"Free software and Open Source seem quite similar, if you look only at their software development practices. At the philosophical level, the difference is extreme. The Free Software Movement is a social movement for computer users' freedom. The Open Source philosophy cites practical, economic benefits. A deeper difference cannot be imagined.
The origin of Open Source lies in a practice that could have come from Dale Carnegie: if you seek to persuade someone, present the case in terms of his values and desires. For persuading business executives, citing practical, economic advantages can be effective. By all means do so, if it feels right to you, when speaking privately to executives.
Talking to the public is something else entirely. When we talk to the public, we promote whatever values we cite. If we cite only practical, economic advantages, and not freedom, we encourage people to value practical advantages and not value freedom.
Those values make our community weak. People who prefer a state of freedom only for the secondary practical and economic advantages it brings do not appreciate freedom itself, and they will not fight to defend it.
This is the reason I stated, in my joint speech with Bruce Perens, for not supporting the practice of presenting Free Software in public in the limited economic terms of Open Source."
It seems to me that by your own admission, Stallman's prediction has come true, and now you're upset about it.
Let's be absolutely, one hundred percent, crystal clear about one thing: Unauthorized copying is not piracy.
What is piracy? Piracy is when someone takes goods, that are legally protected by property rights, and that are being transported from one place to another, without authorization from the owner of the goods, depriving the owner of those goods from their use and economic value.
What is unauthorized copying? Unauthorized copying is taking a pattern of information that is legally protected by copyright and is fixed on a physical substrate, and creating a similar or identical pattern of information on another physical substrate, without permission of the copyright holder, in a manner that does not have a statutory exemption from copyright protection. (Whew!)
As you can see, these things are quite distinct from one another. I don't believe that they are even comparable. The use of the term "Piracy" to describe "Copying a protected work without permission of the copyright owner" is misleading, pejorative and dishonest.
Whether or not you support actual physical piracy (yarrrr, matey) and whether or not you support unauthorized copying, if you want to have an honest debate you should use correct terminology.
It'd be nice if all this stuff were standardized, but there's way too much at stake for that to ever happen.
Too much at stake for Microsoft, as long as they need to maintain their monopoly with anti-competitive practices. When enough people stop using their stuff, they won't have a monopoly, and they'll suddenly have an incentive to use competitive tactics again. Standards will start looking good to them. But that won't happen as long as people like you are content to keep feeding them money.
In short, don't blame free software because you support Microsoft's unwillingness to interoperate.
Hardware [ Operating System ] C:\rootkit.exe Hardware [ Rootkit [ Operating System ] ]
But if we go back a step...
Hardware [ Hypervisor [ Operating System ] ] VirtualC:\rootkit.exe Hardware [ Hypervisor [ Rootkit [ Operating System ] ] ]
Then the Hypervisor can, in theory, detect the rootkit. So the obvious defense against such shenanigans is to install your own hypervisor before the bad guys do it first.
All of this is meaningless, of course, because if a piece of malware has sufficient privileges to install a hypervisor, you're already boned. Fix the privilege hole and you're as safe as you ever were.
I mean, I've always heard space described as the final frontier. Our first forays into space colonization should be concentrated on putting a man on the Moon, but this time to stay. It's true that a lot of work needs to be done on finding economical ways to get from the Earth to the Moon, but these problems are solveable if we are willing to put forth the effort. I think that setting up a lunar base will be remembered as one giant leap for mankind. Even though, admittedly, the Moon is a harsh mistress, who wouldn't want a chance to be one of the first men in the Moon? As those brave individuals gaze up at the Earth, illuminated by the light of the Moon, we will look up at them and and wish them a good night.
The large companies have no choice in the matter, unlike you.
So you believe that Microsoft didn't choose to engage in predatory pricing, didn't choose to add intentional incompatibilities to its software, didn't choose to bully and intimidate other companies, didn't choose to break anti-trust consent decrees, and didn't choose to unlawfully abuse its market power to create and maintain a virtually unchallenged monopoly?
Fascinating.
Would you also believe Bill Gates if he walked up to you and punched you in the stomach, but then claimed that he didn't choose to punch you, market forces compelled him to swing his fist in an arc that coincidentally happened to intersect your torso?
You're kidding me, right? Blizzard expanded the market with WoW, but not in a way that's accessible to anyone but themselves. Unless a game comes out that is phenomenally better, the market for any other MMO has, in fact, shrunk. Why? Everyone's still playing WoW. Until WoW becomes old hat and enters the mass exodus stage of the MMO lifecycle, I don't see a game, much less a SOE game, doing any better than any pre-WoW MMO.
I say this, of course, as a devoted Blizzard fanboy. Yeah, I could be wrong. Am I? Not likely.
See there are these wonderful countries out there that don't have qualms about squashing anyone including their own people.
You mean, like the United States?
They have a propesity to sponsor violence versus other parts of the world.
You mean, like the United States?
So while it may be great to spout off against the capitalist society we live in please realize that there are many leaders who see that success as a threat to their control. Hence they will not balk at finding a way to strike out.
Which is why we need to strengthen international treaties against space weapons, and mobilize the international community against such dangers. The rest of the world should unite against any nation that tries to deploy them, because they are a threat to everyone.
My statement is best viewed as sarcasm as any intelligent person will see it as absurdity or just plain ignorance.
I was browsing del.icio.us from a link in today's Bittorrent article, and I found a highly relevant story, And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon by Paul Di Filippo. Read it, and beware!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to quote your own website here.
