" are to blame.
If by "hacker" you mean people with skills to break into another guy's computer, who do use those skills, well, they are very helpful.
I believe that the enemy of security-sensitive systems are people with interests in the information guarded by those systems. For example, the enemy of a bank is a scammer, not a hacker. If it weren't for "hackers", common scammers, with no skills, would be able to learn how to break into systems. Email databases would be plain-text and easily accesible through google, so it wouldn't take a "hacker" to build a massive spammer database.
Only if you invent a new meaning for "hacker" that stands for "a person who does something _harmful_ with some information/piece of software, when he shouldn't", then those "hackers" would be the cause for the need for security.
If you use the current media definition of "hackers", meaning "a script kiddie with at least average skills", then lots of possible menaces to security would still exist.
Of course, if you use a correct definition of "hacker" where it means something like "someone with actual skills, who can tweak a system into doing something it wasn't originally designed to do (esp. if it's something cool)", then most security threats would not fail into the "hacker" definition, and there would still be a need for actual security.
That's like saying giving a teenager the keys to your car means they'll get you that oil change and take it to the car wash and return the tank full of gas. Not likely.
Bad analogy.
Maybe it's like giving a teenager the keys to my dirty car on a Saturday, he pays for the fuel, and doesn't break it, I don't need it, and maybe, he might wash it for his night out, on his time.
It's work that people give away, not stuff.
GPL is your friend here.
If you are in a proprietary software market, your competitors wouldn't be allowed to used GPLed source.
But you get the advantages of giving your software freely to anyone who wants to play with it. Your company would be a nice company.
Of course, free support from the "community" could or could not happen, you shouldn't count on it.
You should only GPL your software, from a bussiness sense, if you want to make your software more used, or if you want to undermine your proprietary software competitor's software dominance (a nice blow). If you want free PR, it's good too, if your target audience is the kind of people that likes that kind of thing.
If you want to sell services, and think you can, it's good too. When the code is free, there is such a thing as a free market for support, so you can get a way with charging as you want for support (at least enough to make it worthwile), without being a bad guy ripping off locked-in customers.
But one important bit, from the bussiness sense, is GPL, don't BSD. That way, if your software is worth 500k to company that can afford it, you can re-license it under a proprietary license and charge them as much as you want. It's not a new thing. Mysql does something like that.