Richard Stallman:
"Free software and Open Source seem quite similar, if you look only at their software development practices. At the philosophical level, the difference is extreme. The Free Software Movement is a social movement for computer users' freedom. The Open Source philosophy cites practical, economic benefits. A deeper difference cannot be imagined.
The origin of Open Source lies in a practice that could have come from Dale Carnegie: if you seek to persuade someone, present the case in terms of his values and desires. For persuading business executives, citing practical, economic advantages can be effective. By all means do so, if it feels right to you, when speaking privately to executives.
Talking to the public is something else entirely. When we talk to the public, we promote whatever values we cite. If we cite only practical, economic advantages, and not freedom, we encourage people to value practical advantages and not value freedom.
Those values make our community weak. People who prefer a state of freedom only for the secondary practical and economic advantages it brings do not appreciate freedom itself, and they will not fight to defend it.
This is the reason I stated, in my joint speech with Bruce Perens, for not supporting the practice of presenting Free Software in public in the limited economic terms of Open Source."
It seems to me that by your own admission, Stallman's prediction has come true, and now you're upset about it.
Basically what you're saying is that Stallman was right and you were wrong all along?
Let's be absolutely, one hundred percent, crystal clear about one thing: Unauthorized copying is not piracy.
What is piracy? Piracy is when someone takes goods, that are legally protected by property rights, and that are being transported from one place to another, without authorization from the owner of the goods, depriving the owner of those goods from their use and economic value.
What is unauthorized copying? Unauthorized copying is taking a pattern of information that is legally protected by copyright and is fixed on a physical substrate, and creating a similar or identical pattern of information on another physical substrate, without permission of the copyright holder, in a manner that does not have a statutory exemption from copyright protection. (Whew!)
As you can see, these things are quite distinct from one another. I don't believe that they are even comparable. The use of the term "Piracy" to describe "Copying a protected work without permission of the copyright owner" is misleading, pejorative and dishonest.
Whether or not you support actual physical piracy (yarrrr, matey) and whether or not you support unauthorized copying, if you want to have an honest debate you should use correct terminology.
Too much at stake for Microsoft, as long as they need to maintain their monopoly with anti-competitive practices. When enough people stop using their stuff, they won't have a monopoly, and they'll suddenly have an incentive to use competitive tactics again. Standards will start looking good to them. But that won't happen as long as people like you are content to keep feeding them money.
In short, don't blame free software because you support Microsoft's unwillingness to interoperate.
So the scenario described in TFA is like this:
Hardware [ Operating System ]
C:\rootkit.exe
Hardware [ Rootkit [ Operating System ] ]
But if we go back a step...
Hardware [ Hypervisor [ Operating System ] ]
VirtualC:\rootkit.exe
Hardware [ Hypervisor [ Rootkit [ Operating System ] ] ]
Then the Hypervisor can, in theory, detect the rootkit. So the obvious defense against such shenanigans is to install your own hypervisor before the bad guys do it first.
All of this is meaningless, of course, because if a piece of malware has sufficient privileges to install a hypervisor, you're already boned. Fix the privilege hole and you're as safe as you ever were.
I mean, I've always heard space described as the final frontier. Our first forays into space colonization should be concentrated on putting a man on the Moon, but this time to stay. It's true that a lot of work needs to be done on finding economical ways to get from the Earth to the Moon, but these problems are solveable if we are willing to put forth the effort. I think that setting up a lunar base will be remembered as one giant leap for mankind. Even though, admittedly, the Moon is a harsh mistress, who wouldn't want a chance to be one of the first men in the Moon? As those brave individuals gaze up at the Earth, illuminated by the light of the Moon, we will look up at them and and wish them a good night.
...collect-call marketing, phone fraud, slamming, robot calls, junk fax....
The large companies have no choice in the matter, unlike you.
So you believe that Microsoft didn't choose to engage in predatory pricing, didn't choose to add intentional incompatibilities to its software, didn't choose to bully and intimidate other companies, didn't choose to break anti-trust consent decrees, and didn't choose to unlawfully abuse its market power to create and maintain a virtually unchallenged monopoly?
Fascinating.
Would you also believe Bill Gates if he walked up to you and punched you in the stomach, but then claimed that he didn't choose to punch you, market forces compelled him to swing his fist in an arc that coincidentally happened to intersect your torso?
You're kidding me, right? Blizzard expanded the market with WoW, but not in a way that's accessible to anyone but themselves. Unless a game comes out that is phenomenally better, the market for any other MMO has, in fact, shrunk. Why? Everyone's still playing WoW. Until WoW becomes old hat and enters the mass exodus stage of the MMO lifecycle, I don't see a game, much less a SOE game, doing any better than any pre-WoW MMO.
I say this, of course, as a devoted Blizzard fanboy. Yeah, I could be wrong. Am I? Not likely.
Unaffected. Well, IE crashes whenever I view the proof-of-concept, but I chalked that up to coincidence.
You mean, like the United States?
You mean, like the United States?
Which is why we need to strengthen international treaties against space weapons, and mobilize the international community against such dangers. The rest of the world should unite against any nation that tries to deploy them, because they are a threat to everyone.
I fixed your post for you.
--
In Soviet Russia, Slashdot moderates you!
And who has physical possession of the smart card? Back to square zero.
But, but, but, that idea makes sense!
Who gave you a Slashdot account!?
Guards!
I was browsing del.icio.us from a link in today's Bittorrent article, and I found a highly relevant story, And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon by Paul Di Filippo. Read it, and beware!
"Harsh Realm".
Link